Our high school essay contest winner is Hally Sweet! Congratulations Hally! You can read Hally's entire essay below.
Amy Schlichter
Executive Director
Hoosiers for Life
All life is important from the time of conception. No exceptions.
Some might try to argue otherwise, but I hope to show you why no excuse is good enough to slaughter a baby. Proverbs 6:16-19 says, “There are six things the Lord hates, seven that are detestable to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked schemes, feet that are quick to rush into evil, a false witness who pours out lies and a person who stirs up conflict in the community.” A baby in the mother’s womb that cannot speak for itself is innocent blood.
Pro-choice people give many excuses and times at which they think abortion is acceptable. Some examples are the rape exception, overpopulation, bodily autonomy, and especially, “It isn’t a human until it’s born.” Well, I’m here to tell you that all of those things are wrong, but I’m going to hit on the last reason I listed: “It isn’t a human until it’s born.”
The crazy thing is, our Indiana Code already notes, “That human physical life begins when a human ovum is fertilized by a human sperm,” IC 16-34-2-1.1. So, the code is already saying unborn babies are human, but the state of Indiana still allows abortion to happen. Pro-abortion advocates try to argue that an unborn baby is not a human, or a baby, until it’s born!
One definition for life is “the period during which a person or thing is alive or exists.” Now let’s look at the definition for zygote. A zygote is the outcome at the moment of conception, when a male sperm is joined with a female ovum to fertilize it. It is a single celled organism of biological information of both parents. This zygote holds important information like 50,000 genes belonging to both parents. It is something that holds its own genes. This is when life begins.
Let me walk you through the stages of baby development in the womb. Like I said above, development begins at the moment of conception, creating a single celled organism called a zygote.
From there, the mass of cells moves from the fallopian tube to the interior part of the canal and sticks itself to the uterine wall of the mother’s womb. During the next 24 to 48 hours, the zygote starts multiplying tremendously, becoming a stage called blastocyst, also called the placenta. This is a tiny ball of almost 150 cells. From this point on to the 8 week mark, this life form is called an embryo. After 8 weeks until the point of birth, the baby is called a fetus.
At 4 weeks from conception, the baby begins forming eyes, ears, and a respiratory stem.
During the 7 week mark, the baby begins sucking its thumb.
At 8 weeks from conception, a physician will be able to feel the baby’s heartbeat, through an ultrasonic stethoscope.
At 9 weeks from conception, the baby can hold soft objects by wrapping its fingers around them.
At 11 to 12 weeks from conception, the baby will begin breathing steadily all the way to birth.
Also at 11 weeks, the baby will learn to swallow the amniotic fluid.
Then at 13 to 15 weeks from conception, the baby forms taste buds and gets its sense of taste.
At 16-20 weeks, the baby becomes sensitive to outside noises and even the mother’s heartbeat.
At 23 weeks from conception, the baby forms a steady sleep pattern.
6 months from conception, the baby starts forming oil and sweat glands to get rid of the waste from its body.
After 7 months from conception the baby starts moving by stretching and kicking.
Then from 9 months till birth, the baby will put on a lot of weight, almost half a pound a week. Its skin starts to thicken and it also starts the breathing practice, breathing in more than a pint of amniotic fluid.
Now, with all of that being said, let me give you the definition of abortion: the deliberate termination of a human pregnancy, most often performed during the first 28 weeks of pregnancy.
In Indiana they allow abortions during the first trimester, and after that a woman can still have an abortion with special permission. Most of the abortions in Indiana occur in the first trimester. The first trimester is the first three months! If you look above, you’ll see that by then, the baby has formed eyes, ears, and a respiratory system. It has begun sucking its thumb, the physician can now hear its heartbeat, it can hold soft objects, and has now started breathing steadily.
When we think someone might be dead, what do we do? We check to see if they have a heartbeat. When they do, that means they are alive. How is that any different for a baby, just because it is inside the womb? It still has a heartbeat, it is breathing, and you can clearly see it is a little human with human body parts.
We all go through stages of life. We get older, our hair starts to grey, and our skin begins to wrinkle. It’s all a part of life, and at the moment of conception, that’s when it all begins. Just because the baby hasn’t been born yet, doesn’t mean it’s not human. It’s just going through a stage of life.
Some women that get pregnant and didn’t want to be convince themselves that the baby isn’t really human because they don’t want to accept that they are murdering a child. They have the mindset of, “it’s my body and I can do what I want to do with it.” The problem with that is…what about the baby? That baby is its own human being, but it can’t speak for itself. That baby is alive, with its own heartbeat, its own little arms and legs, and its own body.
In Psalm 139: 13-16 it says, “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.”
These verses are saying that all life is important. God knew that baby before it was even created. He made that baby fearfully and wonderfully. It should not be the mother’s choice to take that away from the innocent baby without a voice.
Job 31:15 says, “ Did not he who made me in the womb make them? Did not the same one form us both within our mothers?” This means, no one is better than someone else. That mom wanting to abort her baby is no better than the baby inside of her. They were both made the same way. She has no right to take away the life of an innocent child who has no say.
Those babies in the womb matter too. Their lives are just as important as yours and mine. No reason is a good enough reason to murder a baby. We are all created equal.
Hally Sweet
10th grade