Meet the Winners of TFC 2007 Essay Contest
Ranking
Name Topic School
5th prize Cole Adema Abortion Home schooled
"I am a homeschooled senior in high school. Although born in Adak, Alaska, I currently reside in northeast South Dakota with my parents, Rick and Laura Adema, and younger brother, Levi. During non-school months I work for a local farmer—operating and maintaining equipment, doing field work, and other tasks around the farm. I am heavily involved in my local church and serve on the board for OffRoad Youth Ministries and am a drummer in the praise band, Ignite. I have been a team member and captain of the Dakota District Nazarene Teen Bible Quizzing “A” Team for several years, and have learned a lot through the competition. I also co-founded Silver Frame Productions, a film company dedicated to writing and producing quality Christian films. In association with Ruf Cut Films, we have been recognized at film competitions such as the San Antonio Independent Christian Film Festival, the South Dakota Film Festival, and the Fischgaard Short Film Project. I thoroughly enjoy writing, paintballing, hunting, and SCUBA diving independently and with the Brown County Dive Rescue Team. My plans for college and career are directed toward service in the United States Coast Guard. I am currently researching several college options, but am presently undecided. My desire to be involved with emergency services began while in the Civil Air Patrol. While involved in that organization, I achieved the rank of Cadet Captain and learned that I was drawn to search and rescue, law enforcement, and emergency service work. Helping others in their times of greatest need would be a great career. Other possible areas that I may devote myself to as led by God are professional Christian filmmaking, government and politics (especially with the abortion issue), writing, and missions and evangelism."
My essay:
Abortion: A Deadly Symptom
“These many, then, shall die; their names are pricked.” Thus said Antony in Shakespeare’s famous Julius Caesar. We find it harsh and even unthinkable to kill off one’s political enemies in such a way. But even such calculated killing begins to appear cordial in contrast with another kind of murder. These new victims are not guilty, nor are they foe to anyone. They do not even have names that can be “pricked.” They are the unborn.
Abortion, the legal killing of a growing human being, has destroyed over 48 million lives since 1973. In 2003, 1,287,000 abortions took place, averaging 147 abortions per hour. Those numbers annually exceed the American casualties of the War of Independence, the Civil War, both World Wars, and the Korean, Vietnam, and Gulf Wars combined. These statistics are shocking, but what do they mean? Is America at war with the unborn? No, those in the womb are the innocent civilians caught in the crossfire of a much bigger conflict. Abortion is only a deadly symptom of a deeper problem.
Where did this conflict start? It was certainly not at the birth of our own nation. The sanctity of life has been a bedrock principle in the United States since this country’s establishment. This principle comes directly from the Biblical Ten Commandments, which are the very fulcrum of the laws we have in America. America was settled by pilgrims seeking religious freedom—not freedom to do whatever they chose—but freedom to live as their God had commanded them. The Founding Fathers won their independence from Great Britain because the mother country was encroaching on the God-given rights of the colonies. The Bible served as a basis for the writing and establishment of our founding documents, which still rule the United States of America, as they did from the beginning. One of the very first and most important founding documents of the United States of America is the Declaration of Independence. In the Declaration it states,
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”
So, we see that from the very beginning of this nation, life was to be the most important right of the person, followed by liberty and the pursuit of happiness. These rights are dependent upon one another. One cannot pursue happiness without liberty, and one cannot have liberty without life. Therefore, by being deprived of life, these unborn Americans are also being deprived of liberty and the right to pursue happiness.
Abortion on demand essentially began in America in 1973 with the Supreme Court ruling in Roe v. Wade. This case ended with a Texas criminal abortion law being struck down on the basis that is violated the Constitutional right to privacy.
As said by Young Christians Fighting for America President Zachary Engelhart: “Even though the Court did recognize that “the Constitution does not explicitly mention any right of privacy,” the Court still concluded that “this right of privacy, whether it be found in the Fourteenth Amendment’s concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action, as we feel it is, or, as the District Court determined, in the Ninth Amendment’s reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough to encompass a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.”
The dreadful oversight made by the Court was that they ignored the life inside the womb. The Fourteenth Amendment states:
“nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” [emphasis added]
The Ninth Amendment, also cited by the Court declares:
“The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”
Therefore, according to the Ninth Amendment, the “right of privacy” should not be construed to deny the “right to life.”
In this ruling, the Court ignored the two most important laws that govern its existence, procedures, and rulings: the Constitution of the United States and the Ten Commandments. The Constitution, in the Tenth Amendment, reserves all powers not given to the federal government (including the Supreme Court) to the states. The Bible, the holy law of God, explicitly declares:
“You shall not murder.”
“You know the commandments: ‘Do not commit adultery,’ ‘Do not murder,’ ‘Do not steal,’ ‘Do not bear false witness,’ ‘Do not defraud,’ ‘Honor your father and your mother.’”
In Rector, Etc., of Holy Trinity Church v. U.S., the Supreme Court found that “[t]hese, and many other matters which might be noticed, add a volume of unofficial declarations to the mass of organic utterances that this is a Christian nation.”
With today’s medical technology, there is absolutely no way to honestly claim that an unborn child is not a human life. (See Figure #1.) Life begins at conception; to end life after conception is murder and should be considered such by United States law. Maintaining the health of the mother is often cited as a legitimate reason for legal abortion. Studies published by the National Right to Life Educational Trust Fund show disturbing evidence of the serious psychological, social, and physical repercussions that plague women who have abortions. These women’s reasons for their decision to abort vary from feeling unready for the responsibility to the financial strain of a child to the damage it might cause in an existing relationship, all of which are but masks that hide the fact that they are avoiding taking responsibility for their actions.
Today, Congress continues to do battle over this issue. There are many bills such as The Sanctity of Life Act and The Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act that side with the innocent unborn, but the opposition to these bills is fierce. Those who call themselves “Pro-Choice” remain vehemently adamant about securing the “right” to kill those in the womb. They secure government funding for organizations like abortion-provider Planned Parenthood, which makes over 400 million dollars on abortions annually. Or they institute programs in public schools that promote condom and contraceptive use, which only worsens the problem by teaching students to live life irresponsibly instead of promoting conscientious choices.
This brings us back to the question of what is really behind this war. As has already been stated, abortion is only a deadly symptom of a larger battle. The people of America are attempting to make war on God. At some point in the early Twentieth Century, a great paradigm shift took place. Whatever the driving force behind the effort, whether it was Marxism, Darwinism, or one of many other ideological forces that endeavored to destroy Christianity, a significantly large number of Americans began to take hold of the philosophy of atheism. Very basically, people rebelled against the idea that a Sovereign God would hold them accountable for their actions. Whether from fear or hatred of this almighty, eternal Being, they began to look to man himself as the savior. Even the concept of God was forcibly removed from the public education system, and a new generation was taught that God had no place outside of the church building and that there was no absolute right or wrong. Evolution told them that there was no intrinsic value to life, that we are all just cosmic accidents. So abortion became evolution at work in Darwin’s theory of “the survival of the fittest.”
The only way to get to the very heart of this issue is to bring America back to obey and worship the God of the Bible and to serve Him only. God is the very definition of morality. Right and wrong is a reflection of God’s perfect, unchanging character. There can be no ethics without God. This nation was founded on Christian principles, and only by those principles can it continue to stand. We must reprioritize and put God and the Bible back at the center of every component of our lives: school, work, home, and government, not solely church. We must pass laws that hold individuals responsible for their choices, instead of allowing them to throw the consequences on the innocent. And we, the body of Christ, must reach out to those who are confused and searching and tell them of our just God who has provided a way of escape from eternal judgment. Only then will we have won the war by God’s power and rid this nation of the sin we call abortion.
