Letitia Wong is a devoted mother of two, a responsibility that she takes very seriously. She also writes a Christian Apologetics blog, “Talitha, Koum!”
At Missouri Baptist University in St. Louis; she directs a student chapter which is devoted to providing those students with resources for defending the Christian worldview against cultural and intellectual challenges. In addition to helping college students, she also helps teenagers with apologetics through a local organization called Faith Ascent Ministries.
Letitia is a cohost of a weekly radio program - named TRU-Life Fridays Radio - which focuses on educating and promoting the defense of a healthy ethic of human life.
Letitia’s hard work and devotion to expressing and defending her Christian beliefs has blossomed from a struggle to understand these beliefs, especially in the light of her cultural heritage. For more information, visit Examiner.com
We hope you enjoy this interview.
We hope you enjoy this interview.
Nathan: You a pro-lifer? Why?
Letitia: I believe that every individual is a unique human person who has equal value and dignity as all other individuals. As a Christian, I also believe people are created in the image of God. Since God is the author and Creator of life, I cannot support anyone else either harming or taking the lives of the innocent.
Nathan: When did you became a part of this movement and why?
Letitia: I have always opposed murder as a basic belief in morality as well as being informed by the Bible specifically in God’s commandments. I began to volunteer for a local pregnancy center where I live shortly after having my first child. Looking at our baby daughter, my husband and I decided that we should put our beliefs more into action. Standing up for the humanity of our own daughter meant standing up for the humanity of everyone’s daughter or son.
Nathan: If there is a danger to mother while giving birth to a baby and only option suggested by doctors is “abortion”. What do you suggest how a pro-life person will handle this situation?
Letitia: I have never heard of the practice to abort a baby while he/she is being born—how horrible! “Danger” is a dangerously vague word. If by “danger,” people mean that the mother’s life is in danger, then doctors should address the cause of the danger. The cause of a life-threatening condition is never the baby herself; it is usually because something has gone wrong with the pregnancy, either with a development in the condition of the baby or the mother.
I believe the suggestion to abort comes more frequently than medically necessary. With good medical practice, whatever causes a problem in pregnancy or birth can usually be minimized in order to save both the lives of mother and child. According to the former, late Surgeon General of the United States, C. Everett Koop, “Protection of the life of the mother as an excuse for an abortion is a smoke screen. In my thirty-six years in pediatric surgery I have never known of one instance where the child had to be aborted to save the mother's life.
When a woman is pregnant, her obstetrician takes on the care of two patients—the mother-to-be and the unborn baby. If, toward the end of the pregnancy complications arise that threaten the mother's health, he will take the child by inducing labor or performing a Caesarian section.
His intention is still to save the life of both the mother and the baby. The baby will be premature . The baby is never willfully destroyed because the mother's life is in danger.”
Nathan: How do we determine our population? If a person is a person at the moment of conception, then we need to seriously re-evaluate how we calculate the number of persons world-wide. How do we track each conception? Have women make daily doctor visits to check? Implement some sort of required daily home test?
Letitia: Population is calculated on how many people there are outside of the womb as a matter of practicality. I don’t see the need to include babies in the global population before they are born.
Nathan: How do we determine our death rate? Somewhere around half of all fertilized eggs naturally don’t implant in the uterine lining, and never develop into fetuses, let alone babies. Does our death rate just go up a few million with the passage of this amendment? The medical community has traditionally defined pregnancy as beginning at the point of implantation precisely because so many fertilized eggs don’t implant. Should we change this definition?
Letitia: Again, I think as a matter of practicality that we don’t need to include the statistics on fetal death in the overall death rate. Of course, we keep these numbers as significant in their own right, otherwise how would we know that around half of all the conceived die naturally?
As for the definition of pregnancy as “implantation,” rather than conception, this is not a traditional but a recent development. Indeed, there are several varying definitions of what constitutes pregnancy exactly. I think the effort to limit pregnancy to the point of implantation (excluding fertilization/conception) is really playing a word game to avoid ethical implication about oral contraceptives that are potentially abortifacient (able to cause abortions).
Nathan: Should every “human” death be investigated? If so, how? As it stands, if a person dies (and especially if they’re found dead), there’s often some sort of investigation, especially if there’s reason to believe that another person caused their death. So, first, how do we recover all the “bodies” of the fertilized egg-people? Do we insist on checking every pad and tampon for evidence of human life? Every pair of panties? Every toilet bowl? And if we find a fertilized egg, should the police be called? I mean, if you find a baby in a dumpster, you call the police. If you find a used tampon in the trash, should you do the same thing? If a woman goes to the hospital for a miscarriage, should she be investigated as a potential murderer or child abuser? Should there be laws about the proper disposal of dead egg-bodies, the way that there are laws regulating the disposal of born human bodies?
Letitia: Most miscarriages happen because of natural causes (problems in fetal development incompatible with life), which don’t illicit a need to know. There is no reason to suspect foul play, so there is no need to make a natural death of the unborn, which often goes unnoticed, a law enforcement issue.
As for laws about proper disposal, in the US, we already have laws that prohibit people form putting human or animal wastes in the garbage, but people do it anyway. Thus, a law that required proper disposal of potentially conceived human bodies would not be heeded even if it existed.
Nathan: Pro-lifers claim to value each and every human life, from the moment of conception. That’s why, they say, they want abortion to be illegal — because it kills a person. And there are indeed a lot of abortions. But the abortion rate pales in comparison to the rate of fertilized eggs that don’t implant and “die” by being naturally flushed out of the body. Yet there is not a single pro-life organization (at least that I can find) dedicated to finding a solution to this widespread, deadly epidemic. The “death rate” of unimplanted fertilized egg-persons almost certainly far exceeds the abortion rate and the death rate from AIDS combined. Why the silence? Why no mass protests or funding drives or pushes for research? Where is the concern for the fertilized egg-people?
Letitia: This series of questions assumes there is an equivalence between death and murder, which, of course, are not the same thing. Therefore, it is quite artificial to accuse pro-lifers of being reasonable and not pursuing an “epidemic” of failed pregnancies.
Nathan: Should fertilized eggs and embryos get social security numbers? What benefits should they be entitled to?
Letitia: Some children and adults do not have Social Security numbers; a SSN is not something that anyone must have as a condition of their existence. The US Constitution names the right to life as the first unalienable right to individuals as endowed by the Creator from which all other rights become absurd if the right to life is held arbitrarily.
Nathan: What responsibilities and legal consequences should pregnant women face? Should Child Protective Services be able to step in if a pregnant woman does something that could potentially damage the fetus — like eat tuna or drink coffee or exercise heavily? What if a woman isn't pregnant, but makes her body inhospitable to a fertilized egg — say, for example, that she uses birth control, which thins the uterine lining and makes it difficult for a fertilized egg to implant? What if she’s anorexic? Some anorexics may be able to ovulate, but may not be able to sustain a pregnancy, or even have enough nutrients to allow for implantation. Can such a woman be prosecuted or otherwise punished for creating an environment that was deadly for an egg-child? What if a pregnant woman had a miscarriage, and it could be linked to some behavior — going skiing or flying or not eating properly? We already prosecute pregnant women when they use drugs during their pregnancies. If a pregnant woman otherwise does harm to her fetus, should she be prosecuted for child abuse? Neglect? If she miscarries, can she be tried for homicide?
Letitia: First, laws can only deal with issues of criminality—the question is whether or not it is necessary to turn a moral/ethical issue into a criminal one. Whether a particular behavior that is not normally illegal ought to be illegal when pregnant is difficult to discern much less, if not impossible, to legislate. For sure, our lawmakers cannot make the determination over which behaviors always, sometimes, or never cause harm to the preborn, so our laws will probably not criminalize behaviors that are ordinarily legal.
Tennessee has a law that prohibits a pregnant woman from using illegal narcotics during pregnancy, and one woman has already been convicted under that law. Note, however, that using illegal narcotics is already, well, illegal, so the law itself changes nothing, except that a woman can be caught through testing her baby.
Second, the issue of harm to the preborn through ordinarily legal activities is far removed from actively obtaining an abortion by an abortionist.
Nathan: I’ve asked this one before, but I rarely get a straight answer. If a woman intentionally terminates a pregnancy in a pro-life nation, how much time should she do? If a fetus is a person and a woman intentionally terminates the life of that fetus, should she go to jail? Be up for the death penalty? In almost any other circumstance, a person who intentionally kills another person — or who pays someone to do the killing for them — is prosecuted. Why should women who terminate pregnancies be exceptions? And if women who terminate pregnancies should be excepted because they just don’t know better, should the same hold true for women who intentionally kill their born children? For women who intentionally kill strangers?
Letitia: Well, that depends. Before Roe v. Wade was decided, all 50 states had laws prohibiting abortion in some way. Most states considered abortion a misdemeanor offense, which usually amounted to a fine or community service, but rarely if ever any prison time. We need to make important distinctions when it comes to the law and penalties. Judges sentence people in a range for committing similar crimes, so we can expect a variety of outcomes when it comes to prosecuting abortion crimes. If abortion were to be declared a crime, why would it have to carry a prison sentence?
One distinction we have to make: In our modern society, abortion is a type of civilized barbarism in which abortionists are killers-for-hire. They are the ones actually committing the act of murder and profiting from it, but rarely do we focus on them in the abortion debate. We should focus more on the abortionists and how they skirt laws in order to run the abortion industry. In my opinion, abortionists should be the greater focus of the law rather than the women who seek abortions.
Next, everyone knows that women have a variety of motives for abortion, and the law needs consider distinctions here. This is a complex issue no one should broad brush. To me, women are the first victims of abortion, because abortion is made available and seemingly convenient for her by those who sell abortion as a business. Abortion supporters’ manipulation and exploitation of emotionally vulnerable women and girls makes it difficult to put them in the same legal category as women who routinely use abortion as a method of birth control. We can easily see the difference between a teenage girl who is being coerced into having an abortion and a woman who has had five voluntary abortions because a baby would interfere with her chosen lifestyle.
So, we can make abortion illegal and still take women’s circumstances into consideration. Do we want to make prison a mandatory sentence? Of course not. To do so would be to say that the woman who was coerced should be treated the same as a late-term abortionist who “snips” babies’ spinal cords and makes jokes. Do we want to rule out prison or even the death penalty? Then how do we prosecute a person like Kermit Gosnell? We couldn’t, and in his case, we didn’t. And that is a tragedy.
Nathan: If a fetus is entitled to use a woman’s body to sustain its own life, should we begin researching other ways for humans to share bodily functions? It could save lives, after all. If, say, my kidneys fail and there is a way that you and I can be physically attached for about a year, can I can use your body to clean out my own? Sure, it will mean that you will be less physically mobile, it’ll require you to take time off of work, it will significantly alter your health, and getting me off of you when I’m ready will require you to go through a long and expensive process which re-defines the meaning of pain, but if a fetus has those rights, why don’t I?
Letitia: There is no reason to compare one (you) with failing kidneys to a child developing normally in the womb. First, the purpose of medical intervention would be to save your life, whereas the purpose of intervention in the womb would be to kill the child.
Second, treatment for your kidneys has many more ethical choices than the one scenario given—you can have the option of many people to come to your aid; you may use artificial methods; you may look for a donor organ, etc, all to substitute for something that is malfunctioning in your own body. I may be obligated to assist in your healing, but I am not obligated to commit a moral wrong against myself in order to heal you.
A growing pre-born baby, however, originates in the one place that is designed for her to develop and mature until birth. The womb is the only organ that serves no other physiological function than to nurture and birth a baby, and when functioning properly does exactly that. The womb is a necessary part of a baby’s life that exists exclusively for her. Therefore, a baby has the right to live in the womb, whereas you do not have the right to anyone else’s kidney.
Third, in case some are unaware, sex makes babies, which is why it is called reproduction. We should, therefore, expect pregnancy as a normal and natural occurrence in the life of a woman who is sexually active. Nothing has gone wrong when a woman gets pregnant, whereas in the case of your ailing kidney, it is a result of something that has gone wrong.
Nathan: What about men? How do we establish the paternity of a fertilized egg? What obligations do men have to the eggs they fertilize?
Letitia: We cannot safely establish the paternity of a child not yet born through scientific means, but barring multiple sex partners, the father can usually found through old-fashioned detective work. Men don’t have obligations to eggs—they have obligations to their children and to the women they have children with. They have the obligation to care for and nurture the lives they help create.
This question is really asking if men have a voice in abortion. I absolutely think men do. The only reason—the only circumstance—that abortion supporters do not want men’s opinions is that they are afraid that most men would not want their child aborted. However, the double standard couldn’t be clearer. When a man coerces a woman into having an abortion, abortion supporters rarely talk about defending the woman’s desire to have a baby over a man’s desire for abortion.
Nathan: What about in-vitro fertilization? Clearly it would be wrong to destroy any fertilized eggs in an IVF clinic, since those eggs are people, but what of the fact that without being implanted in women’s bodies, those eggs will never develop? Is it morally acceptable to leave those egg-people in a freezer for their whole lives, or should we compel some people to carry them to term?
Letitia: The entire industry is an ethical black hole from the beginning. Asking what would be wrong to do after children have been created in an IVF clinic is to ignore the fact that we wouldn’t have to ask these questions if people asked them before trying to make money with reproductive technology. The problem when we make children into a commodity to be bought and sold is that their humanity is lost in the process—they become products, not people.
Legally, the question still remains over whether the children belong to the men and women they were made from or the clinic. The law so far has not even established responsibility, so how can it compel anyone to take any action on behalf of those embryos?
Generous couples have been trying to provide a humane solution—adoptive parents have been willing to bring children to term, and agencies have been established to facilitate embryo adoption. Just like regular adoption, we could never compel anyone to adopt.
Nathan: How should we handle pregnancy-related complications? Say a woman is pregnant, and while giving birth isn’t going to kill her immediately, it’s going to weaken her body to the point that she will almost surely die within a few months of birth. Abortion is a definitely no-go, right? What if giving birth will probably kill her? We usually don’t know for 100% absolute sure that childbirth is going to kill a woman; doctors are usually only able to predict that it is likely to kill her. But of course, the likelihood — even a strong likelihood, and even a near-definite likelihood — that someone is going to kill you is not enough to pay for someone else to kill them first. And what if it is 100%? Why does the woman’s life take precedence over fetal life if they’re both human beings invested with full personhood rights? And how should we deal with ectopic pregnancies? Go the Catholic route and require that the woman’s whole fallopian tube be removed rather than just take out the egg? That still kills the fertilized egg-person.
Letitia: There has been a lot of research into maternal mortality. Without a doubt, those countries with a high level of hygiene, adequate prenatal care, and competent medical practices have the lowest maternal mortality rates. The reason: maternal mortality has very little to do with pregnancy or the child. The child is rarely, if ever, the primary cause of complications, so it makes no ethical sense to kill the child to solve a problem she did not cause.
The goal of good medical care is to save both the mother and child in a life-threatening event (which is practically nonexistent in countries with good medical care in the first place). If a mother is already in the process of giving birth, then doctors can remove the baby via cesarean—that practice has eliminated maternal mortality altogether.
Ectopic pregnancy is probably the most misunderstood circumstance yet. In the course of doing my radio program, TRU-Life Fridays Radio, I interviewed Bill Fortenberry, the head of The Personhood Initiative, who discovered in the course of his research into ectopic pregnancy that it can be a manageable and survivable circumstance. The conditions for this vary from person to person, from incident to incident, but a well-monitored case in which there is no sudden rupture of the fallopian tube, a baby may develop to the point of having a premature cesarean birth.
Of course, if a rupture did occur, then proper medical ethics guide us to see that saving the life that can be saved is the right thing to do rather than allowing both to die. I think it is important to note that saving a mother’s life through surgery in this particular circumstance is not an abortion. There is a big difference between saving the life of a mother in which the life of the baby cannot also be saved and abortion. Abortion has no purpose but to kill the baby.
Nathan: Do you wish to convey any message to our readers?
Letitia: “Pro-life” is a term that applies to more than just one’s position on abortion. Slavery, human trafficking, euthanasia, population control, reproductive technology, war, genocide, honor killing, and religious persecution are all issues that one can (and should) think about with a pro-life ethic. People who consider themselves pro-life should aim for consistency across these issues and develop good responses to the utilitarian and often emotional reasons many give that violate pro-life ethics.
Underlying the values of civil rights and personal liberties is the pro-life ethic. Our contemporary societies will continue to struggle and deny human rights to some class or group until everyone recognizes that before we have a right to anything in life, we must first have the right to life.
We hope you enjoyed this interview. To know more about Letitia, follow her Blog - Talitha, Koum! by clicking here.
No comments:
Post a Comment