Chelsea Schilling, a staff writer for WorldNetDaily, wrote an article about 12-year-old Lia's moral courage and conviction to convey an important message: 12-year-old steals day with pro-life speech -- Teachers threaten disqualification, but girl chooses to speak against abortion.
Here is a transcript of Lia's speech:
What if I told you that right now someone was choosing if you were going to live or die? What if I told you that this choice wasn’t based on what you could or couldn’t do, what you’ve done in the past, or what you would do in the future? And what if I told you you could do nothing about it?
Fellow students and teachers, thousands of children are right now in that very situation. Someone is choosing - without even knowing them - whether they are going to live or die. That someone is their mother, and that choice is abortion.
Every day 115,000 are dying through abortion. 115,000. That means that 5,000 children would die every hour. All those lives gone, all that potential gone, and all that hope and future gone.
Now, I know what some of you might be thinking: “Oh, it’s not really killing. After all, a fetus isn’t a child, right?” Why do we think that just because a fetus can’t talk or do what we do it isn’t a human being yet? The word “fetus” comes from the Latin word meaning “young one” or “young child.” Some babies are born after only five months. Is this baby not human? We would never say that, yet abortions are performed on five-month-old fetuses all the time. Or do we only call them humans if they’re wanted? No, fetuses are definitely humans, knit together in their mothers’ womb by their wonderful Creator, who knows them all by name.
Some people might say that since abortion’s legal now it doesn’t matter, it’s not our business. But if an action is unjust, it needs to be illegal, and it has to be our business. And this particular law has a huge impact on our society. In 1997 over 1,000,000 abortions took place just in the U.S. And just last year, over 42,000,000 abortions happened worldwide. I’d say that’s a huge impact.
I know some people say that the mother has a right to abort. After all, her life is dramatically impacted by having a baby. But I’m asking you to think about the child’s rights that were never given to it. No matter what rights the mother has, it doesn’t mean you can deny the rights of the fetus.
Talking about the mother’s choice, the mother may have had a choice not to have unprotected sex in the first place. We must remember that with our rights and our choices come responsibilities, and we can’t take someone else’s rights away to avoid our responsibilities.
At this point, I imagine the age old question arises: “What if the mother didn’t choose to have sex? What if she was raped? But let’s look at the facts for the U.S. as an example. Only one percent of all American abortions are hard-case categories. This includes rape, incest, and the life of the mother being in danger. One percent. That hardly justifies the disturbing volume of abortions that happens these days.
And who’s to say abortion’s the easy way out? I don’t think people understand the effects of abortion on the woman. I don’t have time to list all the negative after effects. But here are a few examples of the physical effects. Seventeen percent of the women who’ve had abortions face complications in their subsequent pregnancies. Some may not even be able to give birth at all. They are also at a greater risk of developing breast cancer if they have an abortion. But perhaps the worst effects are the emotional ones. Women who had an abortion tend to have more mood disorders substantial enough to provoke them to harm themselves. In addition, women who’ve had an abortion are five times more likely to have problems with drug and alcohol abuse. Abortion leaves a woman feeling lost and uncertain about their future. Almost one-third of all women who’ve had an abortion are dissatisfied with their decision. It certainly is not the cure-all people think it is. I read a story on the Focus on the Family Web site; it was about a girl who had an abortion. She writes:
“I had an abortion at the age of 17, and it was the worst thing I ever did. I would never recommend it to anyone because it comes back to haunt you. When I tried having children, I lost three. Something happened to my cervix during the abortion(Sharon Osborne).
Hers is just one of the many heart-wrenching stories that nobody tells these days, and those same ones are the ones that we need to hear about.
Thank you for taking time to think about the issue of abortion, to think about the unborn, and to think about the effects of abortion on a mother. If you walk away with anything after this speech, walk away with the words of Horton. You know him, that elephant that risks his life to save that little speck. Remember him and his famous quote: “Even though you can’t see them or hear them at all, a person’s a person no matter how small.”
Thank you.
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