A female co-worker and I were joking around about different topics of the day.

I quipped in a deep voice, “Yeah, I’m not pro-choice or pro-life. I’m pro-death! Ha ha. There’s too many people on this planet anyway.”

Then someone stepped around the corner of the aisle and stood behind me. My co-worker gestured and said, “I think he has a question for you.”

So he spoke to us, “Did you know that if abortion was legal in 1937, I wouldn’t have been born?”

I first told him that we were only being sarcastic, and I’m not really pro-death (although I do believe there are way too many humans on this planet), but he engaged us with pro-life reasons. I was at first surprised that a stranger would come over and start discussing abortion, but I just had to defend my pro-choice beliefs and moreover my constitutional beliefs.

It is amazing to me how the topic of abortion alone can really tell someone how a person believes about many other topics. I told this man that if abortion had been legal in 1937 he may not have been born into the body he was born into, but perhaps his soul may have been planted in a different body. Since we are only humans there is no way for us to tell how God, or whatever people believe, makes it all click. I am a believer in God, but I don’t understand it when pro-life Christians claim they know how God wants things. How can a human truly know what a god thinks?

This man also said that a fetus has a heartbeat and blood that circulates. He kept emphasizing the fact that the fetus had blood that circulates on its own and is not part of its mother’s circulatory system.

I replied by saying that one could make the argument that the fetus does not breathe, and it is reliant upon its mother for nutrition and oxygen.

He said that was true, but that the Constitution guarantees the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The right to life protects the unborn child.

This was a good argument. I replied that the fetus has to be living first.

He said that it was living and during later parts of the pregnancy it can survive on its own.

I then said that to be granted protection under the constitution a person must be a citizen. To be a citizen a person needs to either be born in the United States or naturalized. A fetus hasn’t been born and therefore is not a citizen. The mother is a citizen and the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that she has the right to decide what happens to her body. Since the fetus is a part of her body, undoubtedly, she has the right to choose whether or not to go through with the pregnancy.

I feel that despite how anyone stands on the issue, the right to choose whether or not to have a baby is protected by our constitution and as a society people must learn to live with that. Killing obstetricians and blocking the doors of clinics isn’t going to prevent abortions. This is one group imposing its morals on another despite the legality. Even laws making abortion illegal will not stop all abortions. Only then many will seek back alley unsanitary places. Protecting the safety of these women is reason alone to keep abortion legal.

Many states have an interest in viability (the ability to live outside the womb) laws, but I believe this is a case of one group imposing its morals again, but in this case they pass or try to pass unconstitutional laws. A woman should have rights over her body all through the pregnancy. It comes down to what my smart little sister said, “A fetus doesn’t have a right to use the mother’s body unless she gives it the right.”

I think a fetus has potential for life, but it is not in itself a life. If a person claims a fetus is a life, then is an egg or a sperm a half a life? Every time a sperm or egg dies is it waste of life? Are miscarriages really, really short lives? I think the answers are obvious. I’ve heard the argument that killing humans is wrong, therefore killing fetuses is also wrong. They say that despite the legal law, abortion is against moral law.

To this I ask, is it right to force a woman to have a child based on the moral beliefs of another person? An unwanted pregnancy is something nobody, the mother or the father, wants to deal with, but it happens. As a male member of the human race I imagine that no woman would like to ever have an abortion, but situations arise. Government shouldn’t decide whether abortion is right or wrong, but they should let it be allowed so that the individual woman can have her rights, search her own morals and decide for herself.

Yesterday pro-life supporters in the Ames area formed a human chain because this is Respect Life Month. Granted they have every right to assemble and to speak their views. They say they are committed to the protection of all human life. I hope they are also committed to the protection of all human rights as well.

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Tim Frerking is a junior in journalism mass communication from Pomeroy.