Abortion is one of the biggest moral issues of our time. And it's an issue that Dr. Livingstone has thought about carefully. But, can or should we dictate morality? Is the abortion issue another sign that we are getting away from our Judeo-Christian ethic roots? Is that even important or significant in our global world?

"Yes," Livingstone said without hesitation. "It's probably the most important thing for our nation. If you look at any religion - you can find value in human life in Islam. You can find it in Confucianism, you can find it in pretty much any faith. Obviously Judeo-Christian values have always valued life."

"This idea of human dignity is very interesting to me," she explained. "Because it's part of the UN Charter, it was used specifically because there was a feeling that we were getting away from dignity, and looking at things like World War I & II. People were no longer of any value. Individual human beings were no longer of any value. And this has been the slippery slope recently. By moving away from that value system of saying that every single individual human being is valuable, you then move to a Utilitarianism. I feel like abortion is one example of utilitarianism, where we say, 'Well, what's the greatest good for the greatest number?' or, 'What's good for individual people at that time,' totally falling away from the idea of human value; every human being is individual and valuable . And every human being has dignity."

Livingstone continued, "And then, the argument has gone in abortion, from whether it's a human being, because now you can't deny it's a human being. We define things genetically. The only difference between me and a chimpanzee is 1 percent of my DNA, the only difference between me and a grain of wheat is 10 percent of my DNA. So, we know from DNA, it is a human being, it is alive, it is growing, it is developing. So, we can't have that argument anymore. And we have ultrasound, so we know exactly what we're doing. So, now, it's the issue, is it a person? Well, it doesn't have personality. Ok, we're back to Dred Scott, where the court said that African Americans were 3/5ths of a person. We're saying the same about individual human beings in the womb. Oh, well, they're only 2/5ths of a person, so we can get rid of them. Oh, now, they're only 3/5ths of a person, so we can still get rid of them. And, everything is moving away from the moral basis and moral compass that really guided our forefathers. It guided our founding documents."

"When people say, you can't legislate morality, every law we have is based on some type of morality," Livingstone stated logically. "Our laws are reflective of some type of morality. The fact that we say murder is wrong is an ethical and moral statement. The fact that we say you can go this fast in a residential area shows that we value residents of that area and don't want to go too fast and endanger their lives."

"It is also a double standard. It's a double homicide if you kill a pregnant woman," she pointed out. "But, if a woman does away with her own child, she hasn't committed any crime, that's her choice. What about choices of the individual human being in the womb? Our morality has always protected the most innocent. Let's look at Ellis Island - give me your poor, your huddled masses. We're looking at who are the most innocent and fragile in our society, we want to protect them. That is the American ethic, the American morality. When we say, we have more power than that developing human being, we're saying that, we're more powerful, therefore we will decided who lives or dies. I believe that's the slippery slope that Roe v. Wade has led us very, very far away from the value system that has made this country great. And I also believe that most Americans do not agree with abortion."

So, would Livingstone support Supreme Court justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade?

Livingstone nodded. "Yes, and Doe v. Bolton. No one talks about Doe v. Bolton, but it was the same day as Roe v. Wade and the court basically determined that you could abort a baby at any time, if the mother's "health" was implicated. And this term "health" didn't mean physical health. Physical health, mental health, emotional health, financial health, she didn't feel like it - any reason the woman has at all, up to nine months - up to actual birth, you can destroy that human life. That needs to be overturned. And, yeah, I believe that Supreme Court justices should be put in who value life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

"We should also look at the American Convention of Human Rights," Livingstone said, "Because in Article 4, the American Convention says that life in general begins at conception, when it talks about protecting the right to life. Life in general begins at conception - we're talking about Americas, north south, central - agreed that life in general begins at conception. So, we have a regional standard that everyone has agreed to in this whole region, too. And this was a long time ago."

Livingstone turned her attention to another aspect of the abortion debate - is it really good for women? "The other point is, that women who are pro-abortion, say this is good for women. Well, what about this system is good for women? Surgical procedures where there's no informed consent. The woman listens to a recorded message, has no opportunity to ask the doctor what could happen. All of the possible problems and complications are not really gone through with most women that have abortions. They don't talk about the chance (quite a high chance) of perforation, hemmoraghing, extensive bleeding, future infertility, extensive cancer risks going up enormously. Because if you have a natural miscarriage, your chances of breast cancer do not go up. But if you have an abortion, your chances of breast cancer go up at least three times, some studies say as much as five times. Women should know that. If women are not properly informed, why are we saying that this is good for women? You've got surgical procedures with no oversight. These clinics do not have to meet surgical procedure or medical requirements. The emotional and psychological and mental illness levels post-abortion are so much higher than women who do not have abortions, it's been proven. And the most recent study which was done down in Australia and New Zealand showed that the incidence of mental illness among women who have had abortions is about three times greater than women who haven't. So, even if you were just saying, is this great for women, then you have to say, is this good for women to eliminate their offspring. Is this natural and good? We don't see it in nature. Is this something that female animals in nature are doing? Because it's counter-intuitive to destroy your own offspring. Just on that basis, it isn't good for women."

"But, then we have to look at the whole moral thing," Livingstone said. "And we never talk about men. What about the fathers of these babies? These babies are 50% coming from their father. Fifty percent of the DNA is from their father. Why do men have nothing to say about this? I know a lot of men are pushing their girlfriends to have abortions, etc., but we've just pushed men completely out of this equation. A lot of men are very tramatized by the fact that they have children who have been aborted and they had absolutely nothing to say about it, even though it was half theirs. So, we've left that out of the equation as well."

Livingstone then discussed the contradictions abortion has with standard medical practice, "We talk about the age of viability. Well, the age viability is not 24 weeks any more. We can save babies 19 weeks old. And what about the number of abortions that are committed after the age of viability? Because there are at least 150,000 abortions of nine-month-old, full term babies in this country every year, and some would estimate even higher. Why don't they allow the women to see the instruments they're going to use? Why don't they want ultrasound in abortion clinics? If they really care about women, don't you think women should know what stage their child is at when they're aborting them? Why don't they allow nurses to see what's going on most of the time - they have all these shields? What about the baby parts industry, that no one talks about. The fact that institutions buys baby parts and there's a sheet with values on it - baby brains, baby arms, baby legs, baby livers, baby hearts. You can't buy them technically, so these institutions give money to abortion clinics through their foundations, use dissectors to dissect babies as they're being aborted and then they send out the baby parts on ice to all these research institutions."

Livingstone asked rhetorically, "So, this is supposedly what we want to do as a nation? Killing our offspring, chopping them up, using them under a microscope for research, and women totally uninformed as to what's going on. To me, this is a slippery slope morally, and it's 15 million people that we could have in our nation right now. How many of those people would have been Helen Keller, Einstein, and all of the great people we could have had that had no choice?"

So, why are people that are pro-abortion so against showing medical facts or, even worse, ultrasounds? Livingstone answered that question, "Ninety five percent of women who see the ultrasound, do not have an abortion. Ninety-five percent. Why? They tell you 'this is a piece of tissue'. By the time you find out you're going to have a baby, it's not a piece of tissue. The heart's beating at 5 weeks. They don't want fetology or any kind of explanation for the women that come in. To say, ok, this is a book of fetology, here's where your baby is now. Because they know if they see it, it's not going to be a piece of tissue - arms, legs, heads. The other thing that really convinced me, was going down to this 4D imaging clinic in London. It is a 3D baby in real time, it is unbelievable, and it is the most advanced ultrasound in the world. I went down there, and the guy that's there is actually pro-choice, and he let me look at the ultrasounds. There was a pair of 10 week twins, and the mother was listening to music and they were doing an ultrasound for her. They were literally dancing. Ten weeks. People don't realize that at 12 weeks, everything's in place, it just grows. There is no more development except for growth after 12 weeks. By the time most people find out they're pregnant, the heart's been beating for weeks. All the organs are almost formed. And women are being lied to. There's also a huge incidence of minority women that are being preyed upon. Sixty-five percent of all abortions are black or hispanic. They prey upon low income women in areas where people are desperate. And Margaret Sanger, who started this whole thing, was a racist. She advocated sterilization of women on welfare who were black in the South. And there's proof that they were sterilized to get their welfare checks. Because she believed that we shouldn't have anyone but whites in our society. And the Nazis praised the American eugenics movement as the sort of their inspiration of the final solution, because it showed that we should be choosing who's born and who's not born."

"I believe what Ronald Reagan said was true, 'the only people who are pro-abortion are those who have already been born,'" Livingstone said simply.

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written by Emily Brent, August 07, 2008

Right On Dr. Livingstone!! I would also like everyone to stop using the term "fetus" instead of BABY. They do that to disassociate it from a human baby. In the exact length of incubation time, you can either be speaking about how happy you are to be expecting a baby or you are referring to it as a fetus. Allowing women to have abortions on demand has made them less responsible for their actions! That's the trouble. Without any kind of moral code people are become less and less responsible for their actions. It used to be that you had to "pay the piper" if you made bad decisions. Apparently, our society is trying to evict the piper.

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