Feticide is just another word to hide the killing of babies

When I was in high school, I remember so well the emphasis English teachers put on the importance of using words to communicate accurately and clearly. The content of the assignments were marked with the same seriousness as correct grammar. The writer or speaker viewed language that intentionally or accidentally failed to get its point across as a sign of disrespect for the intended audience.  Today, too often public discourse tries to hide its meaning and little attention is given to accurate and respectful communication. 

I don’t know what language instructors are teaching these days in our schools, but the mainstream media have learned to use language to deceive us when it comes to the life issues such as abortion. They have learned all too well to hide the killing of babies with words and expressions like: abortion, reproductive rights, pro-choice, women's rights and the latest ones in the news are sex-selection and female feticide. Here language is used to hide the truth rather than state it. Let me try to explain.

A recent Toronto Star article pointed out that a number of hospitals in the GTA located in areas with a high concentration of immigrants from South Korea, China and India don’t tell expectant mothers the ultrasound results about the baby’s sex. The reason: hospitals officials fear that the information will be used for female feticide. (The article uses the word gender, but I refuse to do the same term because gender too has become a modern word that hides the truth about human sexuality. There are two sexes, but the gender definition seems to be constantly expanding.) The ethical issue behind revealing the baby's sex is the concern that unwanted girls will be aborted. I wonder if the feminists will come out to defend these unwanted baby girls who may be killed just because they are females. After all isn't this immorality also a consequence of choice and the freedom to kill?

Dr. Ants Toi from Mount Sinai Hospital believes that female feticide is taking place in Canada. In clear language, female babies are being killed because of who they are. Feticide is just another word that allows Canadian parents to abort baby girls. It’s all perfectly legal. It’s all paid for by taxpayers and backed by the Canada Health Act. You see we are ahead of the Americans when it comes to sustaining the culture of death: we have had the Canadian version of "ObamaCare" long before Obama became president.

So this is the moral dilemma for supporters of abortion. One has to believe that a woman has the right to choose to kill her baby because the child came at the wrong time or is unplanned and unwanted. We call this abortion. As a society, we have come to accept that you have the right to kill a baby for no particular reason. So why the hypocrisy in trying to argue that it's wrong to kill a baby, to have an abortion, because of its sex or to intentionally select who will live and who will die. Isn't this the freedom of "choice" that "women" really want? The moral argument should be to protect all life at every stage. Once you allow abortion, female feticide, the killing of unwanted girls, is merely the outcome of an immoral law.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church makes this moral issue clear: "Since it must be treated from conception as a person, the embryo must be defended in its integrity, cared for, and healed, as far as possible, like any other human being. Prenatal diagnosis is morally licit if it respects the life and integrity of the embryo and the human fetus and is directed toward its safe guarding or healing as an individual. . . . It is gravely opposed to the moral law when this is done with the thought of possibly inducing an abortion, depending upon the results: a diagnosis must not be the equivalent of a death sentence." (2274)


The obvious solution to all this is to bring an end to abortion. 

Once you allow the killing of babies in mothers' wombs you no longer have any moral authority to choose who will live and who will die. You cannot argue logically and ethically that letting a baby boy live is fine, but we can kill baby girls if we choose. This is the immoral language of deception that leads to the slaughter of unwanted babies and continues with devious reasons to nourish a culture of death. However, human beings cannot play God. In the words of the Catechism, "Human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception. From the first moment of his existence, a human being must be recognized as having the rights of a person - among which is the inviolable right of every innocent being to life." (2270) When will Canada be ready to embrace and live this truth? There's no other way out from this evil, language or otherwise.