A teenager from Virginia wowed the audience at the closing banquet of the National Right to Life convention, where she won first place in a national oratory contest featuring contestants from two dozen states.
The competition took place on Saturday and it saw competitors form about 25 states give 5-7 minute pro-life speeches covering abortion and bioethics concerns.
Nicole Gibson of Virginia Beach took home top honors and a scholarship from NRLC for her essay and speech covering the “entitlement culture” that Gibson says is fueling the number of abortions.
“Go ahead; eat another doughnut. You deserve it! Give yourself a break, go on vacation. Don’t you deserve it? Buy yourself a nicer car. You deserve it! Make the choice to end another person’s life because it’s expedient. You deserve it,” Gibson said in the recited speech. “In our entitlement culture, everything you need, everything you want, everything that would make your life more convenient is something you deserve, something to which you have a right. But where did we get these rights?”
“You have a right to a good job, you have a right to a nice house, you have a right to an abortion. But abortion is not a right, no one has that right,” she explains.
Gibson says there is little debate now that the unborn child is a human being starting at conception.
“At one point, even the thought of a mother ending the life of her own children was absolutely horrifying. No one would dare question the loyalty and love of a mother for her children. For this reason, when the abortion movement began, those in support of the practice made every effort to dehumanize the unborn child—“it,” a fetus, a collection of cells, a product of conception; hardly a baby. However, times have changed,” she explained.
“Judith Jarvis Thomson, a philosopher at M.I.T. argues that even if the unborn is a human, abortion would still be justified because a woman’s right to choose overrides the child’s right to live. Because the practice of abortion is already accepted in the legal system and in society, abortion supporters have the social grounds to claim their practice as a right which, in their opinion, is infringed upon by anti-woman, anti-choice extremists,” she continues.
Gibson recalls the era of child sacrifice millenniums ago and says pro-life Americans must use a national call to conscience to oppose abortion and show it to be as ridiculous a notion.
“Our culture claims sophistication and civility, yet we allow for the wholesale slaughter of millions of unborn lives and rid ourselves of accountability by claiming a right to an easier life, a nicer house, and a better career,” she says.
“The battle of semantics is on a dangerous path; entitlement language has taken the lead and is already deeply rooted in American culture. The rights claimed by abortion supporters lead to the deaths of unborn children, yet the nation refuses to turn away from the road of self-centeredness and false benefits. The pro-life movement must bring back a sense of moral responsibility and reclaim the language that was corrupted by a culture consumed by self-gratification,” Gibson contends.
She concludes: “We are not opposing a so-called “right” to abortion; our goal is to protect a true right, the right to life. Our nation needs to be awakened from this daydream of entitlement and made aware of the reality of abortion. We must re-establish our nation’s sense of duty and accountability and in doing so, save the lives of millions of innocent children.”
LifeNews.com editor Steven Ertelt and business manager Julie Ertelt were part of the panel of 21 judges who participated in the three rounds of competition.
The full text of Gibson’s speech follows:
Endangered by an Entitlement Culture
Go ahead; eat another donut. You deserve it! Give yourself a break, go on vacation. Don’t you deserve it? Buy yourself a nicer car. You deserve it! Make the choice to end another person’s life because it’s expedient. You deserve it. What’s more, you have a right to it. In our entitlement culture, everything you need, everything you want, everything that would make your life more convenient is something you deserve, something to which you have a right. But where did we get these rights? What did we do to earn such a lifestyle in which even luxuries are something deserved? Somehow, the language of entitlement has given us these artificial rights merely because they sound good. You have a right to a good job, you have a right to a nice house, you have a right to an abortion. But abortion is not a right, no one has that right.
At one point, even the thought of a mother ending the life of her own children was absolutely horrifying. No one would dare question the loyalty and love of a mother for her children. For this reason, when the abortion movement began, those in support of the practice made every effort to dehumanize the unborn child—“it,” a fetus, a collection of cells, a product of conception; hardly a baby. However, times have changed. Judith Jarvis Thomson, a philosopher at M.I.T. argues that even if the unborn is a human, abortion would still be justified because a woman’s right to choose overrides the child’s right to live. Because the practice of abortion is already accepted in the legal system and in society, abortion supporters have the social grounds to claim their practice as a right which, in their opinion, is infringed upon by anti-woman, anti-choice extremists. Those in the abortion movement ensure that the language they use emphasizes the struggles of the pregnant mother and her right to choose. Even though the unborn child is solely dependent on his or her mother and by law, has a prima facie, or self-evident, claim on her resources including her body, advocates of abortion simply assume what they should be arguing and change the language of the debate to fir the pro-abortion narrative. This is why abortion is now choice, and killing is now a right. National Public Radio, CBS, and the New York Times even changed their language from pro-life and pro-abortion to abortion rights supporters and abortion rights opponents. Now, instead of supporting a cause, those in the pro-life movement are opposing a right.
Andrea Tyler, a linguistics professor at Georgetown University told an NPR reporter, “By positioning themselves as ‘pro-life’, this group essentially won the war of words.” It is bad to be anti-choice, but it’s far worse to be anti-life. Those in the abortion movement know this, and strive to direct emotional appeals away from the child and toward the women who are supposedly subjected to social inequalities and emotional traumas which only abortion can reconcile. Yet, this game of semantics utterly fails to address the moral depravity involved in ending the life of another human being merely for the sake of expediency. The attractive words are just a mask for a heinous crime.
In 1921 the largest cemetery of infants in the ancient Near East was discovered in Carthage. The Carthaginians worshipped a god, Molech, who demanded child sacrifice. Throughout history, many gods of many countries required the sacrifice of children as a prerequisite for blessing. Even today, Ugandan witch doctors claim that infant body parts will bring the bearer good luck from the spirits of the earth. As a nation, we look at child sacrifice as a medieval and abominable practice. Nothing seems so barbaric as the slaughter of innocent children, yet, our civilized, sanitized culture freely condones this practice every day it allows abortion to continue, unopposed. Our gods are no longer stone figures and metal statues; they are ideas, concepts, promises, and entitlements. Behind the welcoming language of freedom is the reality of slavery, slavery to the idols of the socially-created rights of career, convenience, money, lust, and, of course, choice.
Naturally, the culture would not accept a gruesome practice on its face. The nation still possesses some collective conscience which is repulsed by obvious wrong, yet abortion supporters euphemized the practice away to obscure the grisly reality. They’ve redefined baby, killing, choice, motherhood, rights, and in doing so, abortion advocates have redefined the value of human life. Choice overrides life because motherhood should never involve sacrifice. “Every child a wanted child,” as Planned Parenthood would say and if they’re not wanted, we’ll get rid of them. Call it something else, and it becomes a right. Call it something else, and all the problems will disappear. Call it something else, and suddenly, society no longer has the moral responsibility to oppose abortion. Our culture claims sophistication and civility, yet we allow for the wholesale slaughter of millions of unborn lives and rid ourselves of accountability by claiming a right to an easier life, a nicer house, and a better career.
The battle of semantics is on a dangerous path; entitlement language has taken the lead and is already deeply rooted in American culture. The rights claimed by abortion supporters lead to the deaths of unborn children, yet the nation refuses to turn away from the road of self-centeredness and false benefits. The pro-life movement must bring back a sense of moral responsibility and reclaim the language that was corrupted by a culture consumed by self-gratification. We are not opposing a so-called “right” to abortion; our goal is to protect a true right, the right to life. Our nation needs to be awakened from this daydream of entitlement and made aware of the reality of abortion. We must re-establish our nation’s sense of duty and accountability and in doing so, save the lives of millions of innocent children.
