“Doctor speaks against abortion”, printed January 3, 1974 in the Door County Advocate
Doctor speaks against abortion
A talk on abortion given before several groups by Dr. A. G. Tamayo of Sturgeon Bay has been so well received the Advocate has been asked to publish it. Since it runs 10 typewritten pages we have excerpted.
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The only meaning of Christmas is that it is a celebration and a prayerful thanksgiving for the birth of Jesus Christ. Humbling Himself in his love for us He assumed human nature; conceived and born of the paragon of all mothers, the Blessed Virgin Mary, elevating womanhood from a lowly animalistic sex object to be part of God's design of the higher level of motherhood and bring forth children for the greater glory and honor of God.
It is not to say that mothers are only supposed to procreate. They are entitled to enjoy partaking in such a basic instinct with responsibility. This sexual function, biological as it is supernatural, must be done at the proper time following its sanctification with the sacrament of marriage or legalization by law through a civil wedding. It should be done also at the proper place like the honeymoon cottage and family home not just any place like a car or a site in the park. One should be proper so that there should not be any unwanted or accidental pregnancy, hence no occasion to resort to abortion.
How many Christmas gifts would end up unclaimed because thousands, nay millions of babies who could have been the happy recipients have been condemned to perdition and have been denied the gift of life through abortion? Yes, Santa Claus will miss those millions of unborn babies whose addresses are unknown because they landed in the incinerator, or whatever ignominious place, instead of falling in the warm and tender arms of the mother.
The State of New York was the first to legalize abortion. Lately the New York legislature had a change of mind and voted to repeal this law, only to be vetoed by Governor Rockefeller. The fact that the majority of the New York legislators were disturbed enough to change their minds on the idea of legalizing abortion should cause us to pause for a moment and reassess our stand on this issue. During the Vietnam conflict the youth of the land protested the bombing in Vietnam and the wanton killing on both sides. It was touching to witness each youngster wearing a bracelet bearing the name of a prisoner of war as a gesture of their protest and concern. It would be encouraging to see this same sympathy and commitment of the youth for the right to life of the unborn and see them wearing a bracelet for each child that has been aborted.
I wish to deliver a message which does not concern the human cancer but which is anent a cancer that cries to high heaven in its import: the Social Cancer of our time, Abortion. For although 75,000 die annually from cancer, ten fold more are now dying from abortion.
I wonder if any one of us ever stopped for a moment to reflect that we, our physical being, are made up of an aggregate of minute cells from our very hair to our nails, our heart, our blood and our brain which are in dynamic orderly changes dictated and programmed by biochemical and bio-electrical impulses each in constant and dynamic change, each in constant progression, maturation, degeneration and repair every second and every minute of our life. Its complexity is so almost supernatural that one cannot help but arrive at a conclusion that only a divine Genius can possibly envision its conception and existence. So elaborate and enigmatic is the function and workability of the human body that I doubt if medical science will ever be able to fathom life's every mystery. Only one thing is certain. No one can create life! One doesn't have to look around and go into the constellations and the universe to marvel at creation. It is frustrating for us physicians isn't it? But if we physicians must look back to our purpose we should not be disappointed for our role really to sum it all is to prolong life, treat diseases and assuage pain. We are primarily physicians and help the ill-stricken and not philosophers to decide who should deserve to die whether it is by euthanasia in the name of compassion or abort a child because it has less or no right beside the rights of pregnant woman.
No physician is ever so almighty as to take life in the form of euthanasia (mercy killing) under the guise of human-itarianism or do abortion under the guise of a woman's right to her body. Only God has a right to life. He giveth life. He taketh life in his own good time.
Abortion has been with us but not on demand. Allowing abortion on demand gives everyone an easy excuse and almost a license to free love and affords everyone a means to remove the sequel of their indiscretion with the same facility as one would wash his hands with soap and water after it has been soiled with dirt. Everyone after every pretext can do away with the conceptus as though it were but a blob. I would rather we remain with the previous way abortion was sanctioned. Then abortion was allowed when the new life was a serious, almost fatal threat to the mother's life, but only when the pregnancy is fatally inimical to the mother just like we have justified homicide in the face of self defense or killing during a justified war. Only when it is a threat to one's own life or leaves us in self defense of an individual or of a country can killing be allowed. It is rather odd that we decry suicide, the taking of one's life; we condemn genocide, the extinction of a race; we are saddened by the My-lai massacre; we, as doctors, pride ourselves in reducing fetal and maternal mortality; and even abolished capital punishment because it is inhuman, yet now we sanction abortion on demand aided and abetted by that same court that ruled that capital punishment is barbaric and inhuman. There is no rhyme or reason.
The panacea for the social cancer is a return to Godliness; to the order of religion and morality; a return to God and realization that one does not have a right to his own life much less to somebody' else's life and should not commit suicide, murder, genocide, infanticide, euthanasia, and abortion. These can never be and should never be justified.
If only one can witness how a baby with all its parts is being aborted and being removed from a womb of a mother, piece by piece, limb by limb, finger by finger, eyes and all! If only one can witness a baby coming out alive and kicking and maimed during an abortion! The sight of it is so revolting that one need not convince a mother, pardon me, I should say a pregnant woman, because the use of the term connotes a certain tenderness and benignity, to think of perpetuating such a dastardly act, one need not argue against such a selfish and destructive act of abortion.
If it is the right of a woman to her own body then, we should not condemn and ostracize prostitutes, call girls, nude go-go dancers or so called promiscuous women for they too have a right to their own body. Only God has a right to life. No physician can create or nullify it. We have no right to life, not even to our very own. Only God has a right to life.
Judge J. O. Newman wrote the majority opinion in a pro-abortion victory. "It is the right to privacy of an individual, married or single to be free from unwarranted governmental intrusion in matters so fundamentally affecting a person as the decision to bear or beget a child. To understand that a fetus is not a person in any constitutional sense and cannot thus be murdered is not to equate the unborn with a blob." Proponents of abortion contradict themselves by saying that to believe this is not to deny the mystery of birth nor deny the sanctity of life. If we are going to do this legal calisthenics, the poor unborn really has no right constitutionally.
But it is precisely the intent of the constitution to provide the helpless and disadvantaged more protection under the law. For who else would provide them with this mantle of protection but the law? The poor unborn has a right to life and happiness too. so if they are unwanted by their natural parents? There are hundreds of thousands of childless parents waiting for a chance to rear and love these unwanted kids! Besides, in matters of religion and morals there is no democracy. There is only a dictatorship of righteousness. The dictatorship of the Golden Rule which sums up the Ten Commandments of God. If a woman or a man is entitled to love himself, he or she must then, to all intents and purposes allow the unborn child the same love as he begets unto himself and must entitle the unborn child a right to a life of his own.
The twisted righteousness professed by pro-abortionists stems mostly from their permissiveness and irresponsible self-indulgence. First we have the Playboy magazine which at first was a little discreet but now has become so risque it doesn't leave anything to the imagination anymore. Now the x-rated movies are so bold they show frank sex acts, even the unnatural acts. Now not only do we have living-in the same down, now it is a fad and the in-thing to have unmarried marriages. Premarital and extramarital congress is fashionable. Wife swapping is an acceptable past time. Naturally there is more illegitimate pregnancy so more occasion for abortion! Not that it is only limited to the unmarried. A national tennis champion decided she wanted an abortion so that it would not interfere with her tennis tournament schedule. Movie actresses do similarly because it might hurt their physique and image. You call this right? I think there should be a rededication to the mores and morals of our grandparents, a concerted effort in the education of our children to the acceptability and wisdom of their parent's moral code of concordat and in showing the folly of the "now generation" and "jet set" in-thing. I cannot help but fear that the biblical Sodom and Gomorrhea is here with us once again and wonder in what nature fire and brimstones would come about. Is it a nuclear holocaust? I wonder!
Courtesy of the Door County Library Newspaper Archive
Alfonso G. Tamayo related posts
http://doorcounty.substack.com/t/alfonso-g-tamayo
Other Christmas-related articles:
https://doorcounty.substack.com/t/Christmas
Other posts related to protecting unborn babies:
https://doorcounty.substack.com/t/protecting-unborn-babies