Birth of Twins Highlights Evil of Abortion

by Arland K. Nichols

In what has become an annual ritual on January 1, the mainstream media shared the unique story of twins born on different days and different years. This year, ABC News highlighted Lorraine and Brandon Begazo who were born in Washington, D.C., three minutes apart, but in different years. A rare occurrence and feel-good story, it will eventually become a neat bit of trivia that at the very least serves as an icebreaker in social settings.

But might the rare event of twins being born on different days provide more than just trivia?

Consider Maria Jones Elliot who, pregnant with twins in 2012, went into preterm labor and gave birth to her daughter, Amy, 23 weeks into pregnancy. Amy was a tiny 1 pound 3 ounces and was immediately whisked off to NICU in order to save her life. Unexpectedly, contractions stopped and Amy’s twin sister, Katie, decided she wasn’t ready to be born! While tiny Amy fought to survive, her twin sister was doing very well in Maria’s womb where she continued to mature and grow. Eighty-seven days later Katie was born with a clean bill of health! These beautiful twin sisters are recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as twins with the most days between births.

Putting aside the feel-good elements of the story, consider for a moment the status of these sisters under the law in America. While Amy was recognized as a human being whose life was protected and worth fighting for, in most states her twin sister would be considered a mere fetus with no rights—a potential victim of abortion.

Here we see plainly the ruthless arbitrariness of abortion: one twin could legally be killed but the other is protected by law. Is location so determinative? This common-sense example is indicative of how laws that leave any unborn child unprotected are discriminatory and assume a fanciful and contrived essential difference between living human beings.

The science, after all, could not be clearer; the union of two human gametes brings into existence a whole and unique member of the human species who is undergoing organized and self-directed development and growth. So the question then becomes, does this human being possess rights as do all other human beings? And what do we owe this human being? Is it even remotely sensible that one twin is protected by her mother, the law, and by the wider human community while the other twin is left unprotected?

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 Arland K. Nichols is the Director of Education and Evangelization at Human Life International. He is the executive editor of the Truth and Charity Forum.