Mr. Ibeagha:I must say this categorically. I am against abortion. I do not respect the taking of life in any form because of what I've been through. I tell you, before I was a torture survivor, I used to go left and right and think freely about abortion--and about the right to freedom. I used to politicize; I used to think logically about it. But after my experience-- just the fact that I survived torture and there were so many persons who didn't survive it, and children being killed--I developed this deep respect for human life, and to the extent that I never stand for taking away a life at any stage.
If there is a possibility, an iota of possibility, that there may be a life, whether it's a fetus, or whatever it is, do not destroy it. Whether it's an embryo do not destroy it. You do not know the possibilities that can come out of it. I've lived in several countries; I have been through all these different cultures-in Europe, for example, its permissible. I respect their positions, I don't know what they are going through when they make the decision, but I can tell them that if they take a step out of that position and just look at it as a whole, and humanity as one, they will realize that they are killing a part of themselves.
The word kill is so hard, but we shouldn't be afraid of speaking the truth. When you commit abortion, you are killing something, whatever the state of that thing. You shouldn't destroy, that's just my point; that's my position. And how does that bear on my belief? Well, we live in a society where people think that if you say "no" to them, you are not in support of the bigger picture. You are the biggest picture; there can't be any picture bigger than humanity. If you don't preserve it, too bad. If you do preserve it, thank you.
I think that, with due respect again to what other people believe in, I'd just say that we are a people who do not have respect for creation--when I say creation, I mean life. We place our priorities before the other's priority. In other words, we think that we are better, wiser, stronger, perfect, and the other is not. When we do that it shows that we lack integrity; it shows that we are not sure of ourselves; it shows this weakness in us.
Certainty is the greatest quality that a human being can possess, and as a nation, we lack certainty. This translates into the fact that we are still growing, we are still learning, we are not yet there, and we are not listening to the right thing. It shows that we are learning, we are growing, we are going through things, and we are sifting through the policies, but we are not listening to ourselves and to wisdom. We as a people, we should never doubt what is right from what is wrong. Period.
