Please ask yourselves the following questions with as much honesty as you can muster. When a female sex cell with 23 chromosomes joins with a male sex cell of 23 chromosomes, forming a new cell with 46 chromosomes and the genetic material of both the female and male involved, doesn’t that process make something by definition new and independent of the female body?

Regardless of whether this new entity can support its own life and survive outside the womb and at what point it can do so, isn’t it completely obvious that something has been created – a separate cell that is being carried by the female body but is not a part of it?

Please consider another thought: abortion is not a political issue. The “rightness” or “wrongness” of abortion cannot and should not be decided by the government. Each one of us will make a value judgment on abortion regardless of law. Unfortunately, having the freedom to choose does not guarantee that a person will make a responsible or good choice. It’s a choice that will affect the very existence of a being that is not a part of the decision-maker’s body.

Next time you hear “freedom of choice,” think about this. Women have a right to choose if and when they will have sexual relationships that could lead to unwanted pregnancy, excluding cases of rape.

When a woman is impregnated and becomes aware of it, she and her partner have another choice, either to love and nurture the new entity within the female, which is not a part of her body, or to give priority to their own self-interests.

Now here is the real moment of choice; it is the crux of the argument. Regardless of what George W. Bush, Hillary Clinton, the Feminist Action Network or your family and friends tell you to think, the right choice is to love, nurture and care.

Obviously, selfishness is a bad thing – it is the root of everything that is wrong with the world.

With abortion, it is destructive yet legal. Selfishness is always the wrong choice.

Each of us need to face up to this fact: when a person or couple chooses to abort an independent, procreated cell – regardless of its ability to survive alone – for no reason besides inconvenience, that person or couple is making a selfish and ultimately wrong choice.

Step outside yourself for a moment. Ask yourself a few more questions. If you advocate the right of an American to choose to destroy something of value that does not belong to them in order to preserve their own interests, how do you live with yourself? Do you rationalize a lie, or do you knowingly place no value on a newly formed and helpless life?

Is it possible that you have gone much too far in protecting the “rights” of people to have selfish and irresponsible sex and never face the natural consequences? Will you be honest enough to admit that self-centeredness is the real motive behind abortion and its defense?

Alan Smith is a senior history and religious studies major from Morehead City, N.C.

This commentary does not reflect the opinion of the Herald, Western or its administration.