The Frog Dilemma

I had a discussion recently with a nice guy at my local farmer’s market. You can catch the interaction from the Heritage Restored YouTube channel here.

In my state of Ohio, you can kill a child in their mother’s womb at any stage of pregnancy under the protection of the state constitution.

“However, abortion may be prohibited after fetal viability. But in no case may such an abortion be prohibited if in the professional judgment of the pregnant patient’s treating physician it is necessary to protect the pregnant patient’s life or health.”

“Health,” in this context, includes mental health. That means if, the day before giving birth, you and your physician decide that having a baby would be too stressful, you may legally end the child’s life.

Meanwhile, it is a criminal offense to accidentally step on the eggs of an endangered frog while swimming in a river.

If you follow the abortion debate at all, a common justification you’ll hear from abortion advocates is that “the fetus is not alive yet,” and therefore can be killed.

(Let’s ignore the obvious contradiction there: if you can kill something, that means it’s alive.)

However, when it comes to endangered frogs, the law in Ohio makes no distinction between the “living” and the pre-born—unlike how it treats human beings.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: “Yes, but frog eggs are laid outside the body, so technically they’ve been born. Ha! I can murder babies for any reason now.”

No, I give you more credit than that, dear reader. You’re a logical thinker who believes in biological science and reason.

And I know that you know life begins at the moment of fertilization. Biological science affirms this obvious fact.

Since frog eggs have been fertilized, unique DNA has been created, distinct from the mother and father. The same is true for humans.

From that moment on, it is discrimination based upon size, location, or level of development that allows us to arbitrarily decide which humans can live and die.

This, however, is absolutely not the case when dealing with the fetus of certain frogs.

Find some endangered frog eggs in a puddle, stomp on them, and you could go to jail in Ohio.
It doesn’t matter if walking around them would’ve made you late for work. It doesn’t matter if they were on your property. Those frog fetuses could land you in the slammer.

Either excuse—stress over your career or property rights (i.e., “my body, my choice,” which, of course, means the baby has no rights over their own body)—is perfectly acceptable, by law and your liberal aunt’s standards, as justification to execute your child.

Nonetheless, they’re frogs. Humans don’t lay eggs and are not amphibious or endangered, so it’s a bad comparison, you say.

The Puppy Comparison

Okay, then let’s compare human children to puppies, for mammalians sake, in (but not limited to) the great state of Ohio.

Under Ohio code you cannot-

“Torture an animal, deprive one of necessary sustenance, unnecessarily or cruelly beat, needlessly mutilate or kill…”.

This law is broad enough to clearly apply to unborn puppies in the womb, though it has not been used in such a case thus far.

What if you were walking down the street and someone was force-feeding what you knew to be deadly chemicals to a puppy? Absolutely gruesome, right?

What if they were pulling the puppy apart limb by limb? Horrendous.

What if they took a big pair of fore-snips and crushed the puppies head? I would be sick to my stomach to see such a thing, and would immediately jump into action.

All of these things are being done to children in the womb in the state of Ohio every day. Roughly 60 a day. Where is the outrage?

There are few things that instantly make my blood boil more than to see an animal being abused, except women and children, of course. Which is the appropriate response and order of affections.

Frogs legally have more rights than your son or your daughter had before they were born in this state.

Puppies too.

I love dogs. Like really love them a lot. I’ll admit it, I’m man enough, I baby talk ‘em. They don’t even have to be mine.

Frogs are a little more in my step-son’s wheelhouse. But even he, a 14 year-old boy, knows better than a lot of people my age that dogs and frogs are not worth as much as human life.

The Image Of God And Human Rights

We all inherently recognize that. Why?

Because animals are not made in the Image of God, humans uniquely have that characteristic that is not shared with the rest of creation.

Maybe you claim not to agree with that. But if you went to a Chinese buffet and there was a pile of human legs set out for consumption, instead of frog legs, you would immediately recognize that difference.

When you take a puppy from its mother without her consent and sell it, a kidnapping has not taken place. Do the same thing to a baby, and the police will be kicking your door down along with a very upset mother.

We hate to see animals abused, and we should, we have dominion over them. We are their stewards.

Genesis 1:26 – Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

Because we care about frogs and dogs, we write laws that protect them.

But when it is suggested to do the same thing for our own progeny, made in the Imago Dei, that’s suddenly a controversial thing for some reason.

Not always, though; the law is not consistent on that either. If a pregnant mother is on her way to have her child murdered at the abortion clinic, and is killed in a car accident, it’s a double homicide.

If she made it to the clinic, and her hired hitman succeeded in killing that same child, no crime has occurred.

It is not the crazy position to say “human beings should have more rights than animals.” Nor is it the crazy position to say “all humans should be treated equally”.

It is the biblical position.

It’s the kind of thing that when asked in a different context, everyone agrees with. Because humans are made in the Image of God and are designed to recognize these things.

Born and preborn animals currently have more rights than you did when you were in your mother’s womb.

Treating humans with the same value as a dog use to be an insult, now it is an improvement for some.

²⁹ Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. ³⁰ But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. ³¹ Fear not, therefore ; you are of more value than many sparrows.

Matthew 10:29-31

Support our fight in Ohio to legally recognize the rights of every human being. Humans are created equal, and it is our government’s duty and oath to treat them as such. Without discrimination or partiality.

Reach out to your local representative and request their support for the Ohio Prenatal Equal Protection Act.