One of the biggest news stories today is the much anticipated birth of a giraffe. Yes, April the Giraffe is past due, and many people are watching live around the clock. April the Giraffe has her own website and is being filmed on a livestream feed from her own YouTube channel where millions of people are watching live from around the world to see her give birth. April the Giraffe not only has a website and a YouTube channel, but she also has a GoFundMe page. Not only can you follow April the Giraffe on social media, you can purchase apparel in her name to raise money for the Animal Adventure Park in New York.
As we consider the frenzy created by a 15-year old pregnant giraffe, what can we learn from this whole event in our culture? There are some good lessons to observe about our culture along with some blatant inconsistencies. What if April the Giraffe had an abortion? Would her abortion be newsworthy? If giraffe life matters, why does human life continue to be devalued in our modern society?
Giraffe Life Matters
When big news stories online, on the radio, and on the television all point to a pregnant giraffe in New York, it’s clear that giraffe life matters. Has anyone asked if April is pregnant with a blob of cells or a real living giraffe calf? Is that a relevant question worthy of our consideration? Soon enough, it will happen. April will give birth to a giraffe calf, and when that calf falls out onto the ground where hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people will be watching live—it will not come as a shock to anyone that a real living giraffe was in April’s womb.
As the whole world watches with joyful anticipation for April to give birth, not one argument is being made that the “thing” in April’s womb is something other than a living giraffe. In fact, everyone across the board seems to agree that April is actually carrying a real giraffe calf. On the Animal Adventure Park’s website, they are using the language of “calf” in reference to April’s pregnancy. In their “Things To Know” section on the website, it clearly states:
The calf will weigh around 150lb and will be about 6′ tall at birth.
If everyone agrees that a giraffe is pregnant with a real giraffe calf and not a blob of cells, why is there such a raging debate in our society about human life? In 2009, an undercover study was done to point to the inconsistent lies and counsel given by Planned Parenthood to women who were seeking medical advice and potential abortions in their clinics. In one such case, an abortion doctor said, “A fetus is what’s in the uterus right now. That is not a baby.” Dr. Polhaska, the abortion doctor, claimed, “It’s not a baby at this stage or anything like that.” Polhaska also claimed an abortion will be “much safer than having a baby…You know, women die having babies.” [1]
You can see much of the same in the firestorm controversy of Planned Parenthood that erupted in 2015 on the website of The Center for Medical Progress. The Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) is the largest abortion provider in the U.S., performing nearly 330,000 abortions per year. [2] This accounts for 32% of the total 1,058,000 abortions per year in the U.S., or about 1 in 3, according to the latest data. [3] According to Dr. Deborah Nucatola, former Senior Director of Medical Services for PPFA (Hawaii Medical Director, Planned Parenthood), as of 2014 Planned Parenthood performed up to 40% of U.S. abortions. [4] We’ve proven that animal life matters to us, but we must face the question about human life. Does human life really matter to us?
A Question to Consider
What if a special announcement was made by the zoo keepers at Animal Adventure Park stating that a decision had to be made about the expected calf and the pregnancy of April the Giraffe. Suppose the zoo keepers announced that after a lengthy meeting with their staff, they decided that in order for April the Giraffe to be truly happy and fulfilled in the future, she would need to be released from the responsibilities of a calf to care for which would give her added freedom to live life. Therefore, in the best interest of April the Giraffe, the staff decided that her pregnancy would need to be aborted.
What if the abortion of April’s calf was captured live as millions of people watched on the Giraffe Cam? Do you think there would be outrage or support? What would be the response by PETA? How long do you think it would take before Animal Adventure Park was shut down? How would our culture respond to such a decision? It seems obvious that giraffe life matters to our culture and that such a decision would lead to a massive fury of outrage.
What if something far worse was happening as you read this article? What if a similar thing was happening to a human rather than an animal? What if little babies were being killed in professionally operated and medically licensed clinics just a few minutes from the Animal Adventure Park where everyone is anticipating the delivery of April’s calf? The reality is, just a few miles down the road from the location of Animal Adventure Park in New York, babies are being murdered. It’s not a big story. It’s not making a big stir. In fact, I called one of the abortion clinics not far from the zoo and found that they’re accepting appointments for this week.
While we’ve been taught to value the life of animals, we’ve likewise been taught to devalue the life of humans. We live in a culture of death in 2017. With all of the technology available to us—including 3D and 4D ultrasound imaging, we continue to support the legal termination of life in the womb. It has become normal to us. Why should we question the choice of the mother, right?
It may be the legal choice of the mother in America to remain pregnant or to terminate her pregnancy through abortion, but her choice doesn’t negate the fact that a pregnant mother has a living human in her womb. Technology and just plain good logical sense will tell you that a pregnant woman is carrying a living baby in her womb. The dark side of politics and medical practice in our modern age has attempted for many years to avoid the reality of life in a human pregnancy.
Sometimes we find ourselves, as it were, sitting in a room with an oversized and obvious elephant that needs to be addressed. Today, we have a pregnant giraffe in the room with us. The pregnant giraffe isn’t April—it’s abortion. This pregnant giraffe deserves attention from lawmakers, politicians, the medical community, and every human being in our culture. Not only does giraffe life matter, but so does human life. I’m not opposed to people watching a giraffe and celebrating the birth of this calf. However, it should concern us when our culture celebrates the birth of a giraffe but has lost the ability to weep over the murder of unborn babies.
Today a little less than 3,000 babies will be killed in America through legal abortion while we seem to be more interested in the birth of a giraffe.
- See: Planned Parenthood: “That’s not a baby growing inside of you.”
- “2013 Affiliate Services Medical Data,” Services. Planned Parenthood Federation of America May 2015. http://www.plannedparenthood.org/files/4514/3316/9332/PP_Services_05-28-15.pdf
- Jones et al, “Abortion Incidence and Service Availability In the United States, 2011,” Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health March 2014. http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/journals/psrh.46e0414.pdf
- See: Pg. 25, PPFA Transcript, The Center for Medical Progress. 7/25/2014. http://www.centerformedicalprogress.org/wpcontent/uploads/2015/05/PPFAtranscript072514_final.pdf
