Star Trek is Pro-Life

The “Big Blue Wave Pro-Life Blogburst” is underway. I'm going to be a late addition to the list because of a situation today but I figure later is better than never.

I'll leave the talk to the talkers because they are good at what they do.

I'll sum up my reasoning for being pro-life pretty simply. It's because of Star Trek. Not completely but it was heavily influenced by watching and reading science fiction in general.

The more I look back the more I realise that much of my pro-life stance comes from watching Star Trek and reading sci-fi. Not all but much of it. And for that matter, in Star Trek episodes, the Pro-Life theme seems to sap straight out of it at times maybe even despite the intentions of it's contributors.

I remember someone once telling me that science fiction is all about taking an idea and bringing it to it's logical conclusion in the future. And Star Trek was excellent at that.

One particular theme that's common in Star Trek is the idea of using time travel to eliminate someones existence - going back in time to prevent the birth of a person or an entire race.

Based on what we know from modern society doing that wouldn't be murder. After all the person hasn't been born yet. Then why did the thought of someone going back in time to negate your existence bring up so much horror? Why do we think we have a right to live? Because, I decided, on some level, we realise that we are SUPPOSED to live.

That's not to say that an unborn baby is not living. A baby in the womb is capable of much more than we'd like to know when they are commonly aborted. But the question made you think.

Once more another theme was frequently explored. And that was abortion in the name of preventing people from being born who would suffer a decreased "quality of life."

In one episode they came to a planet who terminated embryos as soon as they found they had some sort of defect like blindness. The irony was that it was a blind engineer's visor that had the technology that ended up saving their planet.

In yet another episode Counsellor Troy is impregnated against her will. As the crew debates terminating the child Troy sees the child in her womb on a screen and declares that she's keeping the child.

The pro-life tone of Star Trek is undeniable. The theme has been explored before. And as is common of brilliant science fiction it's left up to the viewer to examine and decide for himself even though it may have a bias. Horrible science fiction forces it's own views on you.

The expressed goal of good Science Fiction should be to make you think.

I can't help but think if more people took the idea of abortion to it's logical conclusion they would recoil in horror at the logical end result that the future would bring.