In the war between the enlightened and the righteous, the debate over abortion reaches heights of absurdity normally reserved for Fox News and Michael Moore.
Why people inflame their passions over abortion for valuable hours which could otherwise be used basking in the brilliance of Prime Time only to completely misunderstand one another, escapes me. Maybe if both sides said what they really meant, they’d gain a better knowledge of themselves and the actual content of their own views.
Toward this end, I’ve humbly taken the task of clearing the abortion debate’s enormous dunghill of misconception and half-truth.
According to some Bible-toting pro-lifers I might as well not even write this article since the entire compendium of human knowledge is already available in the dresser-drawer of your nearest hotel room.
Included is a depiction of Creation, human history, philosophy and experience, complete with a full catalogue of mathematical and scientific truths.
It’s obviously unfair to attack the Bible for things irrelevant to its subject matter (it’s always funny when self-important twerps “disprove” the Bible’s truth by pointing out pithy inconsistencies and grammatical errors), and this is exactly my point.
One likewise cannot use the Bible as an authority on society and law, the domain of reason and tradition. I believe it was St. Paul who said “leave to Rome what is Rome’s,” but what do I know.
Anyway the point is that scripture is a matter of personal salvation, not public policy. People often make this error regardless.
For example, Cal Thomas recently wrote an infuriating column on gay marriage in which he insisted on marriage’s Biblical origins as if the pagan Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Germanics and Celts all didn’t marry.
I really wish the enlightened would understand what they are actually standing for.
Basically pro-choice people are taking two positions of consequence: 1.) The government has no right to determine whether abortions should be performed because the public cannot pass judgment on what is an individual, moral decision and 2.) That even if the government does have this right, The Bill of Rights federally prohibits state governments from doing so.
Allright, then why do people spend so much time debating over whether an unborn fetus is a human being or not?
If science proclaimed the fetus to be a human being tomorrow, would that change the minds of people who are pro-choice? Of course not.
The reason people are pro-choice is because they place personal liberty ahead of the life of an unborn child. After all, what does it mean to be human? Have babbling elderly in nursing homes, unable even to feed themselves, lost their humanity? I don’t think so.
Abortionists like to mask their rather cold beliefs by arbitrarily declaring a “beginning” for human life, like in the third trimester, as if the appearance of human eyes or hands somehow poofed a soul right into the fetus.
A human life is not defined by whether one has reason or one can move on one’s own. We can find endless examples of people who don’t have these qualities but are still considered human. The beginning and end of humanity are, quite simply, conception and death.
Abortionists simply believe that a half-formed, ugly human being in fetus stage isn’t worth the liberty of a fully grown woman with a career on her mind.
If you can’t admit this, maybe you should rethink your beliefs.
Speaking of beliefs, how do people justify vegetarianism and environmentalism with being pro-choice? Is it OK to kill unborn fetuses but not trees and cows?
But, if we admit this first premise, the second point fails as well.
As far as I can tell, the abortion argument is legally based on the Fourth Amendment, which protects private property from illegal search and seizure.
As it’s a bit of an obvious and rather callous stretch to call a fetus “property,” I’d say that this matter falls more likely under the Tenth Amendment, which says that “powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution…are reserved for the states.”
But hell, it’s only the Constitution. It’s not like anyone cares about that old thing anymore.