Posted by
Patrick Henry on Monday, May 18, 2009 11:35:28 AM
Barack Obama's controversial address at Notre Dame has rekindled the debate
about abortion, faith and the sanctity of human life. Blogs and websites are rife
with arguments for the speech and against it, praising Notre Dame or condemning it
and, most important of all, decrying abortion or defending it. What is appalling
in the frenzy of debate is the lack of logic, the penurious grasp of the most
elementary principles of moral philosophy and the blatant ignorance regarding
the canons of international law. This is especially true of the pro choice
apologists, which is understandable since the grounds for their position are
far more visceral than intellectual.
One recurrent specious argument is that it is contradictory to condone killing
in war (e.g., Iraq and Afghanistan) while condemning abortion as child murder.
The argument fails completely on two grounds. First, under international law
a soldier on the battlefield may kill an enemy who is trying to kill him or her
and it is NOT murder. Further, while murder can occur under battle conditions
it is limited to situations in which unarmed non-combatants are killed either
intentionally or through lack of due diligence to avoid their deaths as collateral
damage in a broader attack. There are military courts martial and war crimes
tribunals to deal with such cases. Not so in the case of abortion where the
victim is both innocent and defenseless and no national interest priority or
state of war exists. The argument is 100% bogus.
The second most popular defense of abortion seems to be that a fetus cannot
be murdered, and that the right to abortion is protected by U.S. law. The first
part of this argument is patently false. Assailants who attack pregnant women
and kill the fetus in the process are routinely prosecuted for that homicide. The
dual effect of the law in such cases is to grant the fetus legal standing as a
"person" (since homicide cannot be carried out against a non-person) and to
refute the allegation that a fetus cannot be murdered. The oldest tactic of the
pro-choice mob has been a persistent campaign to dehumanize the fetus, deny
that it is a human baby, a child, and posit that it is some lifeless inanimate thing
to be disposed of at the will of its mother. In addition to having been thoroughly
discredited by modern science, this tired argument sets in bold relief the
dissonance within the law itself on the matter. The only difference between the
murderer whose initial violence is directed at the pregnant mother and the one
seeking or performing an abortion is intent. The latter INTEND to kill the
child in question.
The final pro-abortion fallback is that a woman's body belongs solely to her,
and she alone may therefore have the final say about whether to carry a child to
term or kill it. Sounds black and white. No one would argue that under normal
circumstances a woman's body is not her own. So, she may smoke, drink, use
harmful drugs, get fat, or whatever she likes. But when she becomes pregnant,
two new factors enter the equation. First, barring rape or incest, the woman
herself has become a responsible party in creating the new life within her and
so bears accountability for it. Second, a basic principle of law holds that one
person's rights end where another's rights begin. Abortion supporters must,
by logical necessity, argue that a fetus is a non-human and therefore has NO
rights. Once again, criminal law refutes this, while Roe v. Wade seems to
support it. But Roe v. Wade was decided in the Supreme Court by the
narrowest of margins, and the abortion lobby works frenetically to prevent
another conservative nominee to the high court because they full well
understand the fragility of the premise and fear its overthrow. Many states
have built hedges around Roe v. Wade by passing measures that limit the
point in the term of pregnancy when such procedures can be performed
and placing human rights protections around the child survivors of botched
abortions. The single law supporting abortion hangs by a slim thread, and pro-
choice activists are well aware of it. This argument is little more than an
intellectually lazy attempt to cloak sexual irresponsibility and non-accountability
as a women's rights matter. It suggests that women have rights but babies don't.
In his Notre Dame speech, Obama encouraged students to keep an "open
mind" regarding abortion, and to "seek common ground" on the issue. That
was just before conceding that the two opposing positions on the issue are
irreconcilable. He did not proceed to enlighten us as to where the "common
ground" lies between those who favor protecting innocent babies and those
who would murder them. And apparently his definition of keeping an "open
mind" is code for "if you don'e want an abortion, don't have one, but leave
those alone who do." Begs the question, doesn't it?
One Notre Dame student defending the Obama invitation argued that one
seeking or performing an abortion is, after all, accountable to God. One
cannot help but wonder whether if someone expressed the intent to kill her
she would be content with limiting that person's accountability to the
hereafter. The abortion arguments are out there. They're loud, pugnacious
and in-your-fa ce. They're also faulty, illogical, not scientifically or morally
based and fraudulent. So who wants to be on common ground with that?