From the American Spectator.
When somebody says he
"hates" or is "morally opposed" to abortion, he begs the question: Why,
exactly, do you hate/oppose abortion? The answer, certainly, is that he
believes what is being aborted is a human being deserving of at least
some of the natural human rights all people possess. He may also
believe -- if he acknowledges the developing consensus in the academic
community -- that abortion can have adverse effects on the physical and
mental health of women.
If he didn't consider the unborn child
a human being and/or didn't think that abortion hurt women, there would
be little reason for him to oppose it, especially with words like
"wrong," "hate" and "tragedy."
In other words, if the child in
utero were merely a "cluster of cells" and if the effects of abortion
on women were "mainly positive," as Planned Parenthood insists, why
would anyone oppose it on a personal, or any, level?
The main thing I would pick on in the article is that in my estimation, it is a mistake to think that someone is necessarily guilty of dishonesty for taking the convenient out offered by the "personally opposed, but" position - they may just not be very philosophical thinkers (I should not understate the difficulty of being dispassionate enough to decide on the most rational grounds, let alone to frame the argument properly in one's mind). Many people also do not have the advantage of having logical consistency built into their religion and morals the way Catholics do. The author also sidesteps some assumptions many liberal types have about religion and morality as chiefly a "private" affair that has no place in informing public debate (rather than a matter of recognizing objective truth about the human person). But on the whole, a good article that says something that needs to be heard.
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