Topic: Constitutional Issues
The right to the right to life Abortion is not just a legal or political issue, it's a moral one that goes to the core of who we are as a nation and society. I believe the debate shouldn't start and end with Roe v. Wade.by R.J. Moeller
(Conservative)
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Ronald Reagan, in a State of the Union address some 25 years ago, said about abortion: "If it is not the murder of an innocent baby, then we should not only tolerate it, but encourage it. But, if it is the taking of an innocent life, then we must do everything in our power to put an end to it." I believe that this is the greatest moral dilemma of this, and perhaps any, generation.
Slavery was a moral abomination that was tolerated by millions around the world for centuries. In England, it took the courageous and sustained efforts of abolitionists like William Wilberforce over decades to enact legislation to end human trafficking. In America, we fought a Civil War over it. From the arrival of the first African slaves to the shores of Virginia (Jamestown) in roughly 1620, to the Emancipation Proclamation more than 200 hundred years later, the existence of slavery was accepted and expected by too many Americans.
The "choice" to use slaves was justified in many ways, but the thrust of the argument for continuing its practice boiled down to two factors: convenience (including economic factors) and a supposed "right" to slaves as property (reducing of slaves to chattel), which allowed practitioners of slavery to argue property rights rather than civil ones.
The Civil War began because the South told the Union that it was their right to live and conduct business as they saw fit. While that concept is undoubtedly an essential principle of our free market democracy, if abused and manipulated to include the enslavement of any man, woman, or child, it must (and did) give way to morality, ethics, and human decency.
It goes unquestioned in contemporary culture that slavery was wrong, and that the "choice" whether or not to own slaves, or even the "right" to that choice, should never have superceded the obvious right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that is the bedrock of our society and government.
I suppose you can in some sense understand the South's anger and resentment. Their entire livelihood was based on the cheap manual labor of other humans they considered at best 3/5's of a person. Ending slavery would mean the overhaul of the economic system that had been in place for 200 years. Higher production costs and shortages in the labor force would be inevitable results of Emancipation. Nothing riles the human spirit more than the impeding of Man's ability to earn a living…except the impeding of that man's ability to make as much, for as little cost, as he had been making before.
But no one with a conscience today feels the least bit sorry for the loss of plantation owner's "rights" or ability to "choose" regarding slavery. It was wrong, and we appeal to society's moral consciousness when we collectively say that the institution of slavery, and subsequent decades of institutional racism, was (and is) categorically evil and immoral.
Since 1973 some 50 million babies have lost their lives before ever taking their first womb-free breath. Sanctioned by the government, and systematic in its practice, abortion sees to it that 4,000 "fetuses" end up in garbage bins every single day in the United States. Pro-choice advocates insist that because a Supreme Court (the same institution that at one time reaffirmed slavery and segregation) in 1973 found a non-existent Constitutional right for a mother to be able to kill the child inside her, it is no business of the society or government at-large to condemn her "choice".
Let's call a spade, a spade here. Liberalism is the ideology that champions abortion, and every single Democratic candidate for President not only agrees that a woman's "choice" outweighs the sanctity of human life, but that the Federal government should subsidize that choice. Liberal Democrats have made their own choice regarding abortion, and it is one that must not be brushed aside or ignored in the same pluralistic, relativistic way differing views of religious faiths are in the country.
Many in the media and academia seek to set the terms of debate surrounding abortion as one that pits open-minded people versus close-minded ones. If you are some wacky religious nut on the Right, you have no sympathy for rape victims and reckless college coeds who were unlucky enough to get pregnant.
Pro-choice is the term given to the supposedly more enlightened among us. They are the ones who are more compassionate and understanding of the difficulties life and children can throw our way. They are the ones with tolerant, open minds who recognize not all Americans' have the same moral compass as Bible-thumpers from Red-State USA.
Reagan's question, I believe, is one we've never yet seriously dealt with. Is abortion murder?
Our courts send mixed messages when they uphold Roe v. Wade, yet then convict Scott Petersen for the double murder of his wife Laci and the unborn baby inside her at the time she was thrown into a California bay. Our media sends mixed messages when it presents innocents' deaths in Iraq as being an unspeakable horror, yet rationalizes away abortion as a necessary "right" for any progressive society.Our government sends mixed messages when it allows a 12 year old girl to abort a fetus without parental consent, yet requires a 16 year old boy who has grown up driving tractors on his parents farm in southern Illinois to acquire a parent's signature confirming that he completed 50 hours of monitored driving before he can get his license and drive to Dairy Queen.
Abortion is the extermination of something. Whether or not it is a life has apparently been left up to science, and determined by when a baby can live outside its mother's womb. This however may be an even weaker argument for Pro-choicers than the made-up "right" 7 judges found in the Constitution 34 years ago. Science changes on a daily basis. A family friend recently had premature twins nearly four months early. A few decades ago, this would be unthinkable, but as technology increases, so does the time frame within which abortion remains morally acceptable decrease.
Just like slavery in 17th and 18th century America, abortion must be decided on upon a moral basis. There are core, fundamental questions involved here: Are we more interested in some rights (like, to choose) than we are in others (like, to life)? We've let science and the decision of 7 un-elected judges decide a moral issue like abortion, but is it possible they're as wrong about it as they were slavery? If, for the sake of argument, the Supreme Court or Congress one day declares abortion "murder", will we be looked back upon by future generations with the same disdain we do plantation owners in the 19th century?
In 1856, a new political party began in a small Wisconsin town as a response to slavery. Challenging the Democrats and Whigs on their inaction regarding what the founders of the Republican Party believed to be the moral dilemma of their generation, the GOP was considered inconsequential for the entire four years it took them to gain control of the White House. Abraham Lincoln emerged from a movement of people who were no longer interested in the rationalization of slavery, and the empty promises by politicians to change the system. Is it time for another such change in American politics?
Most believe that the War in Iraq is the moral crisis of our generation. Some believed Vietnam was. Yet the loudest critics of military action against self-described enemies, whether you think it justified or not, are the same who remain silent as 4,000 (more than the total number of troops who've died in Iraq so far) completely innocent lives are snuffed out every single day of the week.If you are angry that blood has been spilled for oil, how can you ignore blood spilled for convenience?
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2007 R.J. Moeller, all rights reserved.
Published: Thursday, October 25, 2007
Last modified: Thursday, October 25, 2007
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Posted By: Jahfre Fire Eater
Date: 2007-10-27 20:18:01
Hi RJ, I believe a dilemma is a convenient camouflage for people who cannot make up their minds. The Roe V. Wade decision is a wonderful example of how Democrats believe in democracy unless they don't have a majority, then they resort to any means available to impose their will on everyone else. This is why Democratic leaders crave power, so they do not have to be held accountable to the majority. Their ends justify their means. Now that libertarians have abandoned the GOP, there is no conscience left in their leaders either so they are now also following the principle of the ends justifying their means.
The first amendment prohibits Congress from passing laws in support of religion so the Democrats went around Congress and had the Supreme Court make such a law. Clearly, if the founders had been able to imagine such a dastardly circumvention of the Constitution could be implemented by Supreme Court justices, who were thought to be the most respectable and principled of individuals in their day, the Constitution would have prohibited them from making such laws as well. Unfortunately, our founding fathers could not imagine the judges in the future would be so anti-Christian and pro-atheism that they would protect tenets of the atheist religion with Supreme Court rulings and instantly stamp out religious freedom throughout the land. Roe v. Wade made it illegal for Christians to create live in a community where their religious freedom could be exercised in the United States of America. This is the exact opposite of the intent of the first amendment, which was to PROTECT such religious freedoms from oppression by the federal government. A federal ban on abortion would no more acceptable, Constitutionally. If abortion is murder, it should fall under the statutes for murder as defined by each of the sovereign states in our republic. It shouldn't matter if abortion, or any issue, is a practical, economic or moral issue. What should matter is that such determinations be left to the States, or to the People, as stated in the Constitution.
Posted By: Colette von Hessen
Date: 2007-10-28 17:58:08
Dear RJ,
I really enjoyed this article. It perplexes me the way leftists claim to be the "compassionate ones" yet they can throw human life away at the drop of a hat. Your comments regarding the Laci Petersen case should hit home with pro-abortionists, but it won't, because reason and logic have never been a strong point with leftists.
Personally I am against the war, against the death penalty, and against abortion. I am so glad there is finally someone running who shares the consistent life ethic. Go Ron Paul!
Personally, I think abortion is a legal and political issue and those are perhaps just as important as the issue of morality.
As a Constitutional libertarian, I happen to believe that the unborn is a DNA Specific Individual, thus that Individual should be entitled to the same Right to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness as the Mother, who is also a DNA Specific Individual.
It the fetus were simply a "part" of the mother's body then it would not be a DNA Specific Individual and would simply be tissue in the mother's body, it is however, not identical tissue. The basis of all Rights is that of the Individual.
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2007 R.J. Moeller, all rights reserved.