The right to actually live is still the most fundamental human right. The older I get (which isn't that old), I honestly have no idea how someone cannot hold this position. I don't ever want to become a demagogue, but I simply understand the pro-choice position less and less these days. Human beings should have the right to live, and the fact that this isn't so contradicts so much of our law system. While I'm normally not a John Piper fan, he has good thoughts today. From the President he asks for straightforward honesty to hard questions:
1. Are you willing to explain why a baby's right not to be killed is less important than a woman's right not to be pregnant?
2. Or are you willing to explain why most cities have laws forbidding cruelty to animals, but you oppose laws forbidding cruelty to human fetuses? Are they not at least living animals?
3. Or are you willing to explain why government is unwilling to take away the so-called right to abortion on demand even though it harms the unborn child; yet government is increasingly willing to take away the right to smoke, precisely because it harms innocent non-smokers, killing 3,000 non-smokers a year from cancer and as many as 40,000 non-smokers a year from other diseases?
4. And if you say that everything hangs on whether the fetus is a human child, are you willing to go before national television in the oval office and defend your support for the "Freedom of Choice Act" by holding in your hand a 21 week old fetus and explaining why this little one does not have the fundamental, moral, and constitutional right to life? Are you willing to say to parents in this church who lost a child at that age and held him in their hands, this being in your hands is not and was not a child with any rights of its own under God or under law?
I dare any Christian that claims that they are pro-choice to articulate a coherent argument on why abortion should be legal (with obvious exceptions for the life of the mother and in cases of rape and incest). Normally, the pro-choice argument proceeds from the fringe of a conviction, not the core of it. Stuff like: "we don't want black market and unsafe abortions" or "it's a hard decision for women in poverty and the government shouldn't make it for them" or "the government simply shouldn't intrude into people's lives." But these arguments never deal with core issues: "Is a fetus really a person?" and "Is the procedure really murder? (it is, it cannot be anything else)."
But the more I talk to people with the pro-choice argument, I'm left feeling that everyone agrees to restrictions on abortion. It just leaves me asking why we're not actually pursuing these ends legislatively. You say you don't support limits, then I'll ask "Do you support an abortion to determine the sex of the baby?" "Do you support an abortion in the case of twins or triplets?" "Do you support an abortion for those babies with a degenerative illness?" If you answered "no" to any of these questions, then you are for limits on abortion. If you answered "yes" to all of them, then you do not have a conscience. Unfounded murder should be illegal.
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6 comments:
Well said, and thank you for saying it.
There needs to be an intelligent pro-life ideologue who will travel the secular university talking circuit and - humbly, winsomely, with conviction - argue the case against abortion. Given the nature of how people hear (or don't hear) arguments in our intellectual culture, it should probably be someone with a personal connection to their argument (could be a woman, an adoptive parent, or someone who had been party to an abortion).
Are you familiar with the liberal political philosopher John Rawls? I ran across his name in a good book (Evangelicals in the Public Square, by Budziszewski - an analysis of the political voices of Carl Henry, Abraham Kuyper, Francis Schaeffer, and John Howard Yoder), so I looked him up. It seems like this guy is a big part of the foundation on which current liberal political philosophy is built. Examining his arguments may hold the key to unraveling the pro-choice view in academia. Consider his idea of overlapping consensus - I'm thinking pro-choice advocates would use it in their favor, and I'm thinking this could be shown to be inconsistent and/or fallacious.
(Hey, I'm the only one commenting here...)
Yes! This Rawls thing is a big deal - I bet overlapping consensus is the source of Obama's "above my pay grade" comment.
Interesting stuff Ben. I'll check that stuff out. You're far ahead of the information and intellectual debate than I on this issue, but I will try to read some of that stuff in my free time. I know you want to go to Spain long term, but if there's ever a chance of us starting a think-tank of ideas, we should do it.
I'm very interested to hear why you're not usually a John Piper fan?
Hey Rachel!
By the way, I always read your letters and emails and have even used that search engine....
Not liking Piper is generally more a matter of flavor than substance. I'm not as reformed or Calvinistic, and sometimes I think he takes it a little too far. While every human action should be "for the glory of God" so says the Westminster catechism, I generally prefer to stick to biblical language on the matter. And, given my primary view of the atonement, I think Christ died primarily for the sake of and in the place of the world and human sin and for sinners. While it is also true that Christ died on the cross to "glorify God," that language just isn't as prevalent as the other view, but Piper generally makes it sound like the primary view. They're not mutually exclusive, and neither are wrong, but I just prefer to emphasize one over the other. So, perhaps this is a matter of taste.
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