I sent the following out to some people who were parsing (slicing and dicing) the abortion issue and whether it could cost Sarah Palin the presidency). Your thoughts are welcome.
Yes, some women (a sliver of urban and suburban females) will always hate -- yes, that is the right word -- Sarah for affirming life. However, I don't think it is possible to put life issues completely on the back burner.
The new "Stimulus" bill contains health provisions that point in the direction of denying adequate care to the very sick elderly. Daschle, Obama's first choice for HHS, advocates as much in his book.
There is a belief, widespread in the Democratic Party, that providing care for the elderly -- who, after all are going to "die anyway" -- is too expensive. In short, having sick old people around is an inconvenience.
Who is to say such liberals are wrong? Well, I for one will say it, but if we are all going to say so, we need some philosophical (or theological?) basis for doing so.
Let me be very blunt my friends: Don Fowler, "Mr. Democrat" from South Carolina and a former head of the DNC, said in late August that Sarah Palin's main qualification for the V-P slot was "that she didn't have an abortion [with Trig]."
I wanted in vain for Hillary Rodham Clinton and other female Democrats to chastise Fowler. If they disagreed with him, they didn't say so. Thus, I assume they weren't disturbed by his outrageous comments.
Here's the issue: What living things are valuable? And which ones should be disposed of in the most expeditious way possible?
Sarah Palin, portrayed as some kind of simpleton by many liberal feminists, has wrestled with that question. She believed and believes that her youngest son, Trig, is a child of God and that he has profound value.
Many feminists, including those who hate Sarah, believe no such thing. They apparently believe the Trigs of this world would be worthless -- burdens, inconveniences, ueseless cellular masses. Sarah does not believe such things.
If I may look into her heart, she would say that if she did have such secularist, selfish views, then life itself -- her life, your life, everyone's -- would be devalued. We would be in the situation Thomas Hobbes described where life is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and . . . short."
If the Trigs of the world don't have a right to "go to term," then why in fact should their lives after birth be sustained? After all, the ancient Greeks, who invented democracy and moral philosophy, practiced infanticide.
Granted, they didn't have sonograms or abortion clinics. However, were they just being more honest than we are?
Yes, the octuplets have been born in CA. But some of them are not going to have what we would regard as a decent life. So, why should they have a right to live? Why not just toss them in with the rest of the hospital garbage?
Our own squeamishness (or horror?) at the thought of infanticide is not exactly a moral imperative. It's critical that on abortion and end-of-life issues we not fall into what's happened for more than 30 years . . . a mindless exchange of slogans.
On this issue generally, I do not want any more constitutional amendments -- on life, on marriage, or on any other issue. But that doesn't mean I don't side with Sarah, who realizes that the devaluation of life that's been going on for nearly four decades could turn into a catastrophe for our society and culture.
Thankfully, Sarah does not side with Nancy Pelosi in the view that one solution to our economic problems is to have a lot fewer Black and Hispanic babies.
It was one of Dostoevsky's characters (in The Brothers Karamazov) who said, "If God [i.e., any sense of ultimate value] is dead, everything is permitted." And yes, he did mean EVERYTHING.
1 comment:
From my experience with pro-life people (those opposed to abortion under any circumstances) they are generally a pragmatic bunch, most of them believe, as does Gov. Palin, that Roe v Wade should be overturned, and each state allowed to decide whether and under what circumstances abortion should be available. On the other hand the pro-abortion crowd is totally unreasonable, thinking that abortion on demand under any and all circumstances is the perfect place for the federal government to exercise its authority. They think that abortion is far too important to entrust to the people.
The majority of people are actually somewhere in the middle, not supporting abortion on demand, but supporting abortion in cases of incest, rape, the health of the mother, and in cases where the child will be severely mentally or physically disabled, if that is what the mother wants, and most of them also think it should be left up to the state to decide.
So, there is far more room for Gov. Palin to attract a lot of voteres in this regard, even with her opposition to abortion under all circumstances. After all, a president cannot overturn a law, that is up to the Supreme Court.
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