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Abortion’s Faulty Rhetoric
By John W. Kennedy | March 10, 2008
The Springfield (Mo.) Pregnancy Care Center held a “vision banquet” Saturday night to kick off a capital campaign to raise $2.2 million for a new building. For its first eight years, the center has existed in increasingly cramped rented facilities. With the new facility, the PCC will be able to expand services to more clients, thereby saving more lives.
Syndicated newspaper columnist Cal Thomas spoke at the banquet. Many of the sound reasons he listed for being against abortion have been longstanding arguments in the pro-life movement: if we believe we are an evolutionary mistake we will treat others the same; if we disrespect life at the beginning we will disrespect it in the end, and every state in between; abortion isn’t the cause of our nation’s decadence, but rather a reflection of it.
Yet one of his statements had a remarkable freshness to it: Why do politicians who are officially “pro choice” want to reduce the number of abortions if they don’t believe the surgical procedure is really about ending the life of a baby?
Pro-choice politicians of course try to have it both ways. They make fundraising speeches at Planned Parenthood events and tout how they will forever defend “a woman’s right to choose.” Yet in media interviews they often tone down the rhetoric and say they believe no woman really wants an abortion; they will do what they can to make abortion rare.
What’s the logic in that? If a lawmaker or office-seeker really believes abortion is a fundamental right to be protected, why would he or she want to decrease its numbers?
God doesn’t foster such duplicity. In Jeremiah 1:5, the Lord declares, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart.”
Topics: abortion |
March 12th, 2008 at 4:13 pm
I have wondered what would happen if the word ’slavery’ were substituted for the word ‘abortion’ in the political rhetoric … “While I personally do not believe in ’slavery’, I will defend the right of others to own slaves.” (remembering that at one time slavery was legal) The weight of the issue is not about a legal Right but about a moral Wrong. It amazes (and saddens) me to hear a politician use this muddled reasoning in the attempt to keep a foot in both camps.Enjoy all of your blogs, John. Keep up the good work!
March 15th, 2008 at 12:14 am
John,
Yes, the inconsistencies are many. Meg and I were quite fascinated by a BBC documentary that illustrates a related dilemma in the debate. The 10-minute YouTube clip linked to in this op-ed is quite compelling … maybe material for some of your projects:
India’s Missing Girls and the Right to Choose, by Rusty Wright and Meg Korpi, PhD.
Female infanticide and feticide in India’s patriarchal culture stir passions for equality and fairness but raise troubling questions. Does favoring a woman’s right to choose logically imply that one supports her right to terminate a fetus simply because it is female? (Short op-ed)
http://www.christianworldviewnetwork.com/article.php/3128/Rusty_Wright
Glad you’re raising these questions.