Abortion Thinking Is Upside Down
By Fr. Frank A. Pavone
International Director
Priests for Life
If anyone tells you the baby in the womb is not a baby, that person
may as well tell you the earth is flat.
Pro-lifers have heard the out-of-date, unscientific assertion "It's not a
baby" for many years. People who say this ought to be asked when are they going
to catch up with the times. These are the days of fetoscopy and fetal surgery.
Of course we know when life begins. And we know that the earth is not flat.
But now those who promote abortion say something even worse than "The earth
is flat." They now essentially say, "The earth is flat if you think it's flat,
and it's round if you think it's round. Decide for yourself." Whether the baby
in the womb is a baby or not really doesn’t matter to them, because its fate
will depend on the mother's choice. Period.
This is the mentality we are dealing with. It was clearly expressed to me one
day by a man holding a sign that said "Keep Baby-Killing Legal." He told me that
he supports abortion and wants to be honest about what he is supporting. The
value of the baby depends on the mother's choice.
Pro-lifers need to understand that this is how a growing number of
pro-abortion people think. In dealing with this attitude, we need to point out
several things.
- People's decisions don't determine reality. I cannot even decide the
weather. It should be even clearer that the moral value of a life cannot
depend on my choice.
- If the value of others' lives does depend on my choice, then all people
are not equal. But our country was founded on the teaching that all people
are equal, and that the weak should be protected from the strong.
- If the value of a life depends on my choice, then so does the value of a
lot of other things. If a mother can decide to kill her own child, then she
can also decide to beat her own child, or cut off the child's hand, or
torture the child. If, furthermore, a child's life depends on choice, then
so does a house, a car, and a bank account. If baby-killing can be legal,
why not car theft and bank robbery? "But those things are illegal," someone
will say. So what? If the value of a life depends on my choice, so does the
value of a law. The law has value if I say it does. Abortion is OK if I say
it is. The earth is flat if I say it is.
It should be clear from this line of reasoning that the pro-abortion
mentality turns civilization upside down, and produces a chaos that the
pro-abortion people themselves will not want. The difference between them and
us, of course, is that we see that more chaos necessarily follows in the wake of
abortion. They say it follows only if they think it does.
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