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Abortion As 'The Lesser
Evil' Part One of Three By Dave Andrusko Part Two today is a story about how pro-abortionists are very nervous about challenging Nebraska's new law. Part Three is encouraging news from Minnesota. Over at National Right to Life News Today (www.nationalrighttolilfenews.org) we have two entries. The first explains how staff used Twitter to great advantage at the NRLC convention. Part Two gives you a real feel for NRLC 2010. Please send all of your comments to daveandrusko@gmail.com. If you like, join those who are now following me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/daveha. "If you are willing to die
for a cause, you must be prepared to kill for it, too."
I'm only aware that this disturbing op-ed ran because a thoughtful reader contacted NRLC to refer us to a column by Albert Mohler which shrewdly analyzed Antonia Senior's remarkable-by-any-standard column. Dr. Mohler, a staunch pro-lifer, serves as president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. (His column can be read at www.albertmohler.com/2010/07/01/when-feminism-kills-abortion-as-the-lesser-evil.) Obviously, Senior's conclusion is the attention-grabber. In its full it is part of the concluding paragraph which reads as follows: "As ever, when an issue we thought was black and white becomes more nuanced, the answer lies in choosing the lesser evil. The nearly 200,000 aborted babies in the UK each year are the lesser evil, no matter how you define life, or death, for that matter. If you are willing to die for a cause, you must be prepared to kill for it, too." I offer the entire last paragraph because it makes her conclusion even more bizarre. Why is abortion no longer "black and white?" What is that "paints the world an entirely different hue"? Having a baby, as Senior has! Senior starts dramatically, talking about an interactive display in the Cradle Tower at the Tower of London "that asks visitors to vote on whether they would die for a cause." For Senior that the ability of women to "order her own life as she chooses. And that includes complete control over her own fertility." You would think with that beginning she'd be off to the races. But in the very next sentence she tells us, "Yet something strange is happening to this belief that has, for so long, shaped my core; my moral certainty about abortion is wavering, my absolutist position is under siege." After she recalls her days as a young pro-abortion militant and then the supposedly complexity about what we mean by "life," Senior writes, "What seems increasingly clear to me is that, in the absence of an objective definition, a foetus is a life by any subjective measure. My daughter was formed at conception, and all the barely understood alchemy that turned the happy accident of that particular sperm meeting that particular egg into my darling, personality-packed toddler took place at that moment. She is so unmistakably herself, her own person -- forged in my womb, not by my mothering." But there's even more. "Any other conclusion is a convenient lie that we on the pro-choice side of the debate tell ourselves to make us feel better about the action of taking a life. That little seahorse shape floating in a willing womb is a growing miracle of life." Wow, sign her up for a subscription to National Right to Life News. Only then…" In a resentful womb it is not a life, but a foetus -- and thus killable." At that point the unwary reader wonders is she speaking for unrepentant "pro-choicers" or herself, or is there no difference? Senior does a nice job talking about the significance of Sarah Palin in promoting pro-life feminism. "This attempts to decouple feminism from abortion rights, arguing that you can believe in a woman's right to be empowered without believing in her right to abort," Senior writes. "Its proponents report a groundswell of support among young women." That's good, but still we don't know where Senior is going to wind up. We do in the next two sentences. "But you cannot separate women's rights from their right to fertility control. The single biggest factor in women's liberation was our newly found ability to impose our will on our biology." At that juncture she warps into abortion hyper-drive and what was an interesting and thoughtful piece goes to pieces. By the time she finishes, Senior has talked herself into believing, as noted at the beginning, "If you are willing to die for a cause, you must be prepared to kill for it, too." After you've read enough of what seem to be pro-abortion mea culpas, you're wise enough to know that they cannot end well. So, too, here. All the lovely talk about her daughter, all the wonderful fascination at the marvelous complexity of our common humanity can never overcome the iron grip of a certain kind of pro-abortion feminism. For these women, abortion=freedom and freedom=abortion. Doesn't matter if over half of the babies aborted are female. Doesn't matter that the category of the powerless used to include BOTH unborn children and most women--and therefore they ought to have a highly developed sympathy for the voiceless unborn child. Doesn't matter that it is simply bizarre to envision your own child as the "enemy." Nothing matters except "control" over "fertility," which is synonymous in their minds with the "right" to retroactively "control fertility" by abortion. For Senior where you find the inability to abort you're pretty much assured of finding misogyny--the hatred of women. More accurately, when you see protective laws, that's where you find a consensus that there has to be a better answer than destroying huge swathes of the next generation. |
