The author is Newsweek's Lisa Miller, and the piece that I read online comes from the magazine's December 8 issue. The headline (and accompanying subhead) promised an intriguing, thought-provoking article. "No God--And No Abortions: Pro-life atheists insist that a human life has intrinsic value, even though they don't believe in God." And it is worth reading, but not primarily because it recognizes that the pro-life house has many mansions.
Prior to the election Miller wrote a piece about white Evangelicals and abortion where she predicted "that conservative Christians would not move in large numbers away from the Republican Party because of their fundamental theological and cultural objections to abortion." She should be given some credit, for much of the media for almost all of the election cycle had gleefully predicted/promised/hoped that Obama would make deep inroads into this community. He didn't.
But what's most interesting is not her surprise that there exists people who oppose abortion who either profess no faith basis or who are out-and-out atheists. The case for protecting unborn human life can be made with great power and forcefulness without a religious foundation, and has been for years.
The prime example is syndicated columnist Nat Hentoff. As you read his own explanation for his secular conversion, you might say Hentoff came in through the back door.
As he researched the inhumane and merciless disregard for the lives of babies born with serious injuries, Hentoff began to see how the same virus that made it possible for doctors and parents to starve days-old babies to death had infected the debate over euthanasia–-and abortion! And as he came to know pro-lifers as individuals, he found that he liked them, and respected them, a lot.
Rather what makes Miller's piece must reading is how it fits into the larger context. Every pro-abortionist and his aunt and uncle are attempting to carry on the deception which was so instrumental in allowing Obama to make inroads into constituencies that normally would never have given a pro-abortion maximalist like him a second thought. And that is the fabricated out of whole cloth myth that pro-abortionist and pro-life alike are bent on "reducing the number of abortions."
Bogus times ten, it is a strategy that Obama and his ilk will nonetheless carry in front of them like a banner. And if "everyone" wants to decrease the number of abortions, then pro-lifers must of course (a) accept every proposal, even if is entirely insincere or provides no evidence it will reduce the number of dead babies, and (b) quietly stand by while pro-abortionists simultaneously demolish every protective measure that has a proven track record of saving unborn babies.
Put another way, provided they offer a rhetorical crumb or two along the way, as pro-abortionists attempt to devour every protective measure, we are to accept that "progress" is being made in "reaching for common ground after 30 years of oppositional acrimony." Watch how it's done in Miller's article.
Having begun her column with atheists who are pro-life and who voted against Obama, Miller's choice to represent a phantom "middle position on abortion" is the "bombastic and verbally double-jointed atheist intellectual," Christopher Hitchens. A better description might be the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Hitchens.
On the plus side, Hitchens sort of answers to the description "pro-life" and will defend the use of the term "unborn child." And, for what it is worth, there is Hitchens' "squeamishness, a squeamishness he comes by honestly, he says, out of two personal experiences with abortion."
What do pro-abortionists get from the dark side of Hitchens?
Of course, he doesn't think "a woman should be forced to choose," Roe should stand forever and a couple of days more, and in exchange for pro-abortionists excising "moral callousness" from the debate, pro-lifers will excise religion. Not a bad bargain for Obama and his fellow pro-abortionists, wouldn't you say?
But, according to Hitchens, the real answer to the abortion debate is not a recognition of moral and ethical responsibility. Nor is it an acknowledgment that it is the parents, not the unborn child, who create a crisis pregnancy situation. Nor is it a frank realization that a culture that is at war with its own progeny ultimately puts its whole future in jeopardy.
No, the answer is "science," or, more specifically, abortifacients such as RU-486. Hitchens is the representative figure because this is an article about atheists and abortion, but he stands for the "out of sight, out of mind" answer to moral dilemmas.
Chemical abortions like RU-486 are by no means the walk in the park Planned Parenthood types tell women they are. We have documented how painful they are and how dangerous.
But pro-abortionists love them because they promise to kill the little ones before their resemblance to a "real child" is undeniable. This allows women (and men) to keep their conscience at bay. Or so the excuse-mongering goes.
Miller ends with a rhetorical question: "how is a pharmaceutical abortion any different from a surgical one?" But, luckily for her and all the others who bask in "inconsistent and imperfect" answers, Hitchens has the perfect response: "I'm happy to say some problems don't have solutions." To Miller, "such honest reflection is progress indeed."
It is nothing of the sort. Far from honest reflection, it is both morally tone-deaf and plagued by an arrogant self-assurance that allows them to believe that if they speak loud enough and long enough and insincerely enough, truth can be turned on its head.
Not so. Not on our watch.
Contact: Dave Andrusko
Source: National Right to Life
Source URL: http://www.nrlc.org
Publish Date: December 2, 2008
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