This explores an important issue. The lives of the very youngest members of the Homo sapiens species. What value have they? And when? When do they begin to have value? (The “Carla Foster” above aborted her child at 8 months and was fined).
This is something on which I’ve gone from “Safe, Legal and Rare” (the Bill Clinton formulation) to “Safe, Legal and Discouraged” (my formulation). Both formulations are still “pro-choice”, vs the anti abortion stance of “pro-life”. It sometimes helps to strip away the euphemisms, to “pro-killing” and “anti-killing”; but then that can be somewhat “triggering”, so I’ll just leave that there for now.
In general, we ought to discourage the taking of a life, no matter how young and no matter how much dependent on another human being. It’s a little like the issue of eating meat. My son, John, had convinced me that eating meat is immoral, because we have to kill animals and killing is immoral. However, we both eat meat.
We recognise the immorality, but do it anyway. And so with abortion. Why on earth we would celebrate as was done when the Bill was passed in Vermont to allow abortions up to the time of birth, for no reason other than the mother’s will. And why have cakes, as I’ve seen recently, celebrating with wording on the icing: “It’s A... borted”. I mean, ok, let’s have choice and legality, but celebrating? Not for me. Not for many folks.
Anyway, good ol’ Rod Liddle does it good, as usual.
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ADDED: I asked an old friend here, a very liberal, leftie guy: “have you ever changed your mind about something consequential?” and he said no, he hadn’t. It was a good question, he granted, but no, he’d never changed his mind about something important.
I was thinking of so many of my friends from school days and relllies too, and how I don’t believe any have changed their minds about anything consequential.
The above issue is one that I’ve change my mind about. Though I’ve not had the courage to go across “to the other side”. I’m still on the “pro-choice” side. The difference is, I now realise its internal contractions and that the “pro-choice” side is immoral, even if we - as in eating meat -- do it anyway.
