Witness, if you can bear it, the fanatical devotion to abortion

First, as reported by Catholic News Agency, Michelle Obama says the following about her husband: "He’ll protect a woman’s freedom of choice, because government should have no say in whether or when a woman embraces the sacred responsibility of parenthood.”

Which means, if we try to be logical about this, that the child and the work of parenting is only sacred once the parent(s) decides to "keep" the child and not have him aborted. Which means that we, as mere men and women, have the ability to impart supernatural meaning unto a child. If you're not wanted, you are merely a clump of tissue and cells to be discarded. If you're wanted, you become, by our divine initiative, sacred beings who must be protected at all costs, must not be left behind, must be treasured as our nation and world's future, and so forth.

Which, simply put, is nonsensical.

Then Barbara Boxer weighs in:

Boxer, who was introduced as the “leading defender of the right to choose,” responded to the removed protesters by saying they have a right to an opinion, but “all we want is our right to choose.”

“They can choose what they want to choose, and we can choose what we want to choose... That’s America! That’s what Democracy means, that’s what freedom means, that’s what individual rights mean,” Boxer asserted to audience applause.

“We believe in the right to choose for our personal health, and we know the right choice to protect that right to choose: it is President Barack Obama and Vice-President Joe Biden,” she said.

Attacking presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Boxer said that McCain has a rating of zero percent from NARAL and zero from Planned Parenthood.

“Now you have to be pretty radical to have a zero rating,” she claimed.

And: “He’s a hero, John McCain’s a zero!”

My interest here is not in saying who to vote for or against. Rather, just consider the level of "discourse" going on here. And ask, "Why is it that not supporting NARAL and Planned Barrenhood is radical, while 100% devotion to the two leaders of the abortion industry is somehow emblematic of freedom, goodness, rights, and choice?" Perhaps we can simply be thankful that neither Mrs. Obama or Ms. Boxer attempted to quote Augustine, Aquinas, or some other Doctor of the Church.

Finally, New York U.S. Representative Louise Slaughter  stated, apparently without any hint of irony or embarrassment, "It was the right to control our reproductive systems that made it possible for almost all of us to achieve our own dreams which our parents had paid for." While I'm not capable of adequately parsing that sentence, she seems to be saying that the only way the American Dream is realized is if you don't let kids stand in your way of your "dreams," which necessarily involves killing them.

As ZENIT reports, Archbishop Chaput doesn't agree:

"Here in America, and especially here tonight, we need to remember two basic truths," Archbishop Chaput said.

"Here's the first truth," he said. "Society has an obligation -- and Christians have a Gospel duty -- to provide adequate and compassionate support for unwed and abandoned mothers; women facing unintended pregnancies; and women struggling with the aftermath of an abortion. It's not enough to talk about 'pro-life politics.' The label 'pro-life' demands that we work to ensure social policies that will protect young woman and families, and help them generously in their need. […]

"Here's the second truth. Killing an unborn child is never the right answer to a woman's or society's problems. Acts of violence create a culture of violence -- and abortion is the most intimate form of violence there is. It wounds the woman, it kills the unborn child and it poisons the roots of justice and charity that bind us all into one human family."

Back in February of 2007, Father James Schall wrote an excellent essay, "What Is "Legal"? On Abortion, Democracy, and Catholic Politicians," that addresses eloquently much of the nonsense quoted above. Here is an excerpt:

This latter rhetoric of "rights" is where much confusion often originates, even in religious circles--especially in religious circles. When it comes down to it, opposition to abortion, especially among Catholics, does not primarily arise from religious argument. Religion merely affirms what we already know, namely, that abortion is irrational as such. The use of "rights" as the primary way to think about the protection of the unborn has itself often become something that fosters abortion. How so? If abortion is a civil "right," duly passed by the legislature, and we are for "rights," are we not contradicting ourselves? The word "right," however, is a modern term in political science beginning largely with Hobbes in the 17th century. It has its own specific meaning. When we wonder how abortion became a "democratic" cause, the answer is largely because we have implicitly accepted the modern notion of "rights" as the primary way we think about these things.

In this sense, a "right" is whatever the individual has the power to do to protect himself from violent death or to promote his concept of happiness, whatever it is. Governments, following Locke, are set up to protect these "rights." We collectively yield to the government the power to protect our "rights" from the abuse of others. We enable the government to define and enforce whatever it thinks necessary. A "right" becomes "whatever the ruling body decides it will protect or enforce." A ruling body can be "democratic" and still claim, in theory or in practice, to acknowledge no law but itself.

Thus, in this scheme, we see nothing of that presupposition in John Paul II's remarks of a possible conflict between what is legislated and what is the object of legislation. The "innocence" or well being of the unborn is not a factor if it is not made a factor by legislation. "God's law and the laws of nature," on the other hand, indicate that legislative law or positive law has outer limits that are not defined by a legislature but by what the thing is. Thus, it is perfectly possible for a decree or law or decision that is "legal" to be also "immoral" or "unjust."

Read the entire essay.

Comments

[Little Gidding]

"we, as mere men and women, have the ability to impart supernatural meaning unto a child. If you're not wanted, you are merely a clump of tissue and cells to be discarded. If you're wanted, you become, by our divine initiative, sacred beings who must be protected at all costs, must not be left behind, must be treasured as our nation and world's future, and so forth."

This may be nonsensical, but it's standard rhetoric from the Left, and has been ever since it was broached in the late 1850s by such people as Freethinker and ex-Congregationalist minister Henry C. Wright in his books "The Unwanted Child" and "The Empire of the Mother"--except that in Wright's thinking, it was ultimately the mother that did the "wanting" and therefore the investing of human nature into the child in the womb. The father's place in it all was only that of an endangerment to the mother: his attitude and actions toward her might cause her to feel loathing or anxiety, as the result of which she would, by a process of interior inscription, cause the child in the womb to be actually marked, biologically, and therefore, already be made unfit, justifying an abortion. (It's all the man's fault!) This, of course, is why, today, it's only women--that is, the mothers--whose "choice" matters. When genetics finally came to be understood at the end of the 19th century and it was clearly understood that the genes, inherited at conception, from both the mother and the father, were what fixed the form of the growing child (rather than the volatile thoughts and feelings of the pregnant woman), the pro-eugenics crowd abated their arguments justifying abortion on the grounds that a mother's "unwanting" of a child actually made it literally defective, but, perhaps surprisingly, they did not abandon these arguments. They only made the damage to the child metaphorical, talking instead about the need to "save" an "unwanted" child from being brought into a corrupt or uncaring world. This is exactly how Margaret Sanger used to phrase it. The rhetoric was essentially unchanged, even though advances in understanding reproduction had completely undercut the argument for "compassionate" abortion.

[Dan]

Senator Boxer, do you think we should have a choice, a right, to wield barbaric lethal violence within the family? If not, how then can you justify the "choice" of abortion?

[Ed Peters]

If we remember, in these dark days, that abortion is built on the foulest of Lies, then we will be better able to understand that the Democrats, among a few others, are eventually going to hang themselves on abortion, and that in future decades, people will look back (from exactly what, I don't know, but they will look back) and wonder how so many people could have made the preservation of unborn baby killing the most important point of their political work.

[Stohn]

Well, Senator Boxer is right about one thing: that is "what Democracy means" - it's the tyranny of liberalism and individualism - and that's why she is a supporter of it.

[joanne]

""It was the right to control our reproductive systems that made it possible for almost all of us to achieve our own dreams which our parents had paid for."

There's a disconnect there. Parents. Paid for. The parents self-sacrifice is "honored" by their children's selfishness?

[Jackson]

Very Screwtapian! Such is the dictatorship of relativism.

[Matthew]

Thank you Senator Boxer you've given me another reason to become a Monarchist!! :^)

[Dan Deeny]

Thank you for this information on the abortion business, Sen. Boxer, Mrs. Obama, and Rep. Slaughter. Let's pray that the bishops can help the Catholics make their way through this fog. It will take the patience of the doctor in Camus' book The Plague and the stubborn determination of Blessed Cardinal von Galen.

[Kirk]

"A woman who deliberately destroys a fetus is answerable for murder. And any fine distinction between its being completely formed or unformed is not admissible among us."

"Those who give potions for the destruction of a child conceived in the womb are murderers, as are those who take potions which kill the child. "

-Saint Basil the Great (A.D. 329-379)

[Matt]

It appears to me (a Canadian) that your presidential election can be boiled down to two positions: those who are in favour of life and those who are opposed to life. Anyone who is in favour of God (who is the author of life) is going to be pro-life. Anyone opposed to God, whether explicitly stated or not, is going to be opposed to life on some level.

Ultimately, when someone supports something that involves the destruction of innocent human life (such as abortion), that individual is saying no to God. I think that you can extend this argument to any issue for that matter, whether it's "same-sex marriage", cloning,...etc. Is it a coincidence that the same individuals and movements who fanatically support abortion are also opposed to even mentioning the word "God"?

How can any Christian (especially a Catholic) even consider voting for a politician who supports something as heinous as abortion?

I commend Archbishop Chaput for speaking out against Speaker Pelosi. That being said, I think stronger words are required. Correcting someone who is in error is an act of charity (afterall, they may be acting or speaking out of ignorance). However, when a Catholic politician continues (i.e. obstinately) to support something like abortion, she cannot claim ignorance. Her position is not only erroneous, it is also heretical. The Catholic leadership (i.e. the bishops) need to label her a heretic.

You are fortunate in the States to have at least some media (i.e. smart like a) who will at least give pro-life politicians the opportunity to present their position without being ridiculed.