"If you are willing to die for a cause, you must be prepared to kill for it, too."

Blunt and chilling. You wouldn't expect much less, however, from a radical jihadist, or an avowed terrorist, or some other sort of violent extremist. But how about from a "pro-choice" feminist? Antonia Senior, who is the Personal Finance Editor of The Times (London), wrote a column, published June 30th, titled, "Yes, abortion is killing. But it’s the lesser evil." Give her credit for honesty, but then take away said credit for lack of logic and a chilling willingness to justify murder in the name of "a woman's right":

Standing where religious martyrs were held and tortured in Britain’s turbulent reformation, I could think of one cause I would stake my life on: a woman’s right to be educated, to have a life beyond the home and to be allowed by law and custom to order her own life as she chooses. And that includes complete control over her own fertility. 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.

It’s not a baby, it’s a foetus, you God-squaddies, the teenage me would have crowed at the pro-lifers. It’s a woman’s body, her choice, end of, I would have proclaimed in whatever patois we were speaking back then. The report last week by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, which found that the human foetus cannot feel pain before 24 weeks, would have been waved triumphantly at anyone who crossed my path, along with an invitation to be taught the meaning of pain. This is not, you see, a rational debate, but one of passion and vitriol and tribalism.

Of course, she has to say this is not a rational debate, because a rational perspective reveals exactly how narcissistic, anti-life, and irrational the pro-abortion position is. By the way, "passion" about life and death is to be expected, and "vitriol" is hardly surprising when it comes to such a loaded issue, but ... "tribalism"? How about a little less theory and a little more reality? And, in fact, Senior's essay indicates that reality is smacking her across the face, but she is reluctant to stare directly at it and she dare not acknowledge the moral quicksand beneath her restless feet:

Then came a baby, and everything changed. I think of it as the Anna Karenina conundrum. If you read the book as a teenager, you back her choices with all the passion of youth. Love over convention, go Anna! Then you have children and realise that Anna abandons her son to shack up with a pretty soldier, and then her daughter when she jumps under a train. She becomes a selfish witch. Having a baby paints the world an entirely different hue. Black and white no longer quite cut it.

The abortion issue hinges on the notion of life. The pro-life position is clear: a baby is a life, with rights, from the instant of conception. The pro-choice position insists that we are talking only about a potential life, with no rights. An embryo is not a person.

It is here that one can see—as Edward Feser demonstrates so brilliantly (and caustically) in The Last Superstition—how the rejection of sound philosophy has led to an epidemic of bad thinking, deadly ideology, and self-absorbed, post-modern hubris.

Baldly, the debate is foetal rights versus reproductive rights. But you won’t see such dispassionate wording from the campaigners. Both sides are adept at using language to further their position.

And how else, exactly, are people supposed to discuss and argue about important matters save through language? Is she annoyed that the debate even exists? (Well, yes, she surely must be, otherwise she wouldn't try so hard to justify her untenable position in such a public way).

Women terminate pregnancies or kill their babies, depending on who is talking.

But this obviously ignores the reality of things, such as the nature of pregnancy. Sexual intercourse, by its very nature, is meant to reproduce and bring to fruition a person. To "terminate" a pregnancy is to destroy said person; that is the very point of the act, no matter how cleverly it is avoided or coated with deflective language.

In pro-life propaganda, the gory details are recounted with a prurient relish — during a suction abortion, a foetus is “decapitated and dismembered”.

"Relish"? Really? Would she dare write that the Holocaust Museum, in displaying photos of countless murdered Jews, is engaging in an act involving "prurient relish"? I doubt it.

If scientists had established that an early foetus can feel pain, rather than the reverse, the pro-lifers would have seized on it, but actually it makes little difference to the central arguments on either side. Either a foetus is a life from conception, or it is not — ability to feel pain is not, in itself, a defining factor.

In fact, a definition of life is extraordinarily difficult to arrive at. Friedrich Engels said: “Life is the state of being of proteins.” But no single definition is agreed by scientists or philosophers.

The question, at some point, goes beyond the realm of hard science, being metaphysical in nature. And philosophers, it should be noted, disagree about everything. And yet most religions, especially Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, are largely, if not completely, agreed that life is a gift from the Creator, and that it begins at conception. But, wait, after pointedly relying on the failure of scientists and philosophers to agree, Senior employs rather overt religious, metaphysical language in a further attempt to persuade herself (since she isn't persuading anyone else) that abortion isn't so bad:

Some scientists argue that the Universe is set up in such a way to make the spontaneous eruption of life inevitable — Christian de Duve, the Nobel-prizewinning biologist, called life a “cosmic imperative”. Others claim that the existence of life is so unlikely that it is a miraculous fluke. Either way, there is something utterly extraordinary in the notion that we are all recycled matter — that our atoms were once part of something else, animate or inanimate, and that some miracle of assembly created me or you.

Cosmic imperative. Miraculous fluke. Utterly extraordinary. Some miracle of assembly created me or you. Goodness, if only people had noticed these sort of mind-boggling things prior to the late 20th century!

Is life defined by consciousness or an awareness of self? Is it simply the ability to breathe? Take a few moments to try to define being human and alive. Done? It’s not easy, is it?

Man is a rational/philosophical animal who is distinguished from other animals in obvious, vital ways, including his use of language, art, moral reasoning, free will, religious expression, and acquisition of knowledge. To be alive is to be able to engage in such activities, or to possess the potentiality of doing so, something a dog, beetle, iPad, or Jeep cannot do. There is much more, but considering it is 5:00 a.m., and my head is pounding from grass allergies, that will have to do (I just happen to live in the Grass Pollen Capital of the U.S.)

What seems increasingly clear to me is that, in the absence of an objective definition,

Whoaaaaaaa! Did she even try to provide an "objective definition"? No, she didn't. But, to be fair, she probably doesn't believe that anything "objective" can be stated, which is her subjective opinion—which makes her "argument" even more problematic, to put it nicely.

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.

I'm confused: just a paragraph ago there was rapturous talk of "Cosmic imperative. Miraculous fluke. Utterly extraordinary. Some miracle of assembly created me or you", but now we're suddenly back to "happy accident". Because, without a doubt, it's easier to "terminate" an "accident," than to murder a human being who is the result of cosmic imperative, is extraordinary, and is miraculous (and thus somehow touched by the divine). But at least Senior makes an effort to wade through the muck of her muddled thinking:

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. In a resentful womb it is not a life, but a foetus — and thus killable.

And there, in a nutshell, is the essential "argument", if we can call it such a thing: I don't want it, so I can kill it. This, in turn, rests on the Sacred, Untouchable (And Yet Ungrounded and Unfounded) Principle of A Woman's Right to Do Whatever She Wants To With Her Body:

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. Abortion would have been legal for millennia had it been men whose prospects and careers were put on sudden hold by an unexpected pregnancy. The mystery pondered on many a girls’ night out is how on earth men, bless them, managed to hang on to political and cultural hegemony for so long. The only answer is that they are not in hock to their biology as much as we are. Look at a map of the world and the right to abortion on request correlates pretty exactly with the expectation of a life unburdened by misogyny.

It is, in the end, the same lie whispered by the Serpent to Eve in the Garden: You will not die. Your eyes will be opened. You will be like God. Of course, we know that both Adam and Eve sinned, and both fell. Both of them bought into the lie, which is the desire for freedom apart from God, autonomy from the moral order, and the right to create our own reality rather than see and acknowledge what is (such as human nature, life, objective truth, etc.). Senior, in the end, appears to be saying: "I'm willing to kill my children if it means freedom from men." It's hard to imagine a more bitter, perverse, anti-life way of viewing things:

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.

She wrote earlier that there was an "absence of an objective definition" of life. Yet she readily calls abortion evil, even if "only" the "lesser evil." Unable to put together the puzzle of life because she refuses to carefully examine and study the pieces, Senior is like a five-year-old who says, in scowling frustration, "I'm going to destroy the puzzle. It's mine! I can throw it away if I want to!" Unfortunately, as she confesses, this is a matter of life and death.

Related IgnatiusInsight.com Articles, Excerpts, & Interviews:

• Abortion and Ideology | Raymond Dennehy
• Contraception and Homosexuality: The Sterile Link of Separation | Raymond Dennehy
• Privacy, the Courts, and the Culture of Death | An Interview with Dr. Janet E. Smith
• The Case Against Abortion | An Interview with Dr. Francis Beckwith
• What Is "Legal"? On Abortion, Democracy, and Catholic Politicians | Fr. James V. Schall, S.J.
• Deadly Architects | An Interview with Donald De Marco and Benjamin Wiker
• Human Sexuality and the Catholic Church | Donald P. Asci
• The Truth About Conscience | John F. Kippley
• Introduction to Three Approaches to Abortion | Peter Kreeft
• Some Atrocities are Worse than Others | Mary Beth Bonacci
• Personally Opposed--To What? | Dr. James Hitchcock

Comments

[Jeff]

Wow. Senior's reasoning is so unreasonable. I think her message is, snuffing a woman's budding career writing confounding articles is a far greater evil than snuffing the life of her own child -- a child that is both miraculous and accidental. Her logic is both incoherent and unintelligible.

[Janny]

A woman already has had the right to control her fertility (and its results) for thousands of years: it's called not having sex when she's ovulating. Isn't it ironic that the same women who will gleefully fight for the right to tear a woman's womb apart, however, will squirm with discomfort and embarrassment if you suggest that they actually learn their own body's signs of fertility and work with them to avoid pregnancy if that's what they need to do?

Uhh...yeah.

Gnosticism is alive and well. Unfortunately, babies are not because of it.

JB

[GABRIEL]

A woman already has had the right to control her fertility (and its results) for thousands of years: it's called not having sex when she's ovulating

AND WITH THAT, JB JUST PUT AN END TO THE DEBATE FOR ALL ETERNITY.

THANK YOU JB.

GABRIEL

[Eric Pinola]

This is just proof that the pro-aborts really have no ground to stand on.

Great work on the article; it would have driven me crazy!

[Tim H]

That some aethiest has illogical views on abortion is really no surprise.

I understand that the article is about Antonia Senior's views specifically. But for the discussion about ending abortion in general, is not relevant or useful to do so without also discussing contraception, which is in fact, the very cause of abortion. The author of this article even states, "Sexual intercourse, by its very nature, is meant to reproduce and bring to fruition a person."

I submit we will never end abortion until we end contraception. It is contraception that has turned sex into a casual recreational activity and when contraception is not available, doesn't work as expected, or is just plain ignored, abortion is always available as a last resort.

Those who use contraception or council it's use are directly responsible for creating the conditions which allows abortion to flourish. To fight against abortion yet council the use of contraception is to be hypocritical. Those who call themselves Catholic and yet use contraception bear the brunt of the blame.

-Tim-

[Carl E. Olson]

But for the discussion about ending abortion in general, is not relevant or useful to do so without also discussing contraception...

Tim: We certainly agree on the evil of contraception, but my post was not really about "ending abortion in general"; rather, it was a critique of specific "arguments" used by in a specific article by a supporter of abortion.

This blog and Ignatius Insight have addressed and mentioned the contraceptive mentality and its significance on many occasions. For example, see here and here and here and here and here.

To fight against abortion yet council the use of contraception is to be hypocritical.

Agreed! Did my post somehow lead you to believe I was a Catholic who supports contraception? Or were you just making a general remark? It's not readily evident to me to whom your remarks are addressed.

[R.C.]

Be compassionate with Antonia Senior; it is hard for her to kick against the goads.

Be gracious with her; when one grows up in an irrational civilization, it is hard to identify, let alone exercise, rationality.

Intercede for her; her anger, and the hugs of her young child, may yet provide the heat that cracks the ice on her heart, bringing her to conviction, then to contrition.

[LaVallette]

"If you are willing to die for a cause, you must be prepared to kill for it, too."

Every extreme political and religous movement throughout the ages has screamed that slogan and therefore can justify their ethnic/religous cleansings, genocides, exterminations and final solutions: but not the Martyrs for Christ and the Church.

[Mark@Hoodia Gordonii]

Abortion is never a right choice I might say. It is still considered murder.

[Howard]

"If you are willing to die for a cause, you must be prepared to kill for it, too."

"Blunt and chilling. You wouldn't expect much less, however, from a radical jihadist, or an avowed terrorist, or some other sort of violent extremist."

Let's say I don't read any farther down the article, because I already notice that this is released just 2 days after Independence Day. In that context, I think of the violent extremist George S. Patton, who said, "No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country." Violent extremist? He also said, "Nobody ever defended anything successfully, there is only attack and attack and attack some more." And "A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week."

Well, thanks be to God for men like Patton, for Don Juan of Austria, and John III Sobieski, even if you would group them with a "radical jihadist, or an avowed terrorist, or some other sort of violent extremist."

[Manuel G. Daugherty Razetto]

I'd use harsher words with such a shameful exponent of the right to Abortion. The woman is greatly bewildered. Here we find a mind so thoroughly entwined with watchwords and Party slogans that its predominance effaces any trace of reasoning.

In her statement "A woman's right to have a life beyond the home and to be allowed by law and custom to order her own life as she chooses", she ignores that it is not only her life that is involved but the life of another human being in the process of coming into the world by birth.

Regarding the lack of pain during the first 24 weeks between conception and birth as a good enough reason to justify the killing is preposterous.

[Carl E. Olson]

Howard: If Patton had made his remark in the context of killing unborn babies or innocent civilians then, yes, it would be the language of a violent extremist. So, yes, a person does need to read further to gain the context, but I think you'll agree that the context is very important in understanding what I meant. Killing combatants in war is one thing; killing innocents is something altogether.

[Howard]

So, what you meant to say is more like this"

"If you are willing to die for a cause, you must be prepared to kill for it, too."

"Blunt and chilling. You wouldn't expect much less, however, from a radical jihadist, or an avowed terrorist, some other sort of violent extremist, or a hero in a just war." It's not just that context tweaks how chilling the statement is; without context, the statement is not chilling at all -- it might be inspirational.

In other words, it's like the statement, "He has no idea what's about to happen." It's chilling if the speaker is a terrorist, and kind of nice if it's someone planning a surprise party. Or, "You're going to face trial." Scary enough if it comes from the proper authorities, but absolutely terrifying when coming from vigilantes.

What makes the original statement chilling is not the statement itself; it depends entirely on who is killing whom, and why.

[Carl E. Olson]

without context, the statement is not chilling at all -- it might be inspirational.

I appreciate your argument to a certain point, but think there are a couple of problems. First, the context is given, and it is chilling. But even if there is fault to be found in how I initially presented the quote (and I don't deny there is), I think the words "kill" and "cause" should give pause. Having known many men who have bravely served in the military, and some of whom have seen action, I don't think they would normally speak in such a way. They would speak in terms of "defending my country" or "defending freedom," but not in terms of "killing for a cause." Too me, a "cause" has a subjective and ideological quality, which is different from fighting to defend freedom (properly understood) and going to war (under legitimate conditions) to defend one's country. Perhaps I am making too much of the semantics, but I think they are important. In the end, even if I could have presented the quote better up front, the larger point of my post stands: such language, coming from an abortion advocate, is indeed blunt and chilling.

[GABRIEL]

You shall not murder.

End of story.

[Lauri Friesen]

I'd like to add that, if one is willing to die for a cause, it is precisely because one is unwilling to kill for it.

[melanie statom]

killing is killing...whether we justify it as " defence" or not. It is not the path of the Lord. He did not respond with violence from the cross and we are called to do the same.

[Brian J. Schuettler]

killing is killing...whether we justify it as " defence" or not. It is not the path of the Lord. He did not respond with violence from the cross and we are called to do the same.

2321 The prohibition of murder does not abrogate the right to render an unjust aggressor unable to inflict harm. Legitimate defense is a grave duty for whoever is responsible for the lives of others or the common good.

[Brian J. Schuettler]

CCC 2517 The heart is the seat of moral personality: "Out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, fornication. . . . " The struggle against carnal covetousness entails purifying the heart and practicing temperance:
Remain simple and innocent, and you will be like little children who do not know the evil that destroys man's life.

Antonia Senior's heart is reflected in her comments.

[John the Convert]

Great post, Carl, you're on a roll the last few days. "I don't want it, so I can kill it" pretty much sums it up for me. Like my 5-year old screaming "No Fair!" What we think is fair isn't really the issue, is it? And as Janny points out, responsible alternatives do exist. Thanks again.

[richtea]

I know hayfever is nasty, but man is NOT an animal: Please, get that right next time. At that point, I stopped reading.

[Carl E. Olson]

but man is NOT an animal:

Even with hayfever, I'm fairly certain of my grasp of the classical definition of man. Aristotle said the "formula of man" was that he is a "two-footed animal" (Metaphysics, 1037b13-14). The Catechism, quoting Tertullian, states: "Alone among all animate beings, man can boast of having been counted worthy to receive a law from God: as an animal endowed with reason, capable of understanding and discernment, he is to govern his conduct by using his freedom and reason, in obedience to the One who has entrusted everything to him" (par. 1951; also see this article on the nature of man from the Catholic Encyclopedia). The word "animal," of course, comes from the Latin word animale, which means "living being, being which breathes."

So, please continue reading!

[Gail F]

What a strange article. She goes on and on, but she never says why killing a baby is the "lesser" of two evils -- she just says that it is. Why is the alternative "more evil"? Likewise, she never explains what she seems to think is the crux of her argument: that if you are willing to die for something, you must be willing to kill for it. Says who? Just weird.