A Consistent Life Ethic |
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A consistent life ethic means being pro-life across the board:
opposing abortion, capital punishment, assisted suicide and euthanasia. Fundamentally each and every human being is unique and important. No person is defined by someone else's choices. No one exists as a means to someone else's happiness, therefore all choices we make, as individuals and as a society, must be weighed in light of their impact on human life and dignity. The right to life is an inalienable one, as life is sacred. If human life is sacred, then it must be protected. Human life is not more sacred at one point than another. People of one race or nation are not more sacred than others. The lives of the rich are not more sacred than those of the poor. All people have an equal right to life. This must be reflected in our constitution, our attitudes, and our practices in every field. It translates into a coherent social policy which seeks to protect the rights of the weakest and most vulnerable in our society, the unborn, the infirm, the refugee, the homeless, and the poor. The consequences of treating a fetus as a human being Kevin Kelly's article in the Whole Earth Review. Kelly is Executive Editor of Wired. Also includes a reader survey on abortion. If we want peace we must imagine a world without killing in all
its particulars as a first step. Civil libertarian Nat Hentoff describes how the right to life
is inseperable from other issues such as poverty and the death penalty. Mary Meehan, The Washington Post, February 8, 1979 It seems to me that the American Civil
Liberties Union and other groups are right in viewing abortion as a
civilliberties issue -- but wrong in the side they come down on. As the
ACLU says in other contexts, "What can be done to one can be done to
all." Colman McCarthy, The Washington Post, April 11, 1992 Both the military ethic and the abortion ethic are grounded in the same belief: Life is cheap. The language of the war lobby and the abortion lobby is from the same glossary of evasions. No one likes war, say the generals. No one likes abortions, says NOW. But let's keep the killing option, just in case.
The analogy between abortion
and war is all too real. In each case, the violent society takes refuge
in euphemism to legitimize its evil, to pretend that either the killing
isn't killing or the people aren't people. 1977 article for National Right to Life News. There are those who argue that the right to privacy is of
higher order than the right to life. I do not share that view. That was
the premise of slavery. You could not protest the existence or
treatment of slaves on the plantation because that was private and
therefore outside of your right to concerned. Colman McCarthy, The Washington Post, May 21, 1988 If Jesse Jackson of the 1970s were to
debate the Jesse Jackson of 1988 on abortion, the old would flatten the
new and leave him mumbling pro-choice slogans. Jackson of 1988 says
abortion is acceptable because ''it is not right to impose private,
religious and moral positions on public policy.'' The 1977 Jackson
handily dismissed the privacy argument: ''If one accepts the position
that life is private, and therefore you have the right to do with it as
you please, one must also accept the conclusion of that logic. That was
the premise of slavery. You could not protest the existence or
treatment of slaves on the plantation because that was private and
therefore outside your right to be concerned." by Erik Rauch, Harmony: Voices for a Just Future, November 2004 Eight years ago, something little noticed but possibly profound happened. The Finnish Medical Association proclaimed in 1996 a Declaration of the Rights of the Unborn. The Declaration is unequivocal: "The life of an individual human being begins with conception... The right to life is the most basic of all rights, and belongs also to the embryo in a mothers womb. Societies have to provide legislation concerning events that invade this right." It concludes that "the physician shall in all possible ways try to promote the rights of the unborn."
Abortion
Issue Divides Advocates for Disabled Barbara Faye Waxman would cringe when she heard her co-workers at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Los Angeles discuss prenatal screening and the need to abort a disabled fetus. For Ms. Waxman, who must use a wheelchair and needs a respirator to breathe because of a neuromuscular impairment, such conversations were painful. "There was a feeling that there were bad babies," said Ms. Waxman, who is editing an anthology on the sexual and reproductive rights of women with disabilities. "There was a strong eugenics mentality that exhibited disdain, discomfort and ignorance toward disabled babies."Feminist pioneers valued rights of unborn children MARILYN DICKSTEIN KOPP, The Tampa Tribune, August 26, 1997 Why would such progressive champions of women's equality as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton unanimously oppose abortion? For the same reason that many of the suffragists were also abolitionists: They believed that every individual, regardless of race or gender, was entitled to basic human rights and dignity and that those rights could not be given or taken away by others. Stanton wrote in 1873, "When we consider that women are treated as property, it is degrading for women to treat their children as property, to be disposed of as they see fit." Ending Roe v. Wade Wouldn't End Abortion by Mark Hatfield [Republican Senator], The Washington Post, July 2, 1989 To believe that a reversal of Roe v. Wade will end abortion
is to ignore what drives the abortion decision: materialism. When
things are more important than people, you end up with a society that
will do little to help the mother or welcome the baby. This same
society turns its back on the homeless and the drug-addicted and the
mentally disturbed and the poor foreigner... Those of us dedicated to
the prolife cause should endeavor to give pregnant mothers a choice
that is not one among evils but rather one among goods. Strange New Respect Tom Bethell, The American Spectator, September, 1992 An increasing percentage of women
seeking abortions are black; black women are more than twice as likely
to get abortions as white women. 70 percent of Planned Parenthood
clinics are in black and Hispanic neighborhoods. There is, no doubt,
considerable right-wing support for abortion today, but its basis is
carefully left unstated--at least in print. A right-winger I know is
particularly in favor of subsidized abortions. Here's an angle on
racism that journalists don't want to dig into. It might be a little
uncomfortable for their choice-promoting feminist friends to see who
their real bedfellows are. 'It's killed more than Ku Klux Klan' Julia Duin, The Washington Times, January 10, 1997 Black women are three times as likely to
abort as white women and twice as likely to have abortions as Hispanic
women, according to data from the Alan Guttmacher Institute. Although
blacks make up 12 percent of the nation's population, they account for
31 percent of its abortions, the Guttmacher Institute says. by TERRY MATTINGLY ( Scripps Howard News Service), October 31, 1992 It's hard to label JustLife director Dave Medema and others
in this pro-justice, anti-abortion and pro-peace group. "We are
pro-life, yet we struggle with groups that only seem to be interested
in pro-life issues. . . . On peace and justice, we take many of the
same positions as so-called liberal groups. But they reject our
pro-life stand," said Medema.
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