Human life begins at conception. This truth has grown more certain as medical science has peered deeper into the dynamics of human development from its earliest stages. Many who wish to spread legal abortion far and wide know this, and so they have changed from saying "We don't know when human life begins" to "The unborn are not really 'people', and so it is okay to kill them."
How have they made this jump of logic? They have made it by drawing up lists of characteristics which they say define personhood. Peter Singer, a professor at Princeton University (USA), says having human rights requires "characteristics like rationality, autonomy, and self-consciousness...Infants lack these characteristics. Killing them, therefore, cannot be equated with killing normal human beings, or any other self-conscious beings." Note that Singer is talking about killing already-born children; his argument applies with equal lethal force to the unborn.
Happily, this argument is as weak as it is horrifying. If one has to be "rational" and "self-conscious" in order to have a right to life, then anyone who is asleep may, in Singer's mind, be killed. This is ridiculous. Falling asleep does not magically turn a person into a non-person.
Singer's argument, and others like it, are growing in visibility around the world. Forewarned is forearmed. The next time you hear this or other such silly arguments put forth, ask the person next to you if taking a midday nap removes you from the human community and puts you on the same moral standing as a chicken which could be killed and cooked. Then have a good laugh, and appreciate anew the joy and wonder which is human life, at every stage of life. May Swaziland build a culture of love and life.
Rudy Poglitsh
rpoglitsh@live.com
more letters at http://letterstotheTOS.blogspot.com
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