Life begins at conception. Medical science increasingly corroborates this fact. What, then, can the abortion lobby say to keep abortion palatable? Since no one wants to say "I support killing babies", how can the taking of human life in the womb be made "okay" for those who wish to promote abortion?
One recent strategy is to invent a class of human non-persons. Some individuals at the highest academic levels-levels at which, all too frequently, common sense no longer dwells-suggest that the right to life comes from "morally significant traits". One current list of "morally significant traits" includes being able "to reflect upon ourselves as a continuous locus of consciousness", "to form and savour plans for the future", and "to dread death, and to express the choice not to die". Humans not possessing these traits are not persons in this scheme, and so have no inherent right to life.
Note first that anyone asleep possesses none of the traits on this list. I guess, according to some geniuses at major universities, we all shift from being human persons to human non-persons and back again each evening and morning. Would these individuals suggest that anyone asleep may rightfully be killed? Hopefully not-but as philosopher Peter Kreeft has observed, there is no idea so crazy that someone with a doctorate has not thought it.
More importantly, however, consider where this line of thinking takes us. If some individual or group of people can make a list of "morally significant traits" and define personhood (and with personhood the right not to be arbitrarily killed) according to that list, then no one (except maybe the list-writer) is safe. Anyone lacking one or some number of these all-important traits could be ruled a non-person, and their life would not deserve protection.
Tragically, this has been done before. Nazi Germany's killing spree began not with Jewish people, but with a program to make a perfect Aryan race. Near the end of the Third Reich, German doctors were full-blooded German children who wet the bed, had misshapen ears, or had learning difficulties.
Let us learn from the past and use common sense. Let all human life be protected from conception to natural death. No to abortion; yes to life.
Rudy Poglitsh
rpoglitsh@live.com
more letters at http://letterstotheTOS.blogspot.com
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