"Has the non-negotiable stance and rhetoric against abortion rights strayed from the Scripture’s call to choose life and led to a grave disrespect for life even inside our houses of worship?"
So asks Chicago Tribune religion reporter/blogger Manya Brachear in a June 1 The Seeker blog post, headlined "Is abortion inevitable consequence of abortion debate?" It followed in the wake of the May 31 shooting of abortionist George Tiller. Tiller, an usher at Wichita's Reformation Lutheran Church, was shot during the Sunday service there.
"Has the quest to save lives robbed people of their humanity," Brachear asks in concluding her story. Nowhere in her article, however, did she look at the other side of the coin and wonder if the rhetoric of abortion rights activists leads inevitably to the moral legitimization of infanticide.
Surely Ms. Brachear is not unaware of Princeton University bioethicist Peter Singer, who believes it should be legal to kill disabled newborns. From a 2006 "You Ask the Questions" interview in the British newspaper The Independent (questions are in bold):
Did caring for your mother as she developed Alzheimer's change your views about the propriety of terminating the lives of young children with severe mental retardation? LEILA MORRISON, Bath
No.
Would you kill a disabled baby? KAREN MEADE, Dublin
Yes, if that was in the best interests of the baby and of the family as a whole. Many people find this shocking, yet they support a woman's right to have an abortion. One point on which I agree with opponents of abortion is that, from the point of view of ethics rather than the law, there is no sharp distinction between the foetus and the newborn baby.
