Bruce L
I fear the fantastical woke paradise might well be upon us. It will be wall-to-wall human rights very soon if the latter day Liberals have their way. “Everyone will be accorded full protection of their rights.” Except for those still in the womb because they are not human. Their natural protectors are not responsible for their care. An amendment that required the care of a child born after an attempted abortion was voted down in Parliament, 87 to 30.
A human being used to be a creature created by God, male or female, in His image. One was created in the image of God from conception to death. The child in the womb was of the same essence as the child outside the womb. Both were developing interdependent creations.
It was this belief, and this belief alone, that shaped our understanding of human dignity and freedom. It wasn’t an accident that we in the West (but apparently not the majority in Parliament) believe that everyone is equal under the law including those who write them. Human meaning depends upon the existence of a permanent, transcendent and discoverable truth that tells us who we are.
Neither evolutionary theory nor the doctrine of human autonomy can give us that although Andrew Little, the Minister of Justice, says we are foolish to believe that the child in the womb is indeed human.
But what is his authority for condemning such foolishness?
We know of course. His claim is based on the outrageous moral imperative of the supremacy of choice and the ironic claim of bodily autonomy. The mother-to-be must have absolute control over her own body because she is its mistress. The child growing in the womb is not the shared responsibility of mother and father. The child is not of their essence.
The pro-choice argument to justify abortion is profoundly flawed. It tries to manufacture a virtue out of imagined necessity. Its creation depends on the fallacy that one’s body is singularly alone and that naked choice is a human right.
But choice is neutral. It’s not a virtue. The virtue or vice is in the choice we make. Choice cannot be a human right; it operates in the balance between freedom and responsibility which choice advocates would turn into a moral vacuum.
The demand to declare abortion a human right stands out as a primary example of the diminished liberal’s disconnect between rights and responsibilities, a concord fundamental to our humanity.
No matter how you spin it, abortion influences and is influenced by what we understand both an adult and unborn human being to be. One can only defend the pro-choice argument by dehumanising the baby in the womb, which is what Mr Little does.
The substantive issue is that we have two conflicting beliefs about the nature of freedom. When Western civilisation operates at its best, freedom means the power to do what is right rather than the opportunity to do what I choose. Freedom is the consequence of what we understand our shared human dignity to be. It is not the creator of it.
The desire for abortion, fraught and understandable as it might be in some cases, is not vindicated by the primacy of choice. It’s about getting rid of the unwanted child while deliberately denying the responsibility of care. It denies the common responsibility of mother and father.
Abortion cannot be a mere health issue, even in extremis, when it’s about survival of the mother or child. It remains a moral choice with all the consequences that a moral decision has. Giving birth to the child might well be a health issue but killing the child is not.
Based on the belief in transcendent dignity there are necessary freedoms, those that some people call negative freedoms. They include freedom of religious belief and expression, free speech or freedom of conscience, freedom of assembly, movement and trade. And the most self-evident of all, the right to life. Did we really need the sixth commandment to tell us not to murder?
Apparently we did. Certainly Mr Little thinks that “the law should reflect the way we behave.” Even extending to him the best of motives it was a remarkably foolish thing to say. But of course that is the point. Parliament is changing abortion law because it now believes that a person’s subjective autonomy is sufficient foundation to determine the humanity of an unborn child. “Oh dark new world, that has such people in it.”
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