Sign up to get updates from us
Summary
This is a highly controversial subject, but it should not be. Using simple common sense, it becomes so very clear cut.
In the United States alone, we perform over one million–one million–abortions each and every year. I start with this concrete fact to alert all of us to the critical nature of this discussion, and to the vital importance of getting the answer to this much discussed and controversial question absolutely right. The core of this question is life and death on a massive scale. Many times bigger than all of our war deaths, gun crime fatalities, deaths due to alcohol and other drugs. Anything.
For the next 10 minutes, we will unpack this critical and controversial subject–and come up with some answers.
Transcript
This is a highly controversial subject, but it should not be. Using simple common sense, it becomes so very clear cut.
In the United States alone, we perform over one million–one million–abortions each and every year. I start with this concrete fact to alert all of us to the critical nature of this discussion, and to the vital importance of getting the answer to this much discussed and controversial question absolutely right. The core of this question is life and death on a massive scale. Many times bigger than all of our war deaths, gun crime fatalities, deaths due to alcohol and other drugs. Anything.
For the next 10 minutes, we will unpack this critical and controversial subject–and come up with some answers.
Given the magnitude of this topic, let’s put away all of our preconceived notions, and ask the the only two questions that need to be and must be asked and answered:
And don’t we need to know exactly when life starts; I mean with great precision? Without being able to pinpoint the moment when life starts, we are clearly left with an agonizing grey area. As in the grey area when the fetus might be a life, and then again, it might not be. Is it a non-viable tissue mass or is it a human? In this grey area, aren’t we obligated to give the benefit of the doubt to the fetus, and treat it like a living human? We can’t be willing to abort a fetus if it might be a living human any more than we would fire a shotgun into a darkened room, not knowing if anyone was there or not.
Now that we know that we need a precise moment, what is that moment? Using trimesters doesn’t give us that moment. Cutting the cord is a precise moment, but we clearly have a child by then, so that does not help. Is it when the entire baby emerges, or just the head? And if we call the baby fully emerging the test for the precise moment, what is so special about the feet? And how do you handle your thinking with breech babies and C-sections? The only precise moment in the whole process is conception. That’s when human life begins.
Now comes perhaps the more important question of when it is appropriate for the state to sanction the taking of a human life. Wars, law enforcement and self-defense are accepted examples. Capital punishment is more controversial. Now, what about the taking of a life for economic purposes, or simply for convenience or personal preference? As in the prospective parents cannot afford to have that child? Or convenience, as in it would be a 20-year burden to have this child? Or because the child might be mentally challenged? Or the wrong sex? What about when it is highly likely that the child will grow up with few–if any–advantages–and be born into the middle of a drug-infested, ganbanger neighborhood? Is it OK to kill the child under any of these circumstances? Because that’s exactly what we are doing now. We don’t want this person, so we pretend that it is not a person. And when we convince ourselves that a class of beings is not human, we have given ourselves permission to do anything we want with them. Blacks were not seen as human, so it was OK to enslave them. Jews were declared not human, so concentration camps and mass extermination were OK. And now the issue is the child in the womb. If it is judged to be not human, it is OK to exterminate it. But it is a child, and if we, as individuals or a society, want to do away with it, let’s at least say out loud what we are doing. We are taking a human life for convenience. We should be ashamed of our attempt at absolving ourselves of our crimes with the pretense that it was not human in the first place.
Most of us have a very hard time imagining the twisted logic and moral void that would have been required to see either blacks or Jews as non-human–and then act on that belief. We revere the abolitionists and the occasional Holocaust savior like Oskar Schindler, while we despise the Nazis and hate the slave owners. But which are we; are we good guys or are we participating in evil? Even if we are not directly involved in abortions, we are participants in that we allow them to proceed. “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” –Edmund Burke, Irish statesman and philosopher.
The people involved in the recent March for Life were doing something. What can we do? What can you do? It is not hard to imagine a world in the not-too-distant future where the people look back on abortion with the same disbelief and horror as we now see slavery and the Holocaust. How will they see us; you and me? How will history judge us? After a deep examination of this subject, how do we see ourselves?
Forget the Supreme Court and Roe v Wade; this is not a legal question; it is moral one. And, as with all laws, the laws should arise from morals; we should not be aligning our morals to comply with current law.
A quick note on two arguments we often hear in defense of abortion, e.g., “A woman can do anything she wants with her own body.” First, if it is a child, and that is the clear case I am making here,, it is not her body. It is separate person with his or her own DNA. Second, a woman cannot do whatever she wants with her body any more than I can. She is not allowed to punch someone in the nose even if her fist is part of her body. And I cannot take what I want from a store without paying, even if I do it with my own body.
And what about a woman’s reproductive rights? Good question. She has 100% control over her reproductive rights, as does a man, until the moment she has a separate person growing inside her.
How’s that for coming to a hard and fast conclusion on one of the most debated and controversial issues for our day? To me, it is just Common Sense. Nothing more.
All of this ties to the core, driving principles at Revolution 2.0, which are:
If we apply those two core principles simultaneously, never only one or the other, we will always be on the right path. Depending upon what we face, one principle or the other may appropriately be given more emphasis, but they are always acted upon together.
The Founders, Revolution 1.0, were declared traitors by the British Crown, and their lives were forfeit if caught. We risk very little by stepping up and participating in Revolution 2.0™. . In fact, we risk our futures if we don’t. I am inviting you, recruiting you, to join Revolution 2.0™ today. Join with me in using what we know how to do–what we know we must do–to everyone’s advantage. Let’s practice thinking well of others as we seek common goals, research the facts that apply to those goals, and use non agenda-based reasoning to achieve those goals together. Practice personal responsibility and be your brother’s keeper.
Let’s continue to build on the revolutionary vision that we inherited. Read the blog, listen to the podcast, subscribe, recruit, act. Here’s what I mean my “acting.”
Revolution 1.0 in 1776 was built by people talking to other people, agreeing and disagreeing, but always finding ways to stay united and going forward. Revolution 2.0 will be built the same way.
And visit the store. Fun stuff, including hats, mugs and t-shirts. Recommend other items that you’d like to see.
Join me. Let’s grow this together.
Links and References
As we get ready to wrap up, please do respond in the blog with comments or questions about this podcast or anything that comes to mind, or connect with me on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. And you can subscribe to the podcast on your favorite device through Apple Podcasts, Google, or Stitcher.
It is time for our usual parting thought. For us at Results With Reason, it is not only change your thinking, change your life. It is change your thinking, change your actions, change the world. And if you can do it in love and enjoy the people around you at the same time, all the better.
Remember: Knowledge by itself is like running a winning race, then stopping just before the finish line.
Will Luden, writing to you from my home office at 7,200’ in Colorado Springs.
