Innocents die between extremes
The secret, I believe, lies in the ability to dehumanise the other - not to see the other as a human being.
Donal Hanley (Irish Examiner letters, November 11) also notes this anomaly but fails to extend the same logic to abortion. He says: “Religious pro-lifers can’t give one reason against abortion... other than claiming that it is not part of God’s plan for us.”
Okay, so I’ll pitch you one: Christianity has always held that a unique newhuman life is created from the moment of conception - not at 24 weeks or the child’s first, or tenth, birthday.
Finally, science is catching up with old wisdom. Anybody who has studied basic school biology knows that at conception the gametes of the parents fuse to create a genetically unique new life.
Christians would say perhaps this is also the moment when God breathes a new soul into that life, but science hasn’t been able to prove this yet.
So, taking this new life as a unique human being - from the moment of conception - we find very strong arguments against abortion. Just because this life can’t be seen without a microscope or heard to scream when killed is a lame excuse for destroying it.
Other writers to this page have noted there is a parallel here with pilots who rain death on Iraqi civilians or Afghani wedding guests thousands of feet below. In fact, science is even catching up here, providing us with ever-greater images of how developed life is at a very early stage.
Many ‘liberals,’ arguing for greater rights for and tolerance of minorities, etc., still fail to grasp they are scoring an own goal by promoting abortion. If even an unborn human - the most defenceless creature of all, with no voice and no vote - cannot be guaranteed a right to life, then who can claim such a right? Are some more deserving of life than others? If so, then we are taking a the same road as the Nazis - those great pioneers of abortion techniques in their quest for a master race - in deciding who is and isn’t fit to live.
With abortion an accepted ‘right,’ it becomes much harder to argue convincingly against the death penalty, or war, or even genocide.
Thus Mr Hanley falls into the same trap as the gun-totin’ religious right. The first step to murder is to dehumanise the other. With regard to specific circumstances he cited to support abortion, who are we to decide if a child due to be born terminally ill shouldn’t even get its one year of life.
Should we also ‘put down’ handicapped people - as the Nazis did?
The risk of suicide? Could this also mean, for example, that if a women tells her partner she’s going to leave him, and he threatens suicide, she should be obliged to stay with him?
Without wishing to make light of such a person’s situation, ultimately he is responsible for his own actions.
A medical risk to the health of the mother? Christian morality already allows for abortion where it is not the primary intention of medical assistance to save a mother’s life.
The tragedy in America and elsewhere is not the existence of a gun-totin’ religious right, or a selective ‘liberalism,’ but that there is no middle ground. There seems to be no leader seeking office on the basis that all human life - whether unborn child or Iraqi civilian - is sacred and to be protected by civil law.
I guess everyone has an agenda.
Nick Folley
36 Ardcarrig
Carrigaline
Co Cork
