Confessions of a Bad Son

I have used this blog to mostly discuss legal, theological, and moral issues, trying to speak to their intersection.  I have on occasion spoken about my own frailties in order that you might come to learn a bit more about me and so understand why I come to the conclusions I write about. (Oh that really felt good - ending a sentence in a preposition . . . ahhhhh - sorry Josh Rowland).

On Father's Day I did something terrible and grotesquely despicable - I didn't call my Dad!  I didn't send him a card, either.

I have written previously about how much my Dad has meant to me over the years and his influence on me.  I won't rehash that here.

He is now in the throes of immense dementia.  He remembers only snippets about who he is.  I guess in part, I put off calling because every time I think about talking with him now, I cry.  My dad, the greatest man I have ever known, is simply not there anymore.  Yes, once in a while he surfaces with that sly, I've got my hand in the cookie jar look that he often used in the past.  Yes, once in a while he surfaces with a funny comment (although he doesn't know he's being funny - I guess).  My sister Becky sends texts with such moments - one for instance:

Becky:  Dad, why are you yelling?
Dad:  Because I feel like it.

That would be exactly the kind of sassy comment he would make.  I miss my Dad.  I can't tell you how many times we talked Giants football, or politics, or religion, or family.  Now we can't.

So I put off calling him.  I know I was wrong.  I hope that if somewhere deep down he remembers and misses our talks, that he's forgiven me for not calling.  I will call tomorrow night when I take my son to soccer practice.  Even if all he says is hello, at least his voice remains.  I can still hear him . . . I can still enjoy remembering.

If you have a Dad who doesn't remember, don't be like me.  Call him.  If you can go see him, go see him.  He might not remember one minute later that you called him or that you were there.  Then again, how do you know?

Mark Joseph Stern: A Fetus Wrapped In Newspaper is a Moral Good

NOTE:  I actually wrote this some time ago, but for reasons I don’t recall, never posted it.

Mark Joseph Stern’s column at Slate.com A Quiet Victory, proves once again that the pro-abortion crowd can’t stop whining about losing the moral argument.  His writing is, as always, well done, emotionally appealing, and provocative.  His legal reasoning may be accurate, but his moral reasoning fails miserably.

Stern is writing about Jennie Lynn McCormack, an Idaho woman who gave herself an abortion via pills, because she couldn’t afford to pay for one.  She was ultimately arrested under Idaho law because the baby was apparently at a stage (19 to 23 weeks) for which a non-surgical, self-induced abortion wasn’t allowed.  Ms. McCormack was “furious” that the government could intrude so “deeply into her private life.”  According to Stern’s reporting the police “found the fetus wrapped in bags on McCormack’s back porch.”  I guess I must at least give Stern credit for referring to the dead baby as a fetus. 

What Stern champions here is McCormack’s attack on Idaho’s self-induced abortion law.  He provides some legal analysis of cases which I, frankly, have not read, so I’m taking his word for it.  The 9^th Circuit struck down this law as unconstitutional, to which Stern refers as “a powerful affirmation of constitutional autonomy in an age when that value is “in short supply.”

Constitutional “autonomy” only applies to those who have sufficient power to wield it, I guess.  What about the unborn child’s “autonomy?”  Valuing unborn children is in short supply in Mr. Stern’s world.

For Stern, who blithely ignores the child as having any part in this conversation, it is all about the mother’s “reproductive rights,” which is an oxymoron if ever one has existed, since it always refers to the mother’s right NOT to reproduce.  As I  have argued previously, this nonsense about the “mother’s own body” remains one of the most egregious examples of raw emotional argumentation ever ( Abortion is Not a Moral Matter ).  Stern, however, continues to act as if the mother’s right to choose makes sense as an argument.  Yes, he is right in a dry, technical, legal sense.  However, Stern uses phrases like “insane restrictions,” and “shockingly stringent” when describing laws which reduce the availability of abortion, as if it’s awful that we don’t let people willy-nilly kill off human lives.

Stern should take a lesson from Janet Harris, and make his legal arguments, shrug his shoulders and point out that the law is Roe v. Wade until such time as the Supreme Court overturns the decision or the Constitution is amended (neither of which will ever happen in this writer’s lifetime).  But he can’t and won’t. 

He can’t simply make his legal arguments and rest his case because he knows and understands what Harris was honest enough to almost say out loud: you can’t make the moral case for abortion.  Stern argues, in a roundabout way, that pro-life advocates are hypocritical because they have a hard time arguing the police should be arresting mom for engaging in a do-it-yourself abortion.  Well, this pro-lifer doesn’t mind saying that whether mom does it herself, or whether a doctor does it, the result remains the same: a human life is snuffed out and we typically arrest people for killing other people.

Let’s face it, the only murder for hire scheme that’s legal in this country is abortion.

So what Mark Joseph Stern and others continue to do is hide behind the “legality” of abortion while ginning up emotional arguments about “autonomy” and “private lives” and “reproductive rights” in order to keep themselves from feeling guilty about the true nature of what’s going on.  Not too long ago law professor Jay Sterling Silver suggested in a New York Times op-ed that there is a symbiotic nature between the law and morality – if a law declares something illegal, people see it as more immoral.[1]  Oddly, the opposite hasn’t seemed true when it comes to abortion: declaring abortion legal hasn’t worked to make it seem more moral.  This confounds folks like Stern.  He desperately wants people to see abortion as a moral good.  So he portrays every pro-lifer as a wicked and despicable woman-hater who wants to delve into women’s “private lives” and tell them what to do with their reproductive organs.  His forlorn hope is that somehow if he keeps saying that pro-lifers are nasty and mean and morally repugnant it will become true.

Stern seems to hold Ms. McCormack up as one fighting for justice and the law.  Maybe she and Mr. Stern are right about the law.  But it’s pretty hard to get people thinking you’re on the side of morality when your heroine tosses her dead baby on her back porch, wrapped up in some papers like a picked over fish carcass.  Joan of Arc she’s not.  Just argue that her legal rights were violated and stop there, Mr. Stern.  It’s all you’ve got and you’ve seriously overplayed your hand trying to turn this horrific human being into some sort of virtuous crusader.

Abortion doesn’t become moral because it’s legal, any more than Brussel sprouts suddenly taste like sugar just because they’re good for you.  Nonetheless, Stern offers up the “abortion is legal” theory here because he has nothing else to say that might impact anyone’s conscience.  He seems to think if he can show that if this case remains good law it has some sort of impact on the morality of abortion.  He’s like a magician talking about one thing while doing something else with his hands, to keep the audience focused on his talking so he can pull off the magic trick.  Fortunately, too many have been seared and scarred by abortion, either personally, or through the obvious reality that abortion kills a human being to be fooled by talk that the 9^th Circuit said Idaho’s law was unconstitutional, as if unconstitutionality is a rational boundary line for morality.

Abortion is murder and whether legal murder or not, Mr. Stern, it’s not moral.  Case closed.

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[1] Can the Law Make Us Be Decent (Published November 6, 2012).