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 9th 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 9th
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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