Thursday, May 17, 2007

Being "Personally Against" Abortion

On his recent Fox News Sunday appearance, and in the both (May 3 & May 15) Republican Primary debates, Rudy Giuliani has made it clear he is "personally opposed" to abortion but thinks women should be free to make their own choice. To quote his campaign website:


Rudy Giuliani supports reasonable restrictions on abortion such as parental notification with a judicial bypass and a ban on partial birth abortion – except when the life of the mother is at stake. He’s proud that adoptions increased 66% while abortions decreased over 16% in New York City when he was Mayor. But Rudy understands that this is a deeply personal moral dilemma, and people of good conscience can disagree respectfully.


I think that's actually probably a pretty popular position. But it's one I can not get my head around. I think Giuliani would be equally puzzled if he was confronted with the suggestion that we should take a defensive position on the "War on Terror" because "people of good conscience [...] disagree respectfully about how we should wage the War on Terror".

I can hear Giuliani retort "No. We must win. It's imperative."

As I blogged about earlier, abortion comes down to a single fundamental question: is a fetus a human person?

If it is a life, which I assume is the position Giuliani holds, because why else would you be "personally opposed" to abortion?, then how do you possibly justify that because someone else doesn't think it is a life, it's OK for them to have an abortion?

Their belief that it's not a life does not magically make it so.

As Daniel Allot of the American Spectator comments:


To acknowledge the grave injustice of abortion yet still promote its perpetuation is like saying: "I'm opposed to slavery but think it ought to be left to each plantation owner to decide (a popular position, incidentally, during the age of slavery), and in the meanwhile I'll pass laws re-affirming the practice and forcing all taxpayers -- even those who are "personally opposed" to slavery -- to pay for it."


Gov. Giuliani: If a fetus is a life, do everything you can to stop abortion. If it's not, there's no reason to be "personally opposed" to it.

No comments: