Read the quote below from an opinion article:
Just when you thought the religious right couldn’t get any crazier, with its personhood amendments and its attacks on contraception, here comes the academic left with an even crazier idea: after-birth abortion.
No, I didn’t make this up. “Partial-birth abortion” is a term invented by pro-lifers. But “after-birth abortion” is a term invented by two philosophers, Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva. In the Journal of Medical Ethics, they propose:
[W]hen circumstances occur after birth such that they would have justified abortion, what we call after-birth abortion should be permissible. … [W]e propose to call this practice ‘after-birth abortion’, rather than ‘infanticide,’ to emphasize that the moral status of the individual killed is comparable with that of a fetus … rather than to that of a child. Therefore, we claim that killing a newborn could be ethically permissible in all the circumstances where abortion would be. Such circumstances include cases where the newborn has the potential to have an (at least) acceptable life, but the well-being of the family is at risk.
Note that if you go to the homepage of the Journal of Medical Ethics, you can see quite a few angry responses by ethicists who are nowhere near being describable as conservative Christians. So, before some reader begins to decry the “left”, let me make it clear that this paper is receiving quite a bit of universal rejection from every possible side of the political, religious, and ethical spectrum. So, why do I bring this paper up?
I bring it up because it enables me to bring up yet again (eti kai eti) how often what we think are the options are merely the only options that the news media presents to us. Why do I mention this? Well, because the news media sells controversy. As the saying goes, dog bites man is not news but man bites dog is. And, it does not help the news media to sell advertising if all they present are well-reasoned pieces that point out the variety that may be present or that a certain viewpoint is so extreme that it is not seriously held by many. But, this same dynamic is present in many of the political groups or religious groups as well. It often serves various groups well to bring up an extreme viewpoint on the other side to try to claim that this is what will really happen if “they” take control. But, the “they” that they point to is often an extreme caricature, or a member of an extreme group that is in no way representative of the other side.
More than that, almost no one on either side portrays the more moderate viewpoints that are available. This is particularly the case in the pro-life / pro-choice controversy. For instance, it serves both many in the pro-choice movement and many in the pro-life movement to present the pro-choice option as meaning that a woman should be able to abort to the bitter end. There should be no limit on a woman’s right to choose. But, if you were to read the opinion piece that I quoted above, you would find out that there are many in the pro-choice movement who would not subscribe to that particular viewpoint. Many in the pro-choice movement are troubled by late-term abortion, and some even argue that the longer a pregnancy proceeds, the more difficult it ought to be to get an abortion, on the grounds that the baby “gains” standing the older it is.
But, it also serves many in the pro-choice movement and many in the pro-life movement to present the pro-life option as meaning that a woman may never abort, even if it is clear that she will die without a therapeutic abortion. That is certainly an opinion among various in the pro-life movement. But, the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese’s website comments:
The Orthodox Church brands abortion as murder; that is, as a premeditated termination of the life of a human being. The only time the Orthodox Church will reluctantly acquiesce to abortion is when the preponderance of medical opinion determines that unless the embryo or fetus is aborted, the mother will die.
In addition, both the news media and the pro-choice movement have presented the pro-life movement as being even against contraception. While that is the Roman Catholic position, that is not the position of the rest of the Christian world (with some very small exceptions).
I frankly do not think that there is any way to find an acceptable compromise between pro-life and pro-choice. That is not the purpose of this article. But, the purpose is to again (and again) ask people to be cautious to not find every possible radical news story that portrays your opponent in their worst possible light so that you do not have to deal with them but can simply vilify them. Frankly, when you disagree with your religious or political opponent vigorously, it needs to be over a legitimate issue presented in a legitimate way without deliberately using some radical in order to make your supposed rhetorical victory an easy victory. Grapple with the other side’s best debater, not with their most radical nutjob.
Thank you, Father Ernesto. I hope you’re wrong about finding a compromise between the pro-choice and pro-life positions, but it’s certainly not going to happen if the nutjobs on both sides keep getting all the press. Reasonable people on either side can be hard to find—but they’re out there.
Sounds as if the crazies on both sides are trying to “outcrazy” each other!