Most folks on the pro-life side of the abortion fence wonder what those on the opposite side of the issue think about unborn babies. Are they human? Just a fetus? A life? Tissue? Now, thanks to one pro-choice writer, there is crystal clear understanding.
An unborn baby is nothing more than a “life worth sacrificing.”
In early 2013, Mary Elizabeth Williams, a staff writer for Salon, penned a highly controversial article entitled So What If Abortion Ends Life? It was a brazen effort to justify her position on abortion. In her opening paragraph, she writes:
I know that throughout my own pregnancies, I never wavered for a moment in the belief that I was carrying a human life inside of me. I believe that’s what a fetus is: a human life. And that doesn’t make me one iota less solidly pro-choice.
Williams makes a concession that most in the pro-choice crowd are unwilling to make: that a fetus is a human life. So, then how does she justify her pro-choice position?
Simple. By ascribing greater value to one life and less to another:
Here’s the complicated reality in which we live: All life is not equal. That’s a difficult thing for liberals like me to talk about, lest we wind up looking like death-panel-loving, kill-your-grandma-and-your-precious-baby storm troopers. Yet a fetus can be a human life without having the same rights as the woman in whose body it resides. She’s the boss. Her life and what is right for her circumstances and her health should automatically trump the rights of the non-autonomous entity inside of her. Always.
Any stance that assigns more value to one human life than another is a deeply troubling one. Isn’t that exactly what the white supremacists did when they declared African-Americans to be “three-fifths” of a person? Isn’t that exactly what the Nazis did to Jews during the Holocaust?
Williams then moves to even shakier ground by declaring that the rights of one human trump the rights of another (lesser) human. It’s an easy jump to make…especially when one life form is considered nothing but a “non-autonomous entity.” In her world, one person can be less human than another.
She ends her treatise with these chilling words:
I would put the life of a mother over the life of a fetus every single time — even if I still need to acknowledge my conviction that the fetus is indeed a life. A life worth sacrificing.
A life worth sacrificing.
A life worth sacrificing.
That’s what a human child is worth to Williams.
One has to wonder if she feels that way about her own children.
So many Christians believe abortion is a political conversation that the Church has no business having. There may not be a more theological discussion to have in our day than one that defines life as human.
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Topics Illustrated Include:
Abortion
Argument
Baby
Culture
Death
Humans
Life
Murder
Politics
Rights
Sacrificial
Theology
Values
Worth
(Resource cataloged by David R Smith)