I previously noted that the MSM has been somewhat reluctant to address abortion. However, an article that Newsweek published last night by George Weigel provides an outstanding secular argument for the pro-life position (on scientific and rational grounds) and the duplicity of the Democratic Party’s leadership. Excerpt:
At the Aug. 16 “Civil Forum on the Presidency” at Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., Sen. Barack Obama was asked by pastor Rick Warren, “At what point does a baby get human rights, in your view?” Obama quickly changed the subject to when life begins, and then demurred: “… whether you are looking at it from a theological perspective or a scientific perspective, answering that question with specificity … is above my pay grade.” Why, though? An embryology text widely used in American medical schools, “The Developing Human,” is not so reticent about the science involved: “Human development begins at fertilization when a male gamete or sperm (spermatazoon) unites with a female gamete or oocyte (ovum) to produce a single cell—a zygote. This highly specialized, totipotent cell marked the beginning of each of us as a unique individual.” That is the science. It’s quite specific, and understanding the science here is surely not above the “pay grade” of a president who will be making public-policy decisions based on that science.
Weigel later unpacks some of the political implications of the abortion issue:
There are also serious questions of political theory and governance at stake in the abortion wars. Pro-lifers have long argued that allowing the government to declare an entire class of human creatures—the unborn—outside the protection of the law is a danger for everyone (wherever they may be located on the Doerflinger timeline). Does Senator Obama agree that the abortion debate involves that first principle of justice which teaches that innocent life is inviolable and that the equal protection of the laws must extend to everyone, regardless of condition?
Then Weigel comes back to Obama, unmasking Obama’s “understanding” of the pro-life view and showing what it really is: a caricature, a straw man:
At Saddleback, Senator Obama expressed his “respect” for the views of consistent pro-lifers because their conviction that “life begins at conception … is a core issue of faith” for those voters. This, however, is another dodge. Yes, for some pro-lifers, obedience to religious authority is the source of their conviction. Yet to suggest, as Obama did, that the pro-life position rests on private (and thus inherently undebatable) religious intuitions is to have missed virtually the entirety of the substantive pro-life argument since 1973. Pro-lifers of both parties—some of them agnostic and atheists—have made genuinely public arguments, based on scientific knowledge, reason and democratic political theory. Judging from the evidence to date, the Democratic candidate for president has yet to engage those arguments seriously.
Towards the end Weigel excoriates Speaker Pelosi’s “Meet the Press” appearance on August 24:
In her “Meet the Press” appearance Aug. 24, Pelosi was asked by Tom Brokaw whether she agreed with Senator Obama’s statements on abortion at Saddleback. Pelosi, declaring herself an “ardent, practicing Catholic,” told Brokaw that “this is an issue that I have studied for a long time”—and then got herself into a deep muddle, in which she seemed to confuse St. Augustine with St. Thomas Aquinas (neither of whom, in any case, knew anything about modern embryology); misrepresented the settled (and scientifically informed) judgment of the Catholic Church on when life begins by declaring it an open question, and concluded by suggesting that none of this really makes a difference, because what the scientists, theologians, and philosophers say “… shouldn’t have an impact on a the woman’s right to choose.” The Speaker then misrepresented the legal impact of Roe v. Wade, arguing that the Supreme Court hadn’t created a right to “abortion on demand”—which will come as news to those on both sides of the ongoing debates over partial-birth abortion and other late-term abortion procedures, parental- and spousal-notifications laws and regulatory oversight of abortion clinics.
Read the whole thing.