Professor Kaczor of Loyola Marymount College sets out (in the August issue of First Things ”Equal Rights, Unequal Wrongs”) six or more irrefutable reasons why the arguments of ‘gradualists’ vis-a-vis abortion do not stand up to intellectual or moral analysis.
‘Gradualists’ are those who may be seen to occupy a middle ground, by (possibly) accepting certain legal limits to certain abortions of infants who have reached a presumed gestation age of viability, say, 24 to 26 weeks (according to Frances Kissling, a proponent of abortion): But who also do not see anything wrong with any or all earlier abortions such as during the first trimester and most of the second trimester.
Gradualists may consider themselves and be defined as “pro-choice” (as most are). A few gradualists may be of the waffling variety, with the sometimes-heard rhetoric – (especially from a few liberal Republican political candidates) – “I’m basically pro-life, in the sense that Im against late-term abortion”.
Professor Kaczor defines ‘Absolutists’ as those at the extremes on either end of the abortion debate. ”At one extreme, absolutist critics of abortion hold that abortion is always wrong and that the basic moral status of every human being is equal: At the other (extreme), absolutist defenders of abortion hold that (abortion) is always ethically permissible, even moments before the birth of a full-term baby.”
I am an absolutist critic of abortion and I absolutely hold that the moral and God-given status of every human being, from conception to natural death, is equal.
At the same time, I am an advocate of promoting a federal legislative directive banning the abortion of any child in the womb at or over the gestation age of 21 weeks lmp, the age of 21 to 22 weeks lmp being the now-proven and medically definitive viability gestation age of extremely premature-birth infants = NOT 24 to 26 weeks – (see US and UK medical studies referred to earlier in this blog). The 21-week cut off vis-a-vis abortion may warrant being lowered to 20 weeks, for yet another another reason, which comprises the indication based on further medical studies that infants of that age are capable of experiencing pain. The federal ban on such late-term D&E abortions at 20 weeks and over would emulate the guidelines and legislative language set forth in the 2003 Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act.
What Professor Kaczor omitted from his analysis is that it is possible to be both ‘Absolutist’ in reference to abortion, and in favor of banning late term-abortions (which he seems to assign as the territory of only ‘Gradualists’) as a tactical procedure: I call that, which is what I am, being an ‘Incrementalist’.
I am an Incrementalist because we CAN ban such late-term D&E abortions (with an exception to save the life of the mother, as in the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act) and actually save the lives of over 20,000 such aborted, viable infants a year. We can do that soon! We will not be able to ban all abortions, to overturn Roe v. Wade any time soon.
The Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 was the ultimate litmus test a decade ago as to how our legislators, of either party and of all sectors and faiths, voted on that issue. That was – unfortunately – its only value. It did not, and has not, saved ANY babies lives, late-term or otherwise. That’s because the 3,000 late-term babies that were previously aborted by the D&X Partial Birth Abortion method, simply continued to be aborted each year by the equally painful and macabre D&E Dismemberment Abortion method (comprising the other 17,000 late-term babies aborted each year by that so-called “classical abortion method”).
I am an Incrementalist and a Pro-Life Absolutist.
Several responders take issue with that, and insist that one must fight to ban all abortions now, and not divert efforts by hoping to ban one small sliver of the million-three-hundred-thousand infants destroyed each year.
I beg to differ. It IS worth the fight to Ban Late-Term D&E Abortions NOW for two important reasons. One, it can be done: And we save over 20,000 lives a year – nearly quarter of a million in a decade. Two, it will once again give us a stark litmus test, real voting records, of our current crop of legislators in Congress and the U.S. Senate, on the inflammatory issue of killing viable babies by dismembering their bodies in the womb, shredding their limbs.
We need to record once again how the Catholic senators and congressmen would vote on this vital issue; how our women and men would vote; how Jewish legislators would vote this time; how those of other faiths and of no faith would vote. This is THE bedrock, the keystone issue underpinning the morality of America. It needs to be recorded and voted on.
Are we going to go the way of secular Europe: Or are we going to remain that one nation apart from the rest?
Posted on August 24, 2011
0