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October 24, 2003
Child Saved from Burning House; Women's Right to Choose Eroded By Tom Smith From an AP story yesterday: . . . Dr. David Grimes, a North Carolina physician who formerly headed the abortion surveillance division of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, called [the decision to reconnect Mrs Terri Shiavo to her feeding tube] "a very sad day." "Here we have a governor of Florida interfering with a family's choice and Congress interfering with a woman's right to choose," Grimes said yesterday. "I thought this administration's role was to get government off people's backs." Gloria Feldt, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said people need to realize "it's not just a fight about abortion. It extends far beyond, to family planning and other personal, private decisions." These people are starting to really creep me out. I understand how non-Catholics could view as unreasonable the stance that a little cluster of cells should be treated as a human life. But with Terri Schiavo, it is members of her family, her parents and brother, who want her kept alive and her husband who wants the plug pulled. The husband may be right, but it is at least worth inquiry as to whether he has his wife's best interests or just his own at heart. The pro-abortion people are acting as if the principle is, if it's alive and we can't kill it, it's a set back for a woman's right to choose. Similarly with the partial birth abortion debate. Late term abortions of babies who would be viable if put in a neo-natal care unit are morally problematic, at best. The vast majority of physicians won't go anywhere near them. Yet the NARAL etc. view seems to be Congress should not even be allowed to discuss regulating them, for fear legitimate abortions would be impacted. That is nuts. It lends weight to the claim of the right-to-life people make that the logic of abortion will spread outward to include other vulnerable people. Can it really be the pro-abortion people do not recognize there is a public interest in making sure decisions about ending a life are made properly? Do they seriously expect us to treat these decisions as entirely "private"? How can they be called private when the life of a person (or quasi- or semi- person) who by hypothesis is not consenting to being killed, is involved? |