Comments on: Why Abortion is Different

By: Dan Deeny

Dan Deeny — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 16:57:30 +0000

Joe DeVet has it right.

By: cathy

cathy — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 05:16:27 +0000

Charlie, I think you are right about the consistent ethic. Ultimately most of our social justice issues boil down to violence… by committing to a non-violent/non-harm ethic (except for defense but even then, only if necessary), we would solve many problems at once. Therefore it makes no sense to me to pick and choose which beings we can be violent to and which ones we can’t, gradually eliminating one injustice and then another.

http://justbramble.blogspot.com/2009/01/pro-life-omnivores-and-pro-choice.html

By: Joe DeVet

Joe DeVet — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 04:18:05 +0000

If one looks at the abortion question, as opposed to all those others which are often put in some sort of “competition” with abortion–and one looks at it strictly from a secular societal or indeed a purely patriotic perspective…

Can a society which kills its babies for the sake of convenience or lust, be expected to endure?

I think it’s that simple. None of the other pressing matters of public policy would affect the basic health and long-term viability of the culture the way the abortion issue does.

By: Charlie

Charlie — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 00:24:17 +0000

Two things. First, why rag on the consistent ethic? I know very few people who use the consistent ethic to show and all the issues are equal in gravity…certainly Bernardin did not. Rather, it is to show the logical connections between the issues: special concern for vulnerable life, a commitment to non-violence, etc. The thing which frustrates those who adhere to the consistent ethic, and especially Catholics, is when certain Christians prize their late-20th-century political affiliations ahead what the Church teaches about poverty, health care, the death penalty, war, animals and the environment, etc.

Second, while a proponent of the consistent ethic, I certainly think that abortion (at least in the context of the United States) is a far more serious problem than any of the others mentioned above. But the reason has nothing to do with the reasons mentioned in this article. Consider that with the death penalty there are also some ‘for’ and some ‘against’ the practice…as with abortion. No different in that respect. Where it is different (I’m not sure the complex discussion of ‘intrinsic evil’, traditionally used to do this, is all that helpful here) is in the magnitude of the evil. 1.3 million abortions of the most helpless members of our human family intentionally killed…often simply because of their gender or the lifestyle choices of their parents. That has got to be our primary focus of our attention…though, as the consistent ethic implies…concern for vulnerable life needn’t be a zero-sum game.