Posted on 04/22/2007 4:31:54 AM PDT by shrinkermd
...In short, when you focus on the fetus, you see a process of emerging life that begins with small biological clumps and culminates by the third trimester with a creature who is not significantly different from a living baby. And the obvious mystery is: When in this continuous process does human life begin?
And yet when you look at the abortion debate that grows from this mystery, you find that over the years, adults have built these vast layers of argument and counterargument, and the core issue is buried far down below.
The Carhart case, is prompted by revulsion over the practice of killing late-term fetuses. Yet for reasons having to do with political tactics, the law that was upheld wouldn’t even prevent a single late-term abortion. It would forbid doctors from crushing the skull of the fetus, but would permit them to poison and dismember it. Furthermore, the reasoning Justice Anthony Kennedy used to uphold the law — mothers who may come to regret their abortions — is bizarre, and removed from the revulsion that prompted the whole issue.
Meanwhile, when you look at the statements of the abortion rights forces, you find they can’t even look this matter in the face. Read the statements by the Democratic presidential candidates. Read the protests from Planned Parenthood and Naral. They can’t even bring themselves to mention the word “fetus.” They are terrified of having an honest discussion about human life, so they have built this lofty etiquette of evasion that treats abortion as ...a tonsillectomy.
If we could get this issue away from the abortion professionals and their orthodoxies, we could reach a sensible solution: abortion would be legal, with parental consent for minors, during the first four or five months, and illegal except in extremely rare circumstances afterward....
(Excerpt) Read more at select.nytimes.com ...
I am sorry this cannot be accessed by everyone--it requires 50$ a year to get some materials from the NYT.
What's worse, entering into a Faustian Bargain or being the guy who dreams it up?
Coing a new phrase here? Every cell in a living human body is alive. Duh!
There is no "emerging."
Thanks for posting this. Will be interesting to see if Brooks' opinion gets traction.
That's my thinking. If they take money for performing an abortion threw them in the worst prison we got for the rest of their lives.
That's what he means by "abortion professional" right?
That's a sensible solution? No, thank you.
_____________________________________
Though he opposes what he sees as self-destructive behavior like teenage sex and divorce, Brooks is not a culture warrior in the traditional sense. His view is that "sex is more explicit everywhere...except in real life. As the entertainment media have become more sex-saturated, American teenagers have become more sexually abstemious" by "waiting longer to have sex...[and] having fewer partners." He sees the culture war as nearly over, because "today's young people...seem happy with the frankness of the left and the wholesomeness of the right." As a result, he is optimistic about the United States' social stability, which he considers to be "in the middle of an amazing moment of improvement and repair." (New York Times, April 17, 2005, 4-14.)
Brooks also broke with many in the conservative movement when, in late 2003, he came out in favor of same-sex marriage in his New York Times column. He equated the idea with traditional conservative values: "We should insist on gay marriage. We should regard it as scandalous that two people could claim to love each other and not want to sanctify their love with marriage and fidelity.... It's going to be up to conservatives to make the important, moral case for marriage, including gay marriage." (New York Time
Advances in neonatology are making the boundary between late term abortion and infanticide a distinction without a difference.
Life begins at conception.
To that there is no mystery, except for those who want to play God.
I also hope for an outbreak of simple logic. If one is repulsed by skull crushing the almost born, perhaps one can be led to understand that every fertilized ovum will eventually grow a skull if it is simply left alone.
Exactly. It's a human being, no matter what stage of development, in the womb or outside the womb.
I prefer to think that life began a long time ago, and that life does not begin at conception , it is merely passed on, like a flame from candle to candle. Life is a continuum. This avoids the debate of when life begins, and all I see is the flame of life snuffed out during an abortion.
I love my daughter. I think she loves me. Is this guy suggesting that there is something "scandalous" about our not sanctifying this love "with marriage and fidelity"? Or maybe does marriage maybe mean something about which this guy has no clue?
As for abortion, it appears to me that reason is beginning to encroach on this guy's leftist mind. He has decide that those "fetuses" are real human beings, but he just cannot bring himself to want to save them all.
ML/NJ
In other words, keep killing babies as long as they're small enough that we can pretend they aren't human.
Sorry, David. God is not mocked.
Amen bump to that, chick!
Did not think of that. :) I am just trying to say that life just does not "spontiantiously combust" at conception. Life is passed on from generation to generation. Abortion ends the life. From the first cells to the first breath what is consistent is the flame of life, that the abortionist snuffs out.
That’s a nice explanation if you don’t believe in God. Think of “flame of life” another word for “soul”. (God gives a soul). At least we agree that abortion snuffs out life. Live long and prosper, my friend!
Thanks, Don-o.
I can’t understand Mr. Brooks. He’s not stupid, in any objective sense, and so he can’t be unaware that his position is insane. Why does he so badly want unborn babies to die? Who does he think benefits from this?
And why does he think anyone would consider his proposal “reasonable,” when it’s so perfectly arbitrary, unconnected to any known facts?
I see your point. Both the sperm and the egg are living human cells, and so there is no “addition” of life, in the strictest sense, when they combine to form a new person. There is only the addition of a new person, who is neither the mother nor the father.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.