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First published May 22, 1995 Revised: June 18, 1997
NOBODY'S BODY BUT MINE
Holocaust Now! Debate Part 1
by Dalin Hale
The Sonoma County Free Press is dedicated to presenting different opinions on a variety of issues. The column which follows is by a guest writer who is opposed to abortion.
Dred Scott and Roe v. Wade are an ominous parallel. In the Dred Scott Supreme Court, 7 to 2 decision, it was determined that blacks were not persons, they were the property of their owner, who could choose to sell or kill, that abolitionists should not impose morality on the slaveowner, slavery is legal. In the Roe v Wade, 7 to 2 decision, it was determined that the unborn are not persons, they are the property of their owners (the mother), their owner could choose to keep or kill, that the anti-abortionist should not impose their morality on the mother, abortion is legal.
In their language of illusion, the pro choice movement has argued in the name of civil liberty for the continued slaughter of unborn human beings. For some, misled by the lies that this movement promulgates, denial will keep them protected from this horrible truth, but others, caught in moral conflict and psychological anguish, may welcome ideas of hope for a new beginning.
Many times I've heard it asked, "How could the German people sit by and do nothing while the Nazis committed such atrocities?" I've asked myself the same question from time to time, but recently I've realized that I am no different if I sit by and do nothing to stop the abortion holocaust.
This is neither a clever term to keep the readers attention nor an exaggeration for dramatic effect. It didn't impress me when I first heard it, but now the truth of it fills me with fear. So I bring the Nazis nightmare into the picture, for the same reason that I called attention to the slavery abortion parallel, only the images of the holocaust are much more vivid and horrifying, exactly like the image of a garbage bag full of fully formed, or ripped apart, or prostaglandin fetuses. Could it be that the German people were kept in a state of misinformation and were spared the details of cruelty, details that none was spared later, seen over and over.
Hitler and his angry speeches, swastikas, goose-steps, explosions, and the carnage of the concentration camps, seen until we know them by heart, or until inurement. I doubt it, knowing that this sort of denial did not disseminate from the powers above, but was instead endemic to the ethics of collectivism, something a majority of German people embraced from a long tradition of philosophical work, including the works of Plato, Kant, and Hegel. Without this precursive soil of belief in the singular virtue of the collective, the political tyranny of the Nazis would have had no basis for existence. Denial can be seen as the logical necessity of blind faith and self sacrifice, and its counterpart guilt can be seen as the logical necessity of individual validity.
It's one thing to pay penances in the form of graphic documentaries for guilt for wrongs past, but quite another to soberly view the debauchery of the current event of abortion. Those that insist on realistically depicting what here is not commonly seen, are denounced as fanatical, and co-opted values of civil liberty are used to tacitly charge the depicter as an enemy of those values. The anti-abortionist is characterized as the anti-choice. As for the truly violent fanatics, they have given more than a little leverage to the pro-abortionist. The high media profile of bombings and murder can be used to argue that the opponents of abortion have no regard for law or human life. Some opponents of abortion have proven themselves to be opponents of civil liberty, and to those that ponder the cessation of abortion at all cost, may they also ponder the inestimable damage that violence has done to the cause.
In as much as these violent protesters have affiliated themselves with religion, it has also compounded the issue by giving the advocates of legal abortion on demand another rally call over the institution of separation of church and state. Whether unwittingly done or not they've corrupted the very ethical grounds on which they need to accomplish their goal. Whether unwittingly done or not, and except for the service of denial in pursuit of what most religions seem to be; a crucifixion of the individual intellect, sanctity, importance and potential, in the name of devotion to some omnivirtuous, collectivist, living god; they function undiscernibly from the agent provocateur. In the words of the bible that many of them profess to observe, "ye shall know them by their fruits." Sadly, their fruits have been to do more than any other influence to turn much public opinion away from the disciplined reasoning necessary for a life affirming ethic to a foaming tide of blather about individual rights.
The importance of individual rights not withstanding, it can no more be said that society, through the conduit of elected officials, does not have the right to intervene on behalf of unborn human life, than it can be said that society has not the right to define and proscribe murder. Can anyone justifiably argue for the right of individuals to choose to take the life of another? The question is not whether the majority has the right to rule on the matter, but whether the majority will rule justly or not.
Directly and indirectly quoting from Leonard Peikoff, the Nazis were elected into office by millions of people who thought they were good; people who could find support for their self sacrificing beliefs at every turn; not the inconsequential number of thugs who also found it attractive; but a majority of non-thugs who thought of themselves as decent, law abiding Germans who found hope and inspiration in Hitler, "the legions of unhappy, abstemious, duty-bound men and women who condemned what they saw as the selfishness of the Weimar Republic, and who were eager to take part in the new moral crusade that Hitler promised to lead. The reason (for the Nazis debacle) was the 'good Germans'-- above all their concept of 'the good.' These were the people who in the land of poets and philosophers were predisposed to slavery. And full circle we have come to Dred Scott.
The idea and hope for a new beginning that I alluded to earlier needs to be developed from the courage to turn away from these false ethics of evil. To admit honestly where we have consoled ourselves with them, and to see clearly that to repeat them is to continue in complicity. That the way of redemption is to take a stand against it. That the way to affirm the sanctity of human life in all of its stages of development is to uproot the lies by telling the truth against all of its guises.
Editor's Note: See Beth Grimes' rebuttal in Debate Part 2. Return to NOBODY'S BODY BUT MINE Return to Columns Page Return to Sonoma County Free Press Home Page