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Keep doctors practicing medicine
The U.S. House of Representatives voted last week to eliminate federal funding for Planned Parenthood, which provides abortions, along with a variety of health care services for women. The Virginia General Assembly last week approved legislation that requires abortion clinics to be regulated as hospitals, and providers say the stricter regulations will force many of them out of business. Both measures were pushed by anti-abortion activists. Should personal and religious views be allowed to prevent women from having access to a legal medical procedure?
Of late Americans have witnessed the sad and ugly sight of a group imposing a narrow and extreme ideology on the nation. This minority refuses to recognize professional limits and are attempting to corrupt medicine.
How?
They confuse doctors with ethicists or lawmakers and expect our poor medical professionals to be judges of right and wrong and decide what should or should not be legal. Already overworked, these extremists demand doctors do what doctors are not trained to do.
Medical decisions should be left to a doctor and patient. Ethical decisions cannot always be and political decisions should never be. Doctors are credentialed by other doctors, but we elect our legislators.
Doctors are free to suggest the best medical care and patients are free to choose or reject it. The American ideal is for "we the people" to be given the most liberty possible. The American, and Christian, society respects an individual's power to choose. The right to choose and have power over one's own body is a great good, but it is not the only good.
Medical care and the choices involved cannot be isolated from the rest of human life. Some medical procedures come with a social or ethical cost. What would it profit a man to save his body at the cost of his soul?
Put simply: medical decisions sometimes involve ethical decisions.
Ethical decisions cannot be left to amateur ethicists, such as most medical doctors. That doctors wish to do a thing, can do a thing, and even want to do a thing, does not mean they should do it. What any man should do is not "just medicine." American history shows that medicine can easily be corrupted by bad men to pursue wicked ends.
Sterilizing certain Americans involuntarily in the twentieth century may have been a legal medical procedure that was justified by some scientists, but it was still wicked. The problem wasn't with the medicine, but with the ethics.
Medical doctors can only tell us what can be done, but they are as fallible as the rest of us in knowing what should be done.
Americans also know that not everything that is bad should be illegal. The dominant Christian ethical tradition taught us to balance liberty and law. Tolerating too much wickedness will bring societal collapse, but too many laws will choke out liberty and lead to tyranny.
Who will decide these questions?
The Founders of the American Republic decided that "we the People" through our elected representatives would decide what things are legal, though we don't decide "right and wrong." Every human being was given the right to life, liberty, and human happiness by their Creator. The laws of Nature and of Nature's God are not subject to Supreme Court decisions. The Supreme Court may have declared the fugitive slave laws legal and constitutional, but the perfume of legality did not cover the stench of moral rot.
Abortion, like race based slavery, is a very bad thing. God and most Americans know it is wrong, though the Supreme Court made it legal. Pretending that legal restrictions on abortion merely interfere with "medicine" is intellectually shallow. Pro-lifers are not restricting medicine, but what they believe to be unethical uses of medicine.
Some describe this as "personal" or "religious" concerns being used to restrict liberties, but all laws in the history of the Republic have been passed based on the "personal" or "religious" concerns of the voters or their representatives. Saying a thing is "personal" or "religious" is not the same as saying "irrational," though extremists in the secular community would have us believe it.
Individuals make decisions based on their best reason and experience. One set of facts to be considered are religious facts. If God's will can be known, humans ought to take it into account. Each personal decision becomes part of the will of the nation and it is this will that should become law. If the laws are good, a society will generally prosper.
In a republic, our elected officials, politicians, ultimately will reflect that the general will. Politicians may not decide "right and wrong," but they do regulate liberty with necessary laws. Mainstream Americans on the right and left know that some regulations are necessary to prevent abuses from powerful interests. The development and use of medical drugs and procedures are regulated in the public interest.
Advocates for legal abortion have carved out exceptions to sane regulations which have led to horrific abortion mills. Advocates of legal abortion cannot coherently argue that abortion is merely medical and then exempt abortion clinics the same regulations applied to other medical procedures.
Most American doctors don't want to practice abortion. They vote with their practices. Most Americans don't want to see an abortion clinic come to their neighborhood or have their children grow up to be abortionists. Overwhelmingly we know what we think about abortion ethically.
Most Americans are coming to the conclusion that our grandparents were right: abortion should not be legal in most cases. The 30-year experiment with legal abortion has failed. Through their elected representatives the American people soon will regulate and limit legal abortion, because we wish it. Courts can block the people's will for a time, but they cannot do so for long. This is particularly true when the Court is siding against Nature, Nature's God, and the will of the American people.
The Court and the laws made an immoral decision with Roe versus Wade, but now are making an anti-republican one by refusing to listen to the electorate. Americans believe medicine must be decided by doctors, but laws must reflect the judgments of "we the people." May the Republic be freed from the tyranny of an extremist minority using legal fiat to impose legal, unregulated abortion on the rest of the nation based merely on their personal, religious, or secular views.
By
John Mark Reynolds
|
March 1, 2011; 1:11 PM ET
| Category:
abortion
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Posted by: twmatthews | March 3, 2011 9:09 PM
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"pretending that a clump of cells is a human is a case of ignoring science and reasoning in favor of some people's religious beliefs. The concept of a soul, planted at the time of conception, is based on nothing more than religious belief." says a clump of cells who calls himself TWMatthews.
Denying that the clump of cells known as a zygote or an embryo or a fetus is a living human being is a denial of science and reason in favor of an individual's subjective and ill defined metaphysics. It is not a matter of religious doctrine, but scientific observation, that the developing embryo is undeniably human, genetically distinct from the mother in whose embryo he or she is developing, and alive according to the definitions of biological science. "Viability" and "self awareness" are but the secular version of ensoulment, posited purely on subjective belief, a vaporous misty concept that retreats daily before the light of objective truth.
Posted by: Ken16 | March 3, 2011 3:20 PM
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Equating an abortionist who can only profit if the procedure is performed and a physician concerned with the health of the patient is as nonsensical as it is disingenuous.
Posted by: JustJoe3 | March 3, 2011 11:52 AM
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Once someone talks about a god, the god's desires, and the alleged righteousness of said god, everything else the person says must be discounted. Referencing an invisible, non-existant entity shows neither intellectual rigor nor common sense. If you cannot understand this, then you need to go study analytical reasoning, mythology, history and literary criticism. It is truly the uneducated and undereducated who insist on maintaining these absurd, primitive and harmful religious beliefs. Freedom of religion should be called the freedom to prevent progress through ignorance.
Posted by: bob2davis | March 3, 2011 7:58 AM
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John said, "Abortion, like race based slavery, is a very bad thing. God and most Americans know it is wrong, though the Supreme Court made it legal."
Well, that's not factually true. A majority of Americans still think abortion should be legal. (http://pewforum.org/Abortion/A-Slight-but-Steady-Majority-Favors-Keeping-Abortion-Legal.aspx)
It should also be noted that the horror of back alley abortions has left our collective memory. Most people living today knew not what it was like before the supreme court ruled it legal.
There is one purpose for a strong, independent judiciary which you seem to be forgetting. That is the protection of minority rights from the majority. While segregation was rampant in the south, it took the courts to protect the rights of minorities until congress got around to enacting laws specifically to protect them.
John also said, "Pretending that legal restrictions on abortion merely interfere with "medicine" is intellectually shallow."
Yes, and pretending that a clump of cells is a human is a case of ignoring science and reasoning in favor of some people's religious beliefs. The concept of a soul, planted at the time of conception, is based on nothing more than religious belief. We can argue whether that clump of cells deserves the same protection as a baby that was born. But basing legal issues on one's personal religious belief means that all beliefs are just a valid.
I don't think you are Catholic so how would you feel about limiting your access to contraceptives? In much the same way that I suspect you would view this as a violation of your "right to privacy" many women and many men, view the government telling women what to do or not to do with their embryo, is an invasion of their privacy. As much so as forcing you to father children you didn't want to.
Posted by: twmatthews | March 1, 2011 8:29 PM
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"Most Americans are coming to the conclusion that our grandparents were right: abortion should not be legal in most cases. The 30-year experiment with legal abortion has failed. Through their elected representatives the American people soon will regulate and limit legal abortion, because we wish it. Courts can block the people's will for a time, but they cannot do so for long. This is particularly true when the Court is siding against Nature, Nature's God, and the will of the American people."
At least someone at this paper knows how to write reason. Thank you. The abortion experiment has indeed failed. Unplanned pregnancies have not disappeared, but still happen in huge numbers (perhaps now more than before, though I don't know that for certain) because now there are so many supposed ways "out" of these "unplanned" situations. Legalized abortion has not kept its promise because...it was logically never going to. It has only further moved our society towards utilitarianism and disrespect for human life in its most defenseless stages.
Posted by: clark09 | March 1, 2011 5:43 PM
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Most Americans don't want to see an abortion clinic come to their neighborhood or have their children grow up to be abortionists.
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Yes, and they don't want to live near a landfill or a coal mine or a paper mill or a prison, and don't want their children to grow up and work in one.
But SOMEONE has to do the dirty work that keeps our society a pleasant place.
Posted by: WmarkW | March 1, 2011 3:20 PM
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Ken16 said, "Denying that the clump of cells known as a zygote or an embryo or a fetus is a living human being is a denial of science and reason in favor of an individual's subjective and ill defined metaphysics. ..... "Viability" and "self awareness" are but the secular version of ensoulment, posited purely on subjective belief, a vaporous misty concept that retreats daily before the light of objective truth.
So if I understand the thrust of your argument, you're saying that because a zygote contains a unique set of genes belonging to homo sapiens, it should be treated exactly as a person. In your world, if a woman has a miscarriage there should be an investigation conducted to be sure she was properly caring for her embryo?
Are you advocating that all the same rights afforded to a baby should be afforded to a zygote? Are you saying a woman who takes the morning after pill, which eliminates a fertilized egg, should be treated the same as a mother who murders her child.
Do I have it right?