The War in Iraq and Abortion

In the uproar over the Notre Dame scandel, Mary Ann Glendon has come under fire for her supposed hypocrisy for accepting her appointment to the Vatican by the George Bush, but refusing to recieve the Laetare award from Notre Dame. The first criticism of this sort I dismissed as just more nonsense from brain-dead liberals who did too much LSD in the sixties and seventies. But now, it seems, the argument is being advanced by those I would expect to know better.

An example, here in Friday's USA Today.

When I was in college, I remember marching against abortion at the University of Michigan Diag. One counter protester, a young woman approached me and asked if I was in favor of the death penalty. I said that I was (today I would answer differently). She proceeded to "expose" my hypocrisy. I was dumbfounded. So I asked her. So you feel that both Abortion and Capital Punishment are wrong. She said, "No." "So you think they are both morally permissable." Again, she said no. "I am against Captital Punishment, but respect a woman's right to abortion."

My point was simple, even if she didn't see it, and eventually became so angry that further discussion was pointless. If Christians are hyprocritical for opposing abortion and favoring capital punishment, then the otherside is equally hypocritical for the opposite view point. Their position, is by their own standard, horribly inconsistent.

At least with the death penalty, it is the guilty (at least it is hoped) who pay. With abortion, children are executed without presumption of innocence, trial and the right to appeal. Moreover, at least an argument can be made in favor of capital punishment in so far as it's goal it to protect the lives of innocent people by executing violent offenders and by establishing a deterant to such crimes (how effective that deterant is, however, is hotly debated.) I can respect this argument, even if in disagreement.

Likewise, if any argument can be made to justify the war in Iraq, it must be made on the grounds of saving lives. Can't that argument be reasonably made? (Even if you disagree with it?)

But if you are against the war in Iraq on the grounds that it is immoral to take human life, on what grounds can you defend abortion? To argue that the lives of terrorists and rapists, but unborn children, should be protected is not only hypocritical. It's reprehensible.