Forget about gun control, abortion takes more lives. There are only two problems with this mostly true claim: 1) we can deal with both issues at the same time, and 2) gun control may not really save lives.Angry attacks against my love for unborn children indelibly include a false dilemma: "If you really cared about human life, you'd spend more time in Africa feeding poor people instead of stripping my uterus of freedom" (I have only done the former). Remembering the human ability to transcend apish single-mindedness is a good place to begin refuting this argument.
Abortion is not a trade-off with other policy issues. If you save lives in Darfur, and neglect lives in America, you are inconsistent. If you are working to save lives in Darfur, you should probably also work to save the lives of unborn children. Senator Brownback, for example, has found a way to do both. The common value of protecting life is apparent to him, and many others (see the testimony of torture-survivor Anthony Ibeagha about abortion on page 4). Thankfully, this is not a choice between one and the other.
Ex-Daily editor David Kucinskas believes otherwise. In a April 19th Forum letter, he writes:
"The amount of time, money and political capital that contemporary Americans spend frothing at the mouth over the issue of abortion horrifies me as well. There are so many other problems that deserve attention."
This line of "choice-thinking"--choosing between abortion or another issue--is no better than the other "choice" framework offered by abortion advocates. It is just a request for abortion opponents to go away, and nothing else. It is not an actual argument.
To the dismay of Kucinskas, his opinion really deserves a closer look, even if it means diverting attention from more important issues. (Perhaps an example would be passing a veto-ensured and therefore useless Iraqi spending bill?)
Let's start with statistics. A Rasmussen survey found that only 26% of Americans followed Carhart v. Gonzales news, the biggest decision in abortion-law history in 35-years, which broke the day after the Virginia Tech killings. On April 16, just as many late-term unborn children were killed by partial birth abortion as students were shot by Cho. Both are tragic, and only one could be prevented from happening the next day, and the next day, and the next day.
Our political culture, at least on the surface, purports to value consistency. The most obvious position is to "froth" over abortion, because, by all numbers, facts, and signs, it is a huge deal. And by all measures of moral consistency, humanitarians, civil rights advocates, and charitable Democrats ought accompany their social battles with a battle for protecting unborn life. Not exactly.
Instead, "Invisible Children" echoes a strange irony through the corridors of abortion clinics. Instead, Media Research Center found only 17 of the 217 stories on partial-birth abortion actually explained what took place in a partial-birth abortion. Instead, a framework pitting a mother's choice against her child's life flummoxes the American mind. Instead, a quarter of all American children are aborted. Or as Kucinskas puts it, we exaggerate the issue.
My involvement organizing the Virginia Tech vigil last week made one thing patently clear: our generation wants to express sorrow for the loss of life. In other words, we want to exaggerate the issue of life. The three hundred students gathered quickly and compassionately to mourn the loss of life, and by the time we sent the banners to Virginia Tech, students and staff had inscribed over two-thousand personal notes. The hours I spent reading the banners before mailing them to Virginia Tech were priceless. I collected them from Norris and Kellogg around midnight, and spent half the night reading what I consider the most compassionate and sincere message expressed by the Northwestern community in a long time. Our accomplishments don't stop there.
In order to exculpate the University from committing even the most remote and indirect crimes, Northwestern students have retraced University money back to Darfur. No matter how small or large are the University investments which fall into the hands of companies invested in Darfur, and no matter how small or large the affect those investments have on the genocide, the cost is too much for a progressive student body to bear. Life is, rightly so, that precious.
In retrospect, the abortion situation is confusing. As my friend said, we are a country of memorials, yet we passionately tolerate abortion-on-demand. It reminds me of G.K. Chesterton's warning that morality in modern society is fragmented and wild. He said, "The modern society is full of wild and wasted virtues... The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone."
Abortions occur at statistically staggering rates, and science gives more than enough reasons to call the unborn child a human life. We won't go ahead and say it, but if we did, the issue would become clear.
Consider the testimony of Anthony Ibeagha on how to decide the abortion issue. Mr. Ibeagha is a torture-survivor from Nigeria, a resident of Rogers Park, and my friend and mentor.
"Before I was a torture survivor, I used to...think freely about abortion [and] about...the right to freedom. I used to politicize; I used to think logically about it. But after my experience, I developed this deep respect for human life, to the extent that I never stand for taking away a life at any stage. If there is a possibility, an iota of possibility, that there may be a life, whether it's a fetus, or whatever it is, do not destroy it."
