Peter Kreeft - Three Approaches to Abortion: A Thoughtful and Compassionate Guide to Today’s Most Controversial Issue

Preface

This book is designed for two groups ofpeople:

1.for pro-life people to give to their pro-choice friends, to explain themselvesand their position as fully as possible in a short book; and

2.for pro-choice or undecided people who want to understand the pro-life positionfrom three angles.

The three angles are:

1.the impersonal (the objective, logical arguments);

2.the personal (the subjective motives); and

3.the interpersonal (the combination of the first two that surfaces in dialogue betweenpro-choice and pro-life people.

Thus the book has three parts:

1.The Apple Argument against Abortion, an essay arguing logically, in fifteensteps, from the premise that we know what an apple is to the conclusion thatabortion must be outlawed;

2.Why We Fight: A Pro-Life Motivational Map, a confession of fifteen motivesthat fuel pro-life work; and

3. What Happens When an IrresistibleForce Meets an Immovable Object? A Typical Pro-Life/Pro-Choice Dialogue, whichaddresses the fifteen most common pro- choice arguments

Introduction

Abortion is thesingle most divisive public issue of our time, as slavery was for thenineteenth century, or as prohibition was for the 1920s. Intelligent, committedpro-lifers will not be satisfied in principle with anything less than the legalprohibition, or abolition, of all abortion (though most pro-lifers arepragmatic enough to accept partial abolitions as incremental steps toward thatgoal). And intelligent, committed pro-choicers understand this and resist, alsoin principle, any of these incremental steps. Pro-lifers find it intolerablethat the most innocent and vulnerable members of our society and our speciesare legally slaughtered. Pro-choicers find it intolerable that women be forcedby law to bear unwanted children against their will. Neither side can or willbudge, in principle.

There are only fourthings that can possibly be done in such a situation.

First, we couldsimply accept the current standoff and hope it will not erupt into violence andcivil war, as abolitionism did in the nineteenth century. Perhaps if we donothing the problem will just go away. Obviously this is naive andirresponsible. It is also unhistorical. Already in the U.S. and Canada somehave appeared who have murdered abortionists or even their office workers. Theyhave already done what John Brown did at Harpers Ferry just before the CivilWar: to protest violence, they have used violence. There is no reason to thinkthat their ilk will simply disappear, or even diminish.

Second, we couldaccept the current standoff and put social protections around the dispute tokeep it from erupting into war. What these protections are, is not clear. Nosociety has yet solved the problem of assassination by fanatics, especially ifthe fanatics are willing to die along with their victim for the sake of theircause. The closest any society has come to preventing assassinations istotalitarian dictatorship. There were almost no private assassinations underStalin, Hitler, Mao, Castro, or Pol Pot; all assassinations were carried out bythe government. Hardly a solution!

Third, we could hopethat one of the two sides will simply go away, or weaken, or give up, or atleast quiet down not out of conviction but simply because of attrition: time,not logic, will solve the problem. I fear this is also wishful thinking, livingin denial, and failing to understand the depth of conviction of both sides.

Fourth, we couldhope that reason rather than force will convince one side it is wrong. Thissounds to many people even more idealistic and unrealistic than the first threeoptions; but it has happened before. Many practicesincluding both slavery andprohibition, as well as torture, cannibalism, blood vengeance by families,polygamy, and infanticide have disappeared because humanity became convincedthat these were wrong.

It is my hope that this book will helpto make a little progress in this direction, the direction of peace not throughforce but through enlightenmentthat is, through truth. Any other peace isperilous, for a peace not based on truth is not true peace. Certainly, anypeace based on ignoring truth, scorning truth, indifference to truth, ordisbelief in truth cannot be true peace.

Historical Postscript

The company that today manufactures RU-486,the abortion pill, is Roussel-Uclaf, which is a subsidiary of Hoechst, andHoechst is a spinoff of I. G. Farben, the company that manufactured Zyklon-B,the gas the Nazis used to murder the Jews in Auschwitz. Some might call this factironic. I would call it eerie.

I also find it eerie that Planned Parenthood,the worlds largest abortion provider and the worlds most powerfulpro-abortion propaganda machine, has never repudiated its founder MargaretSangers enthusiastic embracing of Nazi eugenics. She had a personal friendshipwith some of the high-ranking Nazi doctors and generals who wrote articles forher in her journal, advocating killing the biologically unfit out ofcompassion. Later, the targeted population was expanded to include theracially and politically unfit. Planned Parenthood has never repudiated anyof her ideas. She was a racist if anyone ever was, and a deliberate liar. Heradmitted strategy was to con Black ministers in America unwittingly to aid hercause of reducing or even eliminating this inferior race step by step, bypersuading Blacks to limit their population by contraception, sterilization,and abortion. Her principle was: more babies from the fit, less from theunfit. Planned Parenthood still targets Blacks and Hispanicsdisproportionately. Today, the American Library Association, which claims to beagainst censorship and will not censor even child pornography, does censor onebook: a scholarly, factual, documented expose of Margaret Sanger and PlannedParenthood, Grand Illusion, by George Grant. This is the one book in print on the subject of the history ofPlanned Parenthood that tells the whole truth, and the one book that you willnot find in American public libraries.

Sometimes I think we are no longer living ina free country with a free press. Why should we expect to? How naive can we be?Our establishment is pro-killing; why should we be surprised to find itpro-censorship? Why should we expect those who are anti-life to be pro-truth?They have something terrible to hide; why are we surprised that they hide it?Why would people without consciences that condemn murder have consciences thatcondemn lying, especially lying about their murders? Why would they not love amorality whose only sin is judgmentalism?

I hope this darkthought of mine is wrong. But it is logical. Once you admit the principle thatsome people grant the right to life to others, it follows that they can removeit from others as they will; and if the right to life from some, why not theright to truth from others?

One of Americas most famous thinkers,Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, shared much of Planned Parenthoods philosophy.Here is what he wrote in 1927, in a Supreme Court decision justifying the Stateof Virginias compulsory sterilization law:

We haveseen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens fortheir lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who alreadysap the strength of the state for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to besuch by those concerned, in order to prevent our being swamped withincompetence. It is better for all the world if instead of waiting to executedegenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility,society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind.The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to covercutting of the Fallopian tubes. (Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, U.S. SupremeCourt, 1927 [274 US 200])

This is exactly the reasoning of the landmarkbook by German doctors, LifeUnworthy of Life, that was the beginning of Nazieugenics. The argument was from compassion on those deemed unfit, thoselives unworthy of life. That is why, in TheThanatos Syndrome, Walker Percy says that compassionled to the death camps. In fact, in MeinKampf Hitler mentioned American eugenicsprograms as a model for what he wanted in Germany (see New Oxford Review, January 2001).