Denver Post Columnist Questions His Own Pro-Choice Views

David Harsanyi is an atheist columnist for the Denver Post. He says he practices "moral relativism regularly", but recently has struggled with the logic of holding to the pro-abortion choice position.

He writes in his column:

After a life of being pro-choice, I began to seriously ponder the question. I oppose the death penalty because there is a slim chance that an innocent person might be executed and I don't believe the state should have the authority to take a citizen's life. So don't I owe an nascent human life at least the same deference? Just in case?

You may not consider a fetus a "human life" in early pregnancy, though it has its own DNA and medical science continues to find ways to keep the fetus viable outside the womb earlier and earlier.

But it's difficult to understand how those who harp about the importance of "science" in public policy can draw an arbitrary timeline in the pregnancy, defining when human life is worth saving and when it can be terminated.

The more I thought about it, the creepier the issue got.

Newsweek, for instance, recently reported that 90 percent of women whose fetuses test positive for Down syndrome choose an abortion. Another survey showed only a small percentage of mothers even used the test. So what happens when 90 percent of parents test their fetuses? Does it mean the end of the disease or are we stepping perilously close to eugenics?

What about future DNA tests that can detect any "defects" in a fetus? What happens when we can use abortion to weed out the blind, mentally ill, the ugly, or any other any "undesirable" human being?

Recently, Sweden's National Board of Health and Welfare ruled that women are permitted to abort their children based on the sex of the fetus. In the United States, a woman can have an abortion for nearly any reason she chooses. In fact, a health exemption for the mother allows abortions to be performed virtually on demand.

If you oppose selective abortions, but not abortion overall, I wonder why? How is terminating the fetus because it's the wrong sex any worse than terminating the fetus for convenience's sake? The fate of the fetus does not change, only the reasoning for its extinction does.

Now, I happen to believe (as the civil libertarian and pro-life activist Nat Hentoff once noted) that the right to life and liberty is the foundation of a moral society. Then again, I also believe a government ban on abortion would only criminalize the procedure and do little to mitigate the amount of abortions.

Obviously, these are a few of the complex and uncomfortable issues to ponder. So maybe this poll tells us that the dynamics of the abortion debate are about to change, that Americans are getting past the politics and into the morality of the issue.

Then again, it's entirely possible that I'm just projecting.

Read the whole thing.

In reference to his second to last paragraph where he says that banning abortion would do "little to mitigate the amount of abortion", this is just blatantly false. Does anyone really believe this? Does anyone really think that having laws against stealing doesn't make someone think twice before they shatter my car window to try and get my stereo? Would you really want to say that laws against stealing to little to mitigate the amount of stealing in our country?

But even if we grant that it is true, do we throw off all legal restraint against domestic abuse because we know that it will certainly occur even though there are laws against it? Of course not. We don't make laws based on how we think people will behave. Our laws should reflect what is right and wrong and should seek to be a deterrent for those whose will leads them to want to do wrong.

(HT: Jill Stanek)