Pam Meister
It’s not unusual for prominent universities to ask presidents to give commencement speeches – not only is it supposed to provide a thrill for the graduates, but gives the university much-desired publicity and, perhaps the biggest goal, inspires university donors to give generously President Obama’s commencement speech at Notre Dame definitely gave the university publicity, but perhaps not as much positive coverage they wanted. As it is a Catholic institution, many pro-life supporters were angry with the university – not so much for having Obama as a speaker, but by bestowing an honorary degree upon the man who, while in the Illinois senate, voted three times against the Born Alive Infant Protection Act. The legislation was intended to protect the lives of infants born alive during an abortion procedure. What was Obama’s reason for his vote? It would be a “burden” to the mother’s “original intent” to treat these infants rather than commit infanticide.
Abortion proponents argue that an infant – or, as they prefer to call it, a fetus – has no status as a human being until life can be sustained outside of the womb. Infants born alive during a botched abortion would fall into that category, but Obama obviously didn’t agree.
During his speech at Notre Dame, Obama echoed the Clinton mantra that abortions should be safe, legal and rare. (As Rush Limbaugh noted, if there is nothing wrong with having an abortion, why is there a need to keep it rare?) Obama also exhorted those on each side of the debate to “open our hearts and our minds to those who may not think like we do or believe what we do” because “that's when we discover at least the possibility of common ground.”
In the instance of abortion, there can be no common ground. You either believe an unborn child, no matter what the fetal stage, is inviolable life or you believe it’s just a mass of cells. You either believe abortion is murder or you don’t. But if we are expected to “open our hearts and minds to those who may not think like we do or believe what we do,” why not take it a step further?
A teen mother has her baby in a public bathroom and throws the infant into a dumpster, allowing it to die. Yes, it’s happened, and those teens responsible are often charged with some degree of homicide. But what if we termed it as a “post natal abortion”? Perhaps the teen just couldn’t get to an abortion clinic. Who are the rest of us to judge her actions? She didn’t want the baby for whatever reason – her body, her choice – and did what was necessary under difficult circumstances.
Or how about honor killings? Throughout the world, Muslim women and girls are subjected to death for besmirching the family “honor” – sometimes for having an extramarital affair, sometimes for marrying a man not approved of by her family or, even worse, for the “crime” of being raped. Those Muslims who believe in the validity of honor killings insist that they are a part of Muslim culture. Who are the rest of us, who do not understand the “nuance” involved, to judge those who believe? In a “multicultural” society, as liberals want us to be, aren’t all cultures and cultural practices equal? When it happens here in America, should we condemn or accept it?
And in Britain, some looking to rein in skyrocketing costs and shrinking resources of the National Health Service believe elderly dementia patients are a drain on resources. Medical “ethics expert” Baroness Warnock believes it’s your “duty” to do away with yourself "if you're demented, you're wasting people's lives – your family's lives – and you're wasting the resources of the National Health Service.”
Many Americans are up in arms about what is being described as torture of high profile terrorist suspects in order to get information about future attacks on innocent American civilians, facts be damned. Perhaps waterboarding those whose “original intent” was to kill untold numbers of Americans is placing a “burden” on them.
Andrew McCarthy reminds us that, legally, torture isn’t torture unless torture is the intent:
To state the matter plainly, the CIA interrogators did not inflict severe pain and had no intention of doing so. The law of the United States holds that, even where an actor does inflict severe pain, there is still no torture unless it was his objective to do so. It doesn’t matter what the average person might think the “logical” result of the action would be; it matters what specifically was in the mind of the alleged torturer – if his motive was not to torture, it is not torture.
If torture was the intent of waterboarding of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, why are Navy SEALs and other special ops personnel subjected to it as a part of their training? Why do leftist anti-war protesters subject themselves to waterboarding if it is, indeed, torture? It’s doubtful that the same protesters would use the torture methods used by al Qaeda, as illustrated in a manual found in an al Qaeda safe house in Iraq and declassified by the military in 2007.
I’d like to ask those who say this “torture” does not fit in with our values: how do you define values? Does the attempt to save American lives from another 9/11 fit in with those values? Or is the comfort of the likes of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed more important?
It’s interesting that we can cry and moan for the discomfort of captured terror suspects who do not fall under Geneva Convention statutes and who would kill great numbers of us if they could, but we can sit idly by and watch a generation of living, breathing babies be wiped out in the name of choice, whatever the reason for that choice may be.
And no modern conversation about life would be complete without bringing up the new CAFE standards for cars that The One has announced in a bid to SAVE THE EARTH™. By forcing car manufacturers to create smaller, more fuel-efficient cars, more Americans will die in auto accidents because smaller vehicles provide less protection. As American Thinker’s Matt Spivey writes, “Only in a liberal’s mind would saving the planet carry more value than saving a life.” Unless, of course, we’re talking about the life of a spotted owl.
You see, there are all sorts of ways to redefine moral standards: culture, convenience, cash, and understanding. But as we redefine, where does the value of life fit within those new standards? I’m waiting for President Obama to say a few words about that. But I suppose I’ll have to wait until next year, when he might be up for another honorary college degree.
Pam Meister is the editor of FamilySecurityMatters.org.
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