South Dakota Abortion Law: A Modest Proposal?
By: Bill Zimmermann
South Dakota’s abortion ruling and positive reactions to it from members on the right such as John McCain pose many questions regarding moral philosophy, logic and law..
Since many states are likely to follow suit, and leaders like McCain seem for it, the subject becomes prevelant and curious.
Couple things come to light:
1. Women who are victims of rape or incest, or whose life is in danger from giving birth, are free to have an abortion.
2. Only the doctors are cuplable of felony if they perform abortions, not the customer-patients.
The first article is everso debatable on moral philosophy and grounds of modern day ethics. The second article, however, seems to unfairly limit the penalty of conspiratorial murder beyond any other legal shield on the books. Why should the service provider be culpable and not the service requester? As in drug laws, the pusher is more culpable than the junkie, and so it comes to mass provision rather than singular procurement that the weight of law falls upon.
But as to the first article– it’s a scary set of logic. If embryonic life is human, regardless of its emotional state of derivement, why should the human derived from rape or incest be penalized with death? What did they do? And why is the mother carrier’s emotional state superior to the embryo’s very survival?
I don’t know the answers to these questions, but I know what I feel. I’d like to penetrate the seemingly unfound logic that would allow justice for rape and incest victims to end their preganancy. It just isn’t there, not on the moral philosophical logic plane. That’s the dilemma– I want the law to work both ways, even if illogical to moral philosophy. McCain seems to stomach it, but does our moral fibre have an innate right?
Do times really change moral law?
Remember that old 40’s movie/book– think it was Shoes of the Fisherman? The priest had to talk his sister into losing her life to give birth to a baby if not killed itself would prove fatal to her. The modern day answer then was to crush the baby’s head and save the mother. In the end, the woman held her faith at her priest brother’s request and gave birth to a healthy orphan.
That movie/book was a tremendous lithmus test precursor to the debate rage that followed twenty years later, and twenty years more and then some– i.e., the debate has never changed.
With upcoming elections, and a conservative Supreme Court, and increasing legal moves like South Dakota’s, be assured this debate has many a twist yet to come.
Everything old is new again. What did the Cardinal say to the reporter back in the mid-80’s asking if John Paul II was behind the times? “Watch, you may find he is quite ahead of them.”
Bill Zimmermann operates a publish relations firm Publish Ink which is involved in many community outreach programs in Weestern New York and elsewhere, focusing on youth, family and community. His website is http://www.indoorhealthcare.com