{"id":4350,"date":"2006-11-28T10:31:29","date_gmt":"2006-11-28T10:31:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/11\/compare-and-contrast-1.html"},"modified":"2006-11-28T10:31:29","modified_gmt":"2006-11-28T10:31:29","slug":"compare-and-contrast-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/11\/compare-and-contrast-1.html","title":{"rendered":"Compare and contrast"},"content":{"rendered":"

At First Things,<\/em> Wesley Smith compares attitudes: Simon Barnes’ towards his Downs Syndrome son (blogged here last week) and Peter Singer’s toward..a lot of people.<\/a><\/p>\n

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What a stark difference between the attitudes of these two men toward the weakest and most vulnerable among us, a difference that can be described literally as the distinction between loving and killing. And indeed, for those familiar with Singer\u2019s writing, it is striking how often he writes of satisfying personal desires and how rarely he writes of sacrifice and love. Which, when you think about it, provides vivid clarity about the stakes we face in the ongoing contest for societal dominance between the sanctity\/equality of life ethic and Singer\u2019s proposed \u201cquality of life\u201d ethic: The former opens the door to the potential for unconditional love, while the latter presumes the power to coolly dismiss some of us from life based on defective workmanship. The choice we make about these contrasting paths will determine whether we remain a moral society committed to the pursuit of universal human rights.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Related, Robert Araujo at Mirror of Justice last week on the arguments before the Supremes on the Partial-Birth Abortion ban.<\/a><\/p>\n

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I was particularly struck by Justice Steven\u2019s remark about whether the \u201cother entity\u201d is identified as a child or as a fetus might depend on whether it is more than half-in or half-out of the woman just prior to the moment of \u201ccranial evacuation.\u201d It was also sobering to hear Justice Ginsburg note that any \u201cmedical procedures\u201d take place inside of the woman\u2019s (mother\u2019s) womb are permissible since they cannot be considered infanticide. These particular discussions introduced two other phrases that captured my attention: the \u201cspatial line\u201d and the \u201canatomical landmark\u201d. In other words, the geographic location (something which I have previously addressed in earlier discussions about abortion and the law) may<\/em> have a bearing on the legality or illegality of the abortion procedure and the \u201crights\u201d under review by a court. However, I find that this preoccupation with geography dismisses the reality that this and all abortion cases ultimately deal with the lives of two human beings rather than one. The problems that geography poses for Constitutional law has been previously demonstrated in cases like Dred Scott v. Sanford<\/em>. Moreover, I find that the legal fictions built upon these troublesome euphemisms mask the awkward reality that one human being, in the minds of some lawyers, can be sacrificed so that the other human being, the woman, may have a better chance at survival in some hypothetical situation. This point becomes all the more poignant when one realizes that what challenges the survival of the second may itself be a fiction\u2014but a fiction which nonetheless permits the sacrifice of the first human being in any case.<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At First Things, Wesley Smith compares attitudes: Simon Barnes’ towards his Downs Syndrome son (blogged here last week) and Peter Singer’s toward..a lot of people. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4350"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4350\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}