Thank You, Camille

Finally one of them has admitted it. At last an abortion supporter acknowledges reality: “’I have always frankly admitted that abortion is murder, the extermination of the powerless by the powerful.’” http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/sep/08091204.html Wow! Camille Paglia’s confession in a recent Salon.com column must have set the ears of our nation’s pro-abortion lobby ringing.

Imagine one of the most-respected and most-popular liberal feminist academics admitting, in the words of lifesitenews.com author Tim Waggoner, “that in order to rationalize and accept abortion, one would have to not only accept, but logically condone other atrocities against life - that is, one would have to accept murder for the sake of protecting a particular, more important ‘right’, as she does.” Unbelievable. Excuse me if I sound giddy, but the image of abortion supporters trying to weasel their way around Paglia’s comments is amusing.

Paglia admits that in her view a woman’s right to choose supersedes a baby’s right to life. “’As an atheist and libertarian, I believe that government must stay completely out of the sphere of personal choice. Every individual has an absolute right to control his or her body.’" Unlike most abortion supporters who throw red herrings by questioning when life begins in the womb, Paglia unflinchingly faces the ethical ramifications of her belief: “’Liberals for the most part have shrunk from facing the ethical consequences of their embrace of abortion, which results in the annihilation of concrete individuals and not just clumps of insensate tissue.’”

In a final slap at her fellow-abortion supporters, Paglia criticized those who support abortion but reject the death-penalty: “’I have never understood the standard Democratic combo of support for abortion and yet opposition to the death penalty. Surely it is the guilty rather than the innocent who deserve execution?’”

As aptly pointed out by Waggoner, Paglia’s testimony exposes the utilitarianism that is increasingly infecting our culture. He also points out two other examples of it:

• The medical community recently acknowledged that “brain death” may not be an accurate way to determine if a person has died. In response, instead of questioning the concept of “vital organ donation”, Waggoner says a recent New England Journal of Medicine article argued that “the piece instead suggest[ed] that the criteria for dead donors should be eradicated altogether - thus sanctioning killing a potential organ donor in order to harvest his/her organs.”

• A report published in early 2008 in the highly-acclaimed bioethics journal The Hastings Center Report addressed infanticide. According to Waggoner “the authors advocate infanticide for those new born babies who may face a life of what medical personnel deem to be ‘unbearable’ suffering.” He adds that “under what is known as the Groningen Protocol, infanticide is already taking place on a regular basis in the Netherlands with government support.”

Individuals who recognize the evil of utilitarianism must stay alert because our society is clearly gravitating toward using the philosophical method as the barometer for gauging a decision’s morality.

Donald Tremblay