The World According to Oatney

The flaw in the logic of "choice"

Every day I find examples of the flawed logic of the Left, but a classic example of the flawed logic could be found in Tuesday's News-Sentinel. Ina Hughes wrote an opinion piece in which she basically accused pro-life Christians of hypocrisy. We have no cause, says Hughes, to protest the evils of aborticide because we will not "take crack babies into [our] home," and all of us will not adopt a dozen children. According to Ms. Hughes' logic, if a child is really unwanted and is going to have a miserable life, perhaps it really would be better to kill that child in abortion than for the child to be brought into the world and live miserably.

The flaw in this kind of thinking is the notion that the right to exist is predetermined by the viability of a life the world deems as happy, or normal, or whatever else you might want to call it. The right to human existence is not predicated upon the right to joy, or wealth, or even a roof over your head. A person's right to live should not be determined by their economic status, or their disability, or lack thereof.

I can honestly say that I have not had an easy life. If anyone could complain about their life, and about the things they've had to go through in their life, or even about the drudgery of daily existence, I could certainly be the one to do the complaining. I've had it hard from the beginning. The day I was born, the doctors told my mother I wouldn't live through the night. When I was three years old, they said I would never walk. Well I don't walk with ease, but I can walk. People wondered about my marketability, and how I would get along in life. I struggled and scratched and found every loophole and string to pull that I could so that I could get a college education. Even my job isn't easy from day to day. Oh well, it's a job. There are a whole lot of people that have it a lot worse than I do. At the worst times of my life, when it looked like I had no hope, I would always remind myself of that reality. When bad things happen to me today, I still remind myself of that fact. I could easily complain that my life hasn't been worth the trouble. A lot of the kinds of people mentioned in Ms. Hughes' article could say the same thing about their life, were they to live to tell about it.

Who are we to deny those people the right to try and turn their life around? Who are we to assume that their life will amount to nothing? We human beings do not have that power. That power resides in God alone. Ultimately, abortion is another of mankind's attempts to play God. We assume it would be better for some to die in order that there be no misery in the world, rather than misery exist in the world and us be willing to take that risk to guarantee everyone the right to live free. If we live in a culture where we must kill the most innocent people among us in order to guarantee the good of the larger whole, is that a culture in which true happiness is even possible?

posted by Deacon David Oatney @ 10:01 PM