In Memoriam

 

From Michael Paulsen’s incredible essay on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, posted today on RealClearPolitics, a piece that manages to be both scrupulously objective and emotionally devastating:

After nearly four decades, Roe’s human death toll stands at nearly sixty million human lives, a total exceeding the Nazi Holocaust, Stalin’s purges, Pol Pot’s killing fields, and the Rwandan genocide combined. Over the past forty years, one-sixth of the American population has been killed by abortion. One in four African-Americans is killed before birth. Abortion is the leading cause of (unnatural) death in America.

And later:

Roe is a radical decision and a legally indefensible one. But what really makes Roe unbearably wrong is its consequences. The result of Roe and Doe has been the legally authorized killing of nearly sixty million Americans since 1973. Roe v. Wade authorized unrestricted private violence against human life on an almost unimaginable scale, and did so, falsely, in the name of the Constitution.

It is hard to escape this conclusion, but not impossible—and many certainly try. I will not here belabor the question of whether the intentional killing of innocent, dependent, vulnerable human children is a grave moral wrong. My concluding point concerns the lengths to which we will go to deny the reality of this holocaust, because it is almost unbearable to contemplate and still go on living life as if nothing is terribly wrong. The cognitive dissonance is simply too great. And so we have become, in effect, a nation of holocaust deniers.

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  1. Profile Photo Inactive
    @NobodysPerfect

    You do not characterize accurately. You are a provocateur.

    Excuse me, but you put up a post characterizing people who use contraception – and I imagine that would include most of the people on this site – as “immoral”.

    That’s about as provocative as one can imagine. If you don’t want pushback, don’t put up provocative posts.

    • #91
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    @

    For a look at the great irony buried herein, read “Roe effect”. In short, the babies killed by abortion would most likely have grown up to be liberals. The ramifications are interesting to contemplate.

    • #92
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    @TroySenik

    Respectfully, NP, that doesn’t hold up here. Comparing a political opponent you despise to Hitler strictly as an indication of the intensity of your dislike would be an example of Godwin’s law — and a failure to recognize the grave seriousness of the evil that existed in Nazi Germany. Referring to the mass extermination of innocents as a “holocaust” — that’s just respect for the word’s meaning … and gravity.

    Nobody’s Perfect: This may be the first example of Godwin’s Law I’ve seen on Ricochet. · 1 minute ago

    • #93
  4. Profile Photo Inactive
    @NobodysPerfect

    Respectfully, NP, that doesn’t hold up here. Comparing a political opponent you despise to Hitler strictly as an indication of the intensity of your dislike would be an example of Godwin’s law — and a failure to recognize the grave seriousness of the evil that existed in Nazi Germany. Referring to the mass extermination of innocents as a “holocaust” — that’s just respect for the word’s meaning … and gravity.

    Michael Paulsen’s implicit conflation of millions of American citizens who made a difficult, lawful choice with the Nazi perpetrators of the Holocaust is repulsive.

    And then he goes on, as Leftist environmentalists do when faced by resistance to their global warming fanaticism, to brand anyone who disagrees with his views as “deniers”, whose opinions are, ipso facto, illegitimate.

    Look, we can disagree about abortion without this sort of hateful rhetoric.

    • #94
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    @NoesisNoeseos

    I am exhausted from the previous thread on abortion. Disagreements with other commentators will not be resolved. I’ll just say that I “like” the latter paragraphs of Nathaniel Wright’s comment immensely; that I hope that first the legal climate and then popular moral opinion will return to those which prevailed over the many decades before 1973.

    • #95
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    @HVTs
    NormD: Do any of you consider for a millisecond what kind of laws could be passed if there really is a “Constitutional duty to protect innocent life”

    You appear to be confusing ‘protection of life’ with ‘protection of lifestyle’ or ‘protection of health.’ The first is actually in our founding documents, the others are not.

    The Founders understood “Life” to be the opposite of “Death.” I know, crazy isn’t it? There was actually a time when words had plain meaning and every concept wasn’t subject to Post-Modernist muddle.

    Sure, Liberals manipulate words, twist meanings and deny context to obtain political advantage. Ask a Liberal which clause in the Constitution contains “Separation of Church and State” and the response is typically quite amusing. Even Liberal lawyers don’t often know that it’s not to be found in any clause.

    So, Liberals are quite successful at riding the horse named “Obfuscation,” and left the barn upon its bare back long ago. Trying to frighten us off now with “Gracious me, what those Liberals might do to abuse your good intentions!” is quite unnecessary. We’d only be surprised if they did not.

    • #96
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    @JosephStanko
    NormD: BTW, as far as I know, except in special situations, murder is a state crime. · 8 hours ago

    Yes, and abortion was a matter of state law, too, until Roe federalized it. So we ought to overturn Roe and return jurisdiction back to the states. On that much, at least, all types of conservatives ought to be able to agree.

    • #97
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    @HVTs
    Nathaniel Wright:

    They don’t see the unborn as living. They aren’t thinking in a teleological manner. There is no-thing there at all. How can you convince someone that the killing of a non-thing is the same as systematic murder of sentient beings? You cannot.

    The key is to overcome the apathy and non-empathy. To create a culture of Life!

    Sure we can! It’s quite easy. Color pictures of babies in the womb, marking the stages of development. Show those for 10 minutes before every movie in every movie theater and the voters would be demanding abortion restrictions and eventual repeal in 35 states inside of a year. That would be a good start!

    • #98
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    @katievs

    @Michael, the natural offspring of a reproductive act between two persons is a person. If you want to posit another possibility—viz, that it might be something other than a person—the burden is on you to explain how that could possibly be the case.

    • #99
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    @katievs
    Mama Toad: Nobody’s Kenneth, as a sinner who herself is Not Perfect, I don’t speak of immoral people. When I say immoral, I quite clearly refer to acts, not people. This is perhaps too subtle a distinction, since you seem repeatedly unable to grasp it? ·

    I see. All is clear to me now.

    • #100
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