"All Life is Not Equal"

In what can only be described as a jaw dropping, you've got to be b.s.'ing me article, Salon.com published a piece by Mary Elizabeth Williams, a staff writer for Salon and the author of "Gimme Shelter: My Three Years Searching for the American Dream" titled "So What If Abortion Ends Life."

In the womb or out, death awaits.

Let's start with Ms Williams' agreement with pro-life advocates that life begins at conception. But don't make the jump from that admission to think she opposes abortion.  No way.  She argues in this deranged article that whether in the womb or out, a baby is not fully a person.  "It seems absurd to suggest that the only thing that makes us fully human is the short ride out of some lady’s vagina," she writes.

The article is  basically a rant about the "wing-nut right" gaining the upper hand in the abortion debate (an assertion that I think most pro-life supporters would find surprising). Williams is willing to concede that life begins at conception but:

Here’s the complicated reality in which we live: All life is not equal. That’s a difficult thing for liberals like me to talk about, lest we wind up looking like death-panel-loving, kill-your-grandma-and-your-precious-baby storm troopers. Yet a fetus can be a human life without having the same rights as the woman in whose body it resides. She’s the boss. Her life and what is right for her circumstances and her health should automatically trump the rights of the non-autonomous entity inside of her. Always.

In so many words, she goes on to acknowledge that, rather than “pro-choice,” “pro-death” is indeed the appropriate moniker for her movement.

Her point is that a human baby - not one in the womb but outside it - is not really human. And if the mother doesn't want the bother of raising the baby - healthy or not - because she has other priorities in her life, then it is perfectly fine to, well, kill the little thing off.  Williams writes:

I would put the life of a mother over the life of a fetus every single time — even if I still need to acknowledge my conviction that the fetus is indeed a life. A life worth sacrificing.

Not only does her article strike me as cruel as well as stupid, it also opens an even deeper concern.  Namely, that slowly, ever so slowly, society will come to accept this distorted view.  First, excuses will be made: "the baby had serious handicaps; better it should die" which will slowly migrate "well, she had too many children to support already; better it should die" then on to "she really wanted a boy; better that the girl die."

Don't think that's possible? It's being done now in Europe and China.