ABSTRACT
The history of the past 16 years has borne out pro-life predictions that abortion would be the precursor of an even wider assault on helpless people. The unborn initially were the victim of choice because they were, in 1973, outside our customary line of moral vision. But as a dress rehearsal for a pattern of discretionary killing what was most significant about abortion was its explicit rejection of the Declaration of Independence's principle holding that our right to life is "inalienable." Abortion taught us that the lives of some are alienable and raised the question, why not the lives of others? Contrary to stereotype, the pro-life movement is a classic reform movement, inbued with a fierce belief in the inherent worth and equality of mankind.
PIP: Although the Roe v Wade decision was based on privacy rights supposedly bestowed by the US Constitution, this ruling represented an assault on the most fundamental value of Western countries--namely, that all humans are entitled to legal protection under the law. Pro- and anti-abortion forces embody 2 divergent approaches to the issue of personhood. While abortion opponents have an inclusive approach, viewing all members of the human species as persons, abortion advocates take an exclusionary approach that insists personhood must be earned. A logical extension of the latter approach is to withhold the right to live from those whose potential has not yet developed (the fetus), newborns with limited prospects for development as a result of genetic defects, and those who are no longer functioning (the comatose). Abortion is closely related to infanticide and euthanasia in its assumption that there are categories of people whose lives are not worthy to be lived. Contributing to this depreciation of human life has been an emphasis in US medicine on cost-containment measures. Unless the Supreme Court takes steps to revoke its 1976 ruling on abortion, the anti-life ethic can be expected to extend to practices such as the harvesting of fetal tissue for transplantation, selective abortion in cases of multiple pregnancies, and pharmacological abortion. A potentially powerful challenge to the pro-abortion movement is the recent identification of the so-called post-abortion syndrome, in which abortion exerts deleterious emotional effects as long as 10 years after the procedure. History will soon demonstrate that it is the right-to-life movement, not the pro-abortion movement, that embodies the classic spirit of reform and equality basic to the country's traditions.
