All black people -including Barak Obama- should understand

Black people were systematically enslaved and oppressed in the United States for hundreds of years. Their humanity was denied, their human rights trampled.

You'd think that with such a history, black people would be quick to denounce and combat other forms of oppression that, like slavery, deny both the humanity and basic rights of the vulnerable.

Why do so many white people tolerate legalized elective abortion? Despite slavery's history perhaps whites are still slow to recognize oppression, at least when the oppression is praised by some as a sacred right and enshrined by unjust law... just as slavery was enshrined and defended as a right.

But why do so many black people tolerate and even defend legalized elective abortion? Why don't they recognize it for what it is, and denounce it and all its defenders, both black and white?

That to me is a great mystery.


“We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people.” -Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“A nation that kills its children is a nation without hope.” -Pope John Paul II

The ethics of accidential vs. deliberate abortion

To:
R. Alta Charo
Warren P. Knowles Professor of Law and Bioethics,
University of Wisconsin Law School

Dear Professor Charo,

Last week I invited You to clarify Your comments quoted in the recent USA Today article, Differences surface in McCain-Obama Christian forum

I didn’t receive a response from You, but perhaps my question was not clear enough to merit a response. I'll try to be clearer by cutting to the ethical crux of the matter:

Is it indeed Your position that deliberate, procured abortion is ethically equivalent to accidental, spontaneous abortion?

Because of Your expertise in the areas of bioethics and reproductive rights law, I'm very interested to learn Your perspective on this important question.

Thank You for Your consideration.

Sincerely,
John Robin.

Dr. Charo, do You believe a procured abortion is equivalent ethically to an accidental miscarriage?

Dear Professor Charo,

I am disappointed that Your response (of 18 August) was nothing more meaningful than a link to an article about Luc Bovens' Journal of Medical Ethics paper on the "rhythm method". The medical basis for his assertions is widely controverted, but that's beside the point. (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/13/health/13rhyt.html)

Any reasonable person can distinguish clear moral differences between these scenarios:

1) a couple intends to avoid conception, has sexual intercourse at a time they have scientifically but erroneously determined to be infertile. They conceive, but the child dies through unintentional miscarriage;

2) a couple deliberately conceives multiple children, and then deliberately targets some for implantation and others for extermination;

3) a scientist deliberately conceives multiple children, then subjects them to mutilating experiments, finally destroying them.

Your quotation in the USA Today article seems to imply that pro-lifers, in order to be "consistent", must oppose on ethical grounds anything that results in the death of human embryos, regardless of whether the deaths are unintended or deliberate. Is this really what You are implying? Would You please clarify?

Best regards,
John Robin.

Natural family planning NOT ethically equivalent to embryonic stem cell research

Re: Differences surface in McCain-Obama Christian forum

To: R. Alta Charo, professor of law and ethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison

Dear Professor Charo,

USA Today quoted You, "If (McCain) believes in human rights at the moment of conception, then he ought to be against embryonic stem cell research, IVF (in vitro fertilization) and even the so-called rhythm method."

If this quote is accurate, then it’s only two-thirds right. Certainly, the inalienable rights of a newly conceived human being ought to be protected, and embryonic stem cell research and IVF result in terrible violations of these rights.

However, the “rhythm method” and other forms of natural family planning involving periodic abstinence (such as the highly effective “Creighton Model”) involve acts of a much different sort, acts that do not result in injury or death to any human being. Couples who practice periodic abstinence exercise their reproductive powers in a responsible and loving way, without trying to manipulate, circumvent, or destroy either the nature of the sexual act or its natural consequences, namely conception and childbirth.

By contrast, IVF and embryonic stem cell research subject newly conceived human beings to manipulation and death by experimentation and selective extermination. Even if these activities are carried out for good motives, such as to further medical research or bring children to an infertile couple, they are ethically reprehensible because they involve the exploitation and killing of one class of human beings in order to obtain some benefit for another class of human beings.

It is no coincidence that couples who practice periodic abstinence as a means of regulating conception and childbirth tend to be strongly “pro-life”, believing that from the moment of conception, human beings have inalienable rights which must be protected by any just society. Those who hold such a position stand ethically on high ground.