LA Times on Abortion

Gerry Willis , in the Los Angeles Times,  attempts a tortured defense of the practice of abortion:

But is abortion murder? Most people think not. Evangelicals may argue that most people in Germany thought it was all right to kill Jews. But the parallel is not valid. Killing Jews was killing persons. It is not demonstrable that killing fetuses is killing persons. Not even evangelicals act as if it were. If so, a woman seeking an abortion would be the most culpable person. She is killing her own child. But the evangelical community does not call for her execution

Willis makes a straw dog arguement.  Of course abortion is not murder,  the illegal killing of a human being by another.   Abortion is legal.  Hence it can not be murder.

The issue is not a legal one but rather a moral one, and sadly the language lacks a word for immoral but legal killing of a human being.

Willis argues by assertion that somehow the unborn is not a person.    Yet, a person is the living body of a human being.   A fetus has a body, is living and is indeed human.   A fetus is a human being and he can be nothing else.  

While Willis argues that the unborn is somehow not a person, Willis makes no attempt to argue that the unborn is anything other than a person.   So Willis is saying that as he is not totally sure the unborn is a real person, it is therefore permissable to kill him.  When in doubt kill?

Hat tip:  Memeorandum.

Addendum: (Bit)

First, if we’re going to resort to the legal version of phrases, the word you’re looking for, David is actually TWO words: “Justifiable Homocide.”  Of course, the way that phrase is worded, of itself puts the argument in serious question… a state of affairs which Willis cannot deal with, and so he avoids it oughtright. There are implications, there, I think, we could discuss for days.

But perhaps of greater import, isn’t ‘not quite a human being’ the argument that was used in the Dred Scott case?

 And it seems to me Dred Scott is particularly ironic as a basis for discussion, since it exposes the wages of over-dependence on law to decide moral issues… a topic we’ve written about in this spaces several times over the years.