Sense and Sensibility They aren’t synonymous, fol…
admin October 26th, 2006
Sense and Sensibility
They aren’t synonymous, folks!
Mark Shea (to whom I tip my metaphorical hat) posted this the other day, and I’ve been struggling to make sense of it since. I even asked a co-worker and friend who is militantly feminist and pro-choice (I always try to use people’s self-chosen descriptors when possible), and she agreed with me. She ultimately disagreed on whether the policy was acceptable, but she agreed about the logical inconsistency.
The upshot of the article is a discussion of a British hospital’s disposal policies for aborted children. A woman had an abortion there, then was horrified to learn that the baby (she even said “my baby”) had been burnt in the same incinerator that the hospital uses to burn trash and other medical waste. (The hospital says they don’t do them at the same time, and that they used to use a crematorium but it got too expensive.)
Here’s my thing. The rationales I have most commonly heard to try to justify abortion have been things like: it’s not human, it’s not a baby, it’s not alive, it’s a “lump of tissue” (akin to a tumor), etc. IF that is true, then disposing of it like a tumor (burning it in the hospital incinerator) should be acceptable. IF (as I would argue) it is not true, if this creature deserves other treatment than to be chucked into a rubbish bin and burnt with the rest of the trash, then that flies in the face of the whole basis for justifying abortion. It is human, it is alive, it is a baby, it is not simply a “lump of tissue”.
I don’t know the woman quoted, I don’t know her circumstances and I don’t know why she had an abortion. It sounds, however, like she’s pretty well traumatized by the whole experience, and prayers are certainly in order.
