What I wrote the Seattle Times today regarding their unfortunate editorial view:
"Editor, the Times:
Your April 25th opinion perpetuates two common fallacies regarding the abortion debate. First, your third paragraph ("this 5-4 decision...push legislatures to tighten...") seems to be warning us that legislatures, rather than courts, might well shape abortion policy down the road. Golly, we can't have that! Of course, that is exactly what citizens should want. We want the voice of the people, not the voice of an oligarchy, making our laws. The only exception to this occurs when legislation takes away the rights of the people--(slaves were deprived of life in order to extend the liberties of slave-owners); ironically, our current abortion laws take away the life of the defenseless so that we might extend the liberty of the mother. Seems like a weird trade to me.
Second, your next-to-last paragraph sets up a straw man to win nods from the cheap seats: that "doctors know better than courts". Just like courts know better than the electorate--which, uh, includes doctors?? So which is it today? In fact, law and court have made doctor moral-know-how on the issue irrelevant. It is silly and elitist to think that doctors (or courts) "know better" than the rest of us on the strictly moral (not medical) question that always undergirds this conflict."
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1 comment:
Scott - thanks for a common sense response to a phoney-baloney editorial. It encourages me to speak up when I see similarly misguided thinking.
Dave VanderYacht
City Sector
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