NOTICE: The following
article is written by the author itself and not by me, I am not trying to
violate their copyright. I will give some information on them.
PAGE
TITLE:
The New York Times
ARTICLE
TITLE:
Why I Am Pro-Life
DATE: October 27, 2012
AUTHOR: Thomas Friedman
AUTHOR
INFORMATION: Thomas Lauren Friedman (born July 20, 1953) is an American
journalist, columnist and author. He writes a twice-weekly column for The
New York Times. He has written extensively on foreign affairs including
global trade, the Middle East, globalization, and environmental issues and has
won the Pulitzer Prize three times.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/opinion/sunday/friedman-why-i-am-pro-life.html?_r=0
& http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/opinion/sunday/friedman-why-i-am-pro-life.html?_r=0&pagewanted=print
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Thomas Friedman
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HARD-LINE
conservatives have gone to new extremes lately in opposing abortion. Last week,
Richard Mourdock, the Tea Party-backed Republican Senate candidate in Indiana,
declared during a debate that he was against abortion even in the event of rape
because after much thought he “came to realize that life is that gift from God.
And even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is
something that God intended to happen.” That came on the heels of the Tea
Party-backed Republican Representative Joe Walsh of Illinois saying after a
recent debate that he opposed abortion even in cases where the life of the
mother is in danger, because “with modern technology and science, you can’t
find one instance” in which a woman would not survive without an abortion.
“Health of the mother has become a tool for abortions anytime, for any reason,”
Walsh said. That came in the wake of the Senate hopeful in Missouri,
Representative Todd Akin, remarking that pregnancy as a result of “legitimate
rape” is rare because “the female body has ways to try and shut that whole
thing down.”
These
were not slips of the tongue. These are the authentic voices of an
ever-more-assertive far-right Republican base that is intent on using
uncompromising positions on abortion to not only unseat more centrist
Republicans — Mourdock defeated the moderate Republican Senator Richard Lugar
of Indiana in the primary — but to overturn the mainstream consensus in America
on this issue. That consensus says that those who choose to oppose abortion in
their own lives for reasons of faith or philosophy should be respected, but
those women who want to make a different personal choice over what happens with
their own bodies should be respected, and have the legal protection to do so,
as well.
But
judging from the unscientific — borderline crazy — statements opposing abortion
that we’re hearing lately, there is reason to believe that this delicate
balance could be threatened if Mitt Romney and Representative Paul Ryan, and
their even more extreme allies, get elected. So to those who want to protect a
woman’s right to control what happens with her own body, let me offer just one
piece of advice: to name something is to own it. If you can name an issue, you
can own the issue. And we must stop letting Republicans name themselves
“pro-life” and Democrats as “pro-choice.” It is a huge distortion.
In
my world, you don’t get to call yourself “pro-life” and be against common-sense
gun control — like banning public access to the kind of semiautomatic assault
rifle, designed for warfare, that was used recently in a Colorado theater. You
don’t get to call yourself “pro-life” and want to shut down the Environmental
Protection Agency, which ensures clean air and clean water, prevents childhood
asthma, preserves biodiversity and combats climate change that could disrupt
every life on the planet. You don’t get to call yourself “pro-life” and oppose
programs like Head Start that provide basic education, health and nutrition for
the most disadvantaged children. You can
call yourself a “pro-conception-to-birth, indifferent-to-life conservative.” I
will never refer to someone who pickets Planned Parenthood but lobbies against
common-sense gun laws as “pro-life.”
“Pro-life”
can mean only one thing: “respect for the sanctity of life.” And there is no
way that respect for the sanctity of life can mean we are obligated to protect
every fertilized egg in a woman’s body, no matter how that egg got fertilized,
but we are not obligated to protect every living person from being shot with a
concealed automatic weapon. I have no respect for someone who relies on voodoo
science to declare that a woman’s body can distinguish a “legitimate” rape, but
then declares — when 99 percent of all climate scientists conclude that climate
change poses a danger to the sanctity of all life on the planet — that global
warming is just a hoax.
The
term “pro-life” should be a shorthand for respect for the sanctity of life. But
I will not let that label apply to people for whom sanctity for life begins at
conception and ends at birth. What about the rest of life? Respect for the
sanctity of life, if you believe that it begins at conception, cannot end at
birth. That radical narrowing of our concern for the sanctity of life is
leading to terrible distortions in our society.
Respect
for life has to include respect for how that life is lived, enhanced and
protected — not only at the moment of conception but afterward, in the course
of that life. That’s why, for me, the most “pro-life” politician in America is
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. While he supports a woman’s right to
choose, he has also used his position to promote a whole set of policies that
enhance everyone’s quality of life — from his ban on smoking in bars and city
parks to reduce cancer, to his ban on the sale in New York City of giant sugary
drinks to combat obesity and diabetes, to his requirement for posting calorie
counts on menus in chain restaurants, to his push to reinstate the expired
federal ban on assault weapons and other forms of common-sense gun control, to
his support for early childhood education, to his support for mitigating
disruptive climate change.
Now
that is what I call “pro-life.”
This
article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction:
October 28, 2012
A
phrase in this version of the article has been changed to “every fertilized egg
in a woman’s body” from “in a woman’s ovary.”
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