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The Tragedy of Abortion
| Article
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20495 |
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Section : |
EDITORIAL
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| Issue
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5 / 1992 |
804 Words |
| Author
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Morton A. Kaplan
Editor and Publisher |
The symposium in the Currents in Modern Thought section this month is perhaps one of the best that has been done on the difficult subject of abortion. I have written on this subject in past issues of the magazine, and our readers are no doubt aware that I am not an absolutist on the issue. Indeed, no sensible person could be.
We live in a world in which tragedy and evil are inescapable, and we must work our way through tragic and evil situations with the least damage to--and sometimes with improvement in--character and social values. Even the war against Hitler was a great evil, although clearly it was a greatly justifiable evil. Great good resulted, in that it cast such severe obloquy on religious or racial persecution that a persistent international consensus has endured since the war.
The system of law and morals we attempt to impose must be one that people can understand and live with. Otherwise, we run the risk that these codes will be as little accepted and observed as were the Prohibition laws. Even if a complete ban on abortion were morally justified in our present circumstances, it would undermine any effort to control or limit abortion. The history of moral development is one in which we pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. The attempt to raise the level of moral behavior--or to fight retrogression--is what separates the moral person from those who merely accept current practice.
We live in a society in which institutions lack effectiveness in assisting the care and development of children. We live in a world in which many women become pregnant but will not take care of or love their children. We live in a world in which rape and incest occur. We live in a world in which some families are burdened beyond their ability to cope.
Both abortion and bringing children into unloving homes are evils. How do we explain the fact that a large majority of Americans believe abortion is a form of murder and an equally large majority inconsistently want to leave the decision to the mother? Surely moral confusion reigns supreme, and I believe it has been exacerbated by the mindless, and constitutionally inappropriate, decision expressed in Roe v. Wade.
The fetus is a potential person, and it is human. To equate it with a wart, to be removed entirely at the instance of the mother--when we wouldn't permit her to have an eye removed for cosmetic reasons--is a manifestation of inanity. The fetus is human. It has interests and rights that
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