Victimless Crimes
A familiar argument, abortion as a class issue: if abortion is
criminalized, only the poor will be affected, as the rich will be able to
always get an abortion. In her article "Abortion: The Left has Betrayed the
Sanctity of Life," which appeared in the September 1980 issue of The
Progressive, writer Mary Meehan asks why this argument can't be turned
upside-down to read: why can't we give rich unborn children the same kind of
legal protection we give to poor unborn children?
Criminalization may or may not succeed--the so-called "War on Drugs" is
failing miserably. On the other hand, one million cars are stolen every
year--does this mean we should legalize auto theft? First we have to
determine whether or not the activity is "victimless," before debating
criminalization.
Respected pro-life columnist Nat Hentoff is a self-described "liberal Jewish
atheist." Not your stereotypical pro-lifer! The pro-life movement
desperately needs religious diversity, and someone like Hentoff gives it
credibility in secular circles.
Eighteen years ago, in an article appearing in the Atlantic Monthly, George
McKenna wrote: "Within the liberal left, from which the Democrats draw their
intellectual sustenance, there is increasing dissatisfaction with the
absolutist dogma of 'abortion rights.' Nat Hentoff, a columnist in the
left-liberal Village Voice, wonders why those who dwell on 'rights' refuse
to consider the possibility that unborn human beings may also have rights."
Another liberal Jewish atheist, Peter Singer, concedes this point. Peter
Singer, author of Animal Liberation, is not liked even by pro-life liberals,
including some on the Democrats-For-Life e-list, because he advocates not
just abortion, but infanticide and euthanasia as well. Bill Samuel, who was
raised a Quaker and a lifelong vegetarian and president of Consistent Life
(a liberal pro-life group), once compared Peter Singer to Hitler. (There is
a sad irony here, as Peter Singer lost three of his four grandparents in the
Nazis' concentration camps.)
Pro-life feminist Mary Krane Derr (1963 - 2012), who credited me with having
caused her to become a vegetarian, called Peter Singer's Should the Baby
Live? "intellectualized racism", because he advocates euthanizing
handicapped infants.
I'll always respect Peter Singer as the author of Animal Liberation (i.e.,
for stating in secular philosophical and to some extent political language
what we ethical vegetarians have always known to be true), but disagree
vehemently with him on the issues of abortion, infanticide and euthanasia.
Anyway, in his article, "Taking Life: the Embryo and the Fetus", Singer
quotes a report of a British government committee inquiring into laws about
homosexuality and prostitution, which concludes: "There must remain a realm
of private morality and immorality that is, in brief and crude terms, not
the law's business." ("Not the Law's Business?"--the Wolfenden Committee--
issued the Report of the Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution,
Command Paper 247, London, Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1957, p. 24)
Singer goes on to quote John Stuart Mill (in his essay "On Liberty") as
having said: "...the only purpose for which power can be rightfully
exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to
prevent harm to others..."
Singer writes that "Mill's view is often and properly quoted in support of
the repeal of laws that create 'victimless crimes'--like the laws
prohibiting homosexual relations between consenting adults, the use of
marijuana and other drugs, prostitution, gambling and so on. Abortion is
often included in this list...
"The fallacy involved in numbering abortion among the victimless crimes
should be obvious," concedes Singer. "The dispute about abortion is,
largely, a dispute about whether or not abortion does have a 'victim.' " So
even Peter Singer, who can hardly be called a right-to-lifer, concedes that
the abortion debate centers on whether or not abortion is "victimless." Nat
Hentoff's observation is correct!
I think you'd be impressed with many who make up the liberal wing of the
pro-life movement. Again, not all of us are rabid right-wingers.
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