I gave up reading Richard Cohen a long time ago, but my friends at the American Spectator blog drew my attention to his latest effort. If the headline didn't give it away, Cohen (though still pro-choice) admits he's no fan of Roe:
I no longer see abortion as directly related to sexual freedom or feminism, and I no longer see it strictly as a matter of personal privacy, either. It entails questions about life -- maybe more so at the end of the process than at the beginning, but life nonetheless.
This is not a fashionable view in some circles, but it is one that usually gets grudging acceptance when I mention it. I know of no one who has flipped on the abortion issue, but I do know of plenty of people who no longer think of it as a minor procedure that only prudes and right-wingers oppose. The antiabortion movement has made headway.
There is such a thing as cognitive dissonance. It is not possible to keep going as a culture that celebrates the ultrasound and the abortion license at the same time. Cohen is one more indicator of that fact.
9 comments:
Great line Hunter...cognitive dissonance indeed.
I'm a bit curious as to how Cohen got to this point. I could understand it if he said that Roe was just bad law, but he hints at something more...yet remains pro-choice.
What an interesting position to be in...he's pro-choice and apparently anti-drug, anti-prostitution...how do you get there?
Naomi Wolfe (an Al Gore adviser) had her own revelation years ago. She said feminists had to admit abortion = death or else risk losing their souls over dishonesty. At the same time, she remained strongly pro-choice. Basically, it was be pro-choice, but admit that it's a terrible thing. I think that was the precursor to "safe, legal, and rare." Unfortunately, as we saw, "rare" included protecting partial birth abortion at all costs.
Interesting. Did Ms Wolfe ever address infanticide? I'm assuming she was against it, but on what grounds?
(Or maybe I'm missing something in the definition of abortion = death.)
She agreed it was basically a killing, but still insisted that if it is me vs. my fetus/child, then I still have the choice for me (my hopes, my vision of my life). Sounds like justified homicide to me, but she wouldn't put it so starkly.
Call me a dreamer, but I would like to believe that one day Cohen woke up and remembered that he was the descendant of Aaron.
"Then Aaron took [the incense] as Moses had instructed and he ran into the midst of the congregation, where the plague had begun among the citizenry; he placed the incense and atoned for the nation. And he stood between the dead and the living, then the plague was stopped." (Numbers 17:12-13)
According to tradition, Aaron actually faced down the Angel of Death and forced him to back down. That is what is being hinted at in the oblique phrase: "And he stood between the dead and the living..."
It's about time that people named Cohen realized that they were entrusted with a sacred calling to preserve life.
I suppose that anything is possible, Jay, but I doubt that Cohen is motivated by a religio-ethnic revelation. We would see evidence of that elsewhere in his life and writings, and we haven't.
The simpler explanation is the more likely one: that the increasing publicization of what actually goes on in the womb during pregnancy has affected Cohen as strongly as it has many of the rest of us.
As to your Biblical exegesis, I hope that you are not claiming that Scripture suggests that Aaron forced the Angel of Death to back down. Clearly the passage is saying that it was God who did so.
Matt - the difference between infanticide and abortion is that the infant can survive without mom, it's not my live versus the life within me.
How long would an infant last without its mom?
Infant doesn't require mom.
The same could be said of a fetus...doctors (like dad in your scenario) could extract the fetus and take care of the baby.
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