After I linked to this article on my Facebook one of my liberal friends decided to play devil's advocate and posed this question: is it wrong to kill innocent people in wars overseas if it's wrong to kill innocent babies in the womb?
He essentially sees them as the same, believing you cannot simultaneously believe in just war and be opposed to abortion. At face value this seems hypocritical, certainly. The end result is death for both the aborted child and some innocent bystanders in war.
The massive difference between abortion and a just war is intent. And this is where we must focus. War is messy, certainly some innocent people will accidentally be killed. However, for the US army, the intention is to NEVER kill innocents, even if it would increase the likelihood of your mission's success.
The intention with abortion is wholly different - to kill out of sheer convenience - after you have, in the vast majority of cases, consented to possibly get pregnant in the first place.
Again, war is messy. But so is driving. Innocent people are killed by cars every day in this country. Is that a moral argument against the driving of motor vehicles? Hardly. 40,000 innocent people day in this country every year due to cars wrecks - that could likely fall under the UN's definition of genocide.
Thus, the issue becomes one of intent and not outcome. Not all deaths are created equal. As my friend says in his article - abortion does not keep people from becoming parents. It only makes some parents killers. Hence a different intent than American soldiers in war.
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1 comments:
You are exactly correct. Innocent people have always suffered from warfare, yet that does not stay armies from the field nor should it.
I began my Army career as a Legal Specialist, teaching about the Law of War. The various laws of warfare pass no judgment on the reason for waging war. Hitler's invasion of Poland was not "illegal."
The Laws of War seek to mitigate the worst aspects of war which produce a cycle of hatred that makes the cessation of violence more difficult. They prohibit the intentional harming of noncombatant, advise proportionality in military action, protect places of historic significance, and demand honorable treatment of POW's not as criminals, but as soldiers doing their duty.
But the primary principal of the Law of War is military necessity. If a building is being used by your enemy, there is no crime in flattening it even though you know with complete certainty there are innocent civilians inside.
Our enemies have often used innocent civilians as human shields to protect themselves or, at least, exploit their deaths for propaganda.
Abortion is an entirely different form of killing. A woman who consent to sex has implicitly given her consent to pregnancy. Even if she uses birth control, no method is 100% effective. Moreover, the child is an independent life form - meeting all the characteristics of life with which we will judge life on other planets. The fact that it relies on the mother for its life is irrelevant. That is the representation of her DUTY to the child, not her RIGHT to kill it.
I fully understand why a woman might not want to have a child. But that is a decision best made BEFORE the act which brought it about. Science has studied the issue in great detail, and they actually know what causes pregnancy now.
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