There has been a lot of discussion on Dexter Lawn and in the University Union the last several days. Some of it good, some of it bad, and some of it clearly not well thought out. Today, I heard something shocking. A member of the organization with the anti-abortion display asked a girl when she thought life begins based on a series of circles with various stages of fetal development. After a moment of pondering, the girl responded that she thought that it did not matter to the discussion. When pressed further, she followed up with the idea that whether any of us are classified as “human” also did not matter, only the health of the mother.
If one follows that train of thought, society could compel the mother to be nothing more than a baby factory since her human rights don’t matter either. But why stop there? We could revolutionize the world with this type of thinking. Darfur? Why, Darfur isn’t genocide, it is housecleaning by the Sudanese government. And slavery? Slavery is, to quote some of our commentators, such an “uncouth” term for the practice. We should rather call it an economically beneficial utilization of Homo sapiens labor.
But clearly this is a ridiculous line of reasoning. What is not ridiculous is that once a society starts eliminating morality from its laws and practices, it opens the Pandora’s box of any action becoming equivalent to any other action. America treads a fine line because of our multicultural heritage with different moral values, but the right to live and respect for all humanity, from the elderly to the unborn, should be something cherished lest we lose everything good for which America stands.
Ryan Hunter
Mechanical engineering senior