Letters to the Editor
vasumurti
Published Letters: 65
-
equally hypocritical...
[Read the article: Ex-girlfriend: Pro-life pol is a hypocrite]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]...is many liberals failing to see abortion as a secular human rights issue.
In the September 1980 issue of The Progressive, Mary Meehan wrote:
“If much of the leadership of the pro-life movement is right-wing, that is due largely to the default of the Left. We little people who marched against the war and now march against abortion would like to see leaders of the Left speaking out on behalf of the unborn. But we see only a few, such as Dick Gregory, Mark Hatfield, Richard Neuhaus, Mary Rose Oakar. Most of the others either avoid the issue or support abortion...
“It is out of character for the Left to neglect the weak and the helpless. The traditional mark of the Left has been its protection of the underdog, the weak, and the poor. The unborn child is the most helpless form of humanity...The basic instinct of the Left is to aid those who cannot aid themselves — and that instinct is absolutely sound. It is what keeps the human proposition going.”
Meehan stated elsewhere:
“Writer and activist Jay Sykes, who led Eugene McCarthy’s 1968 antiwar campaign in Wisconsin and later served as head of the state’s American Civil Liberties Union, wrote a ‘Farewell to Liberalism’ several years ago. Sykes cited several areas of disagreement and disillusionment, then added, ‘It is on the abortion issue that the moral bankruptcy of contemporary liberalism is most clearly exposed.’ He said that liberals’ arguments in support of abortion ‘could, without much refinement, be used to justify the legalization of infanticide.’”
In her article, “Abortion and the Left” (Spring, 1981), Juli Loesch, founder of Pro-Lifers for Survival (an anti-nuclear group) described the response to Mary Meehan’s article in The Progressive:
“The Left...is profoundly divided on abortion...in October 1980, Pax Christi USA, a Catholic peace organization that includes feminists and socialists, approved an anti-abortion resolution at its national assembly by virtually unanimous vote.
“Weeks later, Sojourners, a Christian peace/justice magazine, featured Daniel Berrigan, Shelley Douglass, Jesse Jackson and others arguing for opposition to abortion integrated with a more radical commitment to non-violent feminism and human dignity.
“Possibly abortion never was a Left/Right issue,” concluded Loesch. “Soon after the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision one of the most progressive Senate Democrats, Harold Hughes, joined one of the most progressive Republicans, Mark Hatfield, in co-sponsoring a Human Life Amendment (HLA). Both were opponents of the Vietnam War. Both opposed abortion because of, not despite, their other political views.”
“I have always thought it peculiar how the liberal and conservative philosophies have lined up on the abortion issue,” observed Rosemary Bottcher in the Tallahassee Democrat.
“It seemed to me that liberals traditionally have cared about others and about human rights, while conservatives have cared about themselves and property rights. Therefore, one would expect liberals to be defending the unborn and conservatives to be encouraging their destruction.”
Rosemary Bottcher criticized the American Left for failing to take a stand against abortion:
“The same people who wax hysterical at the thought of executing, after countless appeals, a criminal convicted of some revolting crime would have insisted on his mother’s unconditional right to have him killed while he was still innocent.
“The same people who organized a boycott of the Nestle Company for its marketing of infant formula in underdeveloped lands would have approved of the killing of those exploited infants only a few months before.
“The same people who talk incessantly of human rights are willing to deny the most helpless and vulnerable of all human beings the most important right of all.
“Apparently these people do not understand the difference between contraception and abortion,” concluded Bottcher. “Their arguments defending abortion would be perfectly reasonable if they were talking about contraception. When they insist upon ‘reproductive freedom’ and ‘motherhood by choice’ they forget that ‘pregnant’ means ‘being with child.’ A pregnant woman has already reproduced; she is already a mother.”
At a speech before the National Right to Life Convention in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, in 1982, Reverend Richard John Neuhaus said:
“I have a confession to make. I am a liberal. More than that. I am a Democrat...I know that among some pro-life advocates liberalism is almost a dirty word. I know it and I regret it. I know that among others there has been a determined effort to portray the pro-life movement as anti-liberal and, indeed, as reactionary. I know it and I regret it.
“We are today engaged in a great contest over the meaning of liberalism, over the meaning of liberal democracy, indeed over the meaning of America...Will it be an America that is inclusive, embracing the stranger and giving refuge to the homeless?...Will it be a caring America, nurturing the helpless and protecting the vulnerable?
“...The mark of a humane and progressive society is an ever more expansive definition of the community for which we accept responsibility...The pro-life movement is one with the movement for the emancipation of slaves. This is the continuation of the civil rights movement, for you are the champions of the most elementary civil, indeed human right—simply the right to be."
In her essay, “Life and Peace,” Juli Loesch wrote: “In a revealing article published in Seven Days, Michelle Magar suggests that the New Right’s relationship with Right to Life has been ‘more a marriage of convenience than true love.’ She suggests that the anti-abortion position adds ‘a certain moral luster’ to the New Right, which otherwise has a distinctly different set of priorities (threatening war for the possession of Persian Gulf oil, and so forth).”
“I am struck by how knee-jerk the liberal/progressive community is on the necessity of legal abortions,” writes Timothy Shipe in the June 2003 issue of The Progressive. “On every other issue, the progressive community looks at the parties involved, assesses the humanity, the vulnerability, the justice, the balance of power, and then weighs in on the side of the underdog. Every issue, that is, except for abortion.”