An excerpt from a recent post about, among other things, women's work in the home:
"Last month I listened to a radio program . . . that made me groan out loud . . . . about adoption . . . . Who knows what gifts and treasures an adoptee might bring to the world, if they're only given a chance ([the commentator] said). For proof, just take a look at what Steve Jobs accomplished! And the same has been used as a rationale against abortion: don't deny the unborn a chance to become the next greatest CEO!
"What rot. Children, refugees,
women, men, the elderly, the disabled, the severely disabled, the
unborn, are of extreme value because human life is valuable. Period.
People are worthy of our service simply because they are people and as
such have inestimable dignity. Furthermore, as Blessed John Paul II
said, women are particularly well-placed to humanize
society. He said that we need women because they are women, and by
their existence and through their bodies and their experience, they bear
witness in a special way to the value of the human person by just being women."
Read the whole thing at English Please. I Don't Speak Hindi.
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3 comments:
And the same has been used as a rationale against abortion: don't deny the unborn a chance to become the next greatest CEO! What rot. Children, refugees, women, men, the elderly, the disabled, the severely disabled, the unborn, are of extreme value because human life is valuable. Period.
Yes, yes, a million times yes. I've been making this same point to others recently as an illustration of the kinds of bad, not-very-well-thought-through arguments that you often find by pro-lifers. It's a bad argument because it opens one up to the counterclaim that just as abortion might deprive us of the next [insert your favorite Great Good Person in History here], so too it might also deprive us of the next Hitler, or Stalin, or [insert your favorite Great Evil Person in History here]. It's just a bad rhetorical ploy that misses the fundamental point of the pro-life position.
Indeed, there's something essentially American about the implication that only the meritorious are deserving, and that service is for chumps (as are disability, poverty, and a host of other things).
I clicked over to comment pretty much the same as dmv, "Yes, yes, a million times yes."
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