Re: Wiggle room

By Domenico Bettinelli, Jr. ( articles - email ) | Nov 03, 2004

A reader who is a priest in Massachusetts copied me on the response he sent to that South Carolina newspaper editor that Phil remarks on below:

You know what annoys me? Being styled "an ideological automaton" because I happen to have thought through and agree with what our Church teaches on abortion.

Why is it that social liberals (yes, like yourself) are quick to discount the thought of others who disagree with them? Why must our thought automatically be disregarded? Do we not also have the ability to reason, or is that restricted to those who happen to agree with you?

One of the most disagreeable tasks that we "ideological automaton[s]" have is persuading the smugly self-righteous dissenters that the right to life itself is fundamental -- that without that single issue being adjudicated in favor of the unborn, no other "right" has any standing whatever.

While we're accused of being single-issue voters, and while we are regularly called narrow, ideologues and automatons, the reality is that we have carefully thought out our position, and respectfully disagree with you and yours who trot out (incredibly laughable) lines like, “It’s people like him that are the reason women have abortions."

Tell me, before you went to press, did you really look over your column and honestly believe that women who love their unborn children offer them up to practitioners who either poison them, scald them with salt, or rip them limb from limb in the womb BECAUSE some people have (presumably) antiquated ideas about equality? Do you really believe that?

Please -- if you want to nuance your dissent from the Church's teaching on the fundamental nature of the right to life, at least choose an argument that is not so incredibly un-believable.