March For Life Discussion: Live and let live

Today I’m continuing my series of posts in response to the Facebook discussion a couple of weeks ago concerning the March For Life.

In my previous entry I briefly looked at what I think can be done to raise the standard of dialog between pro-life and pro-choice advocates. I would now like to start looking at some of the particular issues which were raised during the exchange. Today I would like to focus upon the opening comment from a former schoolmate:

“I kinda just wish people would stop telling other people how to live their lives….I’m pro-CHOICE, not pro-telling-people-what-to-do….”

As a pro-lifer, you hear sentiments similar to the one expressed above with considerable regularity and, on the surface, such a position seems extremely commendable. In fact, it is one of the sacrosanct secular doctrines in contemporary culture.

I think that respecting other people’s opinion is a good thing, I do. I mean, nobody likes to be told what to do, right? However, there are some immediate problems here. For a start, the statement self-refuting. As soon as you tell someone that they should mind their own business, you’re attempting, at least in some measure, to impose your own will on another person. That means you’re breaking your own rule and not minding your own business!

In the remainder of this post I would like to look at whether the live-and-let-live ideal is consistently applied…

Always live-and-let-live?

Let’s say I’m walking out of a coffee shop on a Saturday morning and I see a mother take her two-year-old daughter out of her stroller. She then takes the child by the head and prepares to smash the toddler’s skull against the sidewalk.

How would you respond in that situation? Would you intervene when the mother’s intention became apparent? Would you still choose to live-and-let-live? The child in question is not yours, so should you mind your own business? You don’t know the woman’s story, so should you assume she has a good reason for doing what she’s doing? Are you really in a position to make a judgement?

Of course, such a response would be ridiculous. You’d intervene. In fact, in such a scenario you would be morally obligated to save the child’s life. In a civilized society we defend the defenseless and, as such, you’d have to interfere. Inaction would simply not be an option.

In my opinion, the abortion issue turns on the scenario presented above. On what basis is it possible to say that it is acceptable to dismember a child in the womb, yet assert that it becomes unacceptable once the child has passed down the birth canal?

This is an important question and I would invite each pro-choice advocate to consider it. I’ve known some who have refused to answer, simply saying it’s “completely different” or “stupid”. Maybe it is, but in my opinion, the answer to this question typically takes us to the real heart of the issue for that person. So, if you think it’s completely different, then please explain the difference to me. If you think it’s a stupid question, then just give me a stupid answer!

I will talk more about this particular question in greater depth in a future post. For the time-being, it is enough to see that the live-and-let-live attitude isn’t the panacea for which we might have hoped.

Further consequences

Hopefully, it is starting to become clear that the mind-your-own-business policy is not consistently employed. But what would happen if we did employ it consistently? If attending a pro-life rally violates this policy, then so would every other kind of protest and activism, whether it concerned anti-racism, animal cruelty, human rights or some other noble cause.

In fact, not only would we have to do away with political activism, we’d also have to abolish the entire civil code! After all, what are laws, other than things which tell people what they are and are not allowed to do? A country’s laws interfere with the lives of the residents!

Now, I seriously doubt that my friend is really advocating anarchy. I’m sure he is grateful that he lives in a country where there are laws and he is glad that, in different ways, we do in fact tell people in society what they can and cannot do.

If I had to hazard a guess, I would suggest that the issue isn’t that my friend thinks that we should refrain from telling people what to do, but rather that we shouldn’t tell people what to do in this particular area. This, of course, begs the question as to why he thinks this case is special. As with the toddler question above, I would suggest that answering this would most likely get to the real heart of the issue for him.

I think that’ll do for today. Hopefully in this post I have demonstrated some of the problems with the statement that the pro-lifers should just mind their own business. You see, we’re happy to live-and-let-live, but only when everyone gets to live-and-let-live…both the born and the unborn.