The Respectable Murderers

by P. Andrew Sandlin

In Philadelphia last month, the Republican Party, to its credit, retained the firm pro-life plank in its platform. The pro-choice Republicans were pacified by the reassurance that the platform would have very little relevance to George W. Bush’s actual beliefs and actions, though the candidate has identified himself as pro-life. The Republican Party – on this issue as on others – is something of a political (and ethical) hodgepodge.

Not so the Democratic Party. At their Los Angeles convention, we heard again and again assurances that their party is decidedly for "choice." Republicans support the "big-tent" theory – let’s keep those pro-aborts close at hand. By contrast, the Democrats are principled: they keep the minuscule number of pro-lifers in their midst (like Pennsylvania’s Bob Casey) at arm’s length. Democrats are serious about protecting the right to murder. Republicans are tepid about protecting the lives of unborn children.

The Bible and Abortion

The Bible implicitly teaches that unborn children are humans – no less human than children outside the womb (Ex. 21:22-25; Ps. 139:13-16). For this reason and others, the Christian church historically has opposed elective abortion. The same Christian church, which in its first few centuries rescued abandoned children legally cast into the drainage ditches in ancient Rome, could scarcely be counted faithful to its heritage if it today dismissed concerns over legalized abortion.

Libertarianism and Abortion

If the unborn child is as fully human as an adult, elective abortion is murder. There is no other word for it. This puts the issue in sharp perspective. Libertarians are still in a fight about over legalized abortion. All of us want to keep the state out of people’s lives. We also want to keep murder out of people’s lives. The state should be authorized to protect life – one of its few, precious few, legitimate tasks. (We don’t want a society of vigilantes.) Among libertarians, the issue related to abortion is simply when life begins. If it begins at conception, it does no good for certain libertarians to argue that criminalization of abortion conflicts with libertarian principles. If the unborn child is human, he deserves the same legal protection as adults. To suggest anything else is to deny libertarianism.

Language and Abortion

We live in an age dominated by information and, in particular, the battle of ideas. These ideas come in the form of words. The battle over abortion is as much a battle over words as it is a battle over human life itself. Those who support legalized abortion speak of their position as "pro-choice" or simply "choice." This is the sort of damnable euphemism employed by Hitler’s genocidal political machine from 1933-1945. In today’s world of information warfare and media saturation, the easiest way to get away with doing evil things is to describe them in pleasant, even seductive, language. Dope addiction becomes "chemical dependency." State stealing becomes "compassion for the poor." Adultery becomes "an affair." Sodomy becomes "an alternative lifestyle." Sexual intercourse with a young female intern becomes "an inappropriate relationship." This debasement of language is an indicator of a decaying, putrid culture.

Along come Al Gore and the Democratic Party championing "choice." Why don’t you start something? Every time you hear the word "choice" used in relation to the abortion issue, just mentally – or verbally – insert the word "murder." Imagine this from the podium at the Democratic National Convention: "The Republicans will not protect the woman’s right to murder, though we have stood uncompromisingly for the freedom to murder"; Or, "You can be sure in an Al Gore administration that we will protect the woman’s right to murder"; Or, "Pro-murder is more than just a plank in the Democratic Party platform; unlike the Republicans’ treatment of their platform, our candidate, Al Gore, really embraces our platform of liberty to murder." If you think this sounds unpleasant, that’s good.

Murder is unpleasant.

Politics and Abortion

During the primaries, pro-choice, that is, pro-murder, was one of the three main issues on which Al Gore ran his California campaign: environment, education, and "choice," Al Gore’s Great Unholy Trinity. His environmentalism means stealing private property, his educational policy means brainwashing impressionable children, and his abortion position means murdering babies. The pro-murder Republicans are no better; and if they gradually gain the upper hand in the Party, it will reach the destination toward which it has been traveling the last few decades: a gutless, toothless political machine just a few years behind the principled, uncompromising Leftists. Harry Browne’s Libertarian Party is wishy-washy on this issue, though it creditably wants to get the federal government out of the abortion conflict. Ralph Nader is a left wing, socialist pro-abort all the way. Pat Buchanan is vocally pro-life, but the Reform Party on which he has pinned his political hopes has no interest in protecting unborn children from murderous mothers and physicians. The only leading third party that stands uncompromisingly for the life of the unborn child is Howard Phillips’ Constitution Party. Unfortunately, Phillips’ support among the electorate is only a fraction of a single percentage point.

Culture and Abortion

The left wing, in collusion with a largely liberal media, has employed its euphemisms to desensitize the American public. The abortionists and their collaborators have become the respectable murderers. They frame the debate as a "democratic social issue," a crusade for freedom against a moralizing conservative tyranny. They thereby support the routine murder of unborn children by employing high-sounding phrases. In the womb of a mother about to get an abortion, these euphemisms are particularly repellant. Soon these people will support on a wider scale the routine murder of the aged. Then, perhaps, as in Germany earlier this century and Rwanda in the early 90s, they will advocate the extermination of a particular race or religion. (Do not scoff. Nobody in 1950 predicted that by 1980 the United States would annually suffer the scourge of 1.5 million legal abortions either.)

If things do not change, all this too – like abortion – will be culturally respectable.

When murder becomes culturally respectable, that culture has descended deeply into the abyss.

September 11, 2000

P. Andrew Sandlin is Executive Vice President of the Chalcedon Foundation which since 1965 has been dedicated to applying historic, Biblical Christianity in today’s world. He is the author of Christianity: Bulwark of Liberty and several other works.