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World No-Abortion Day
On May 31st, the World Health Organization and its followers celebrated World No Smokers Day. Well, of course they called it World No Tobacco Day (WNTD), but that’s mere hypocrisy. One cannot conceive of smoking as a problem without smokers. So, if you want to get rid of smoking, it follows you must get rid of smokers. Those bullies who worship "health" as some sort of modern golden calf entered virtually everyone’s house; the politically correct media network printed pages and pages in the newspapers of many nations, and broadcast hours and hours on TV to warn people that smoke "kills." Not only active smoking, mind you, but second hand smoke as well is depicted as public enemy number 1. Indeed, smoking is supposed to cause 3.5 million deaths around the world, 400,000 deaths in the U.S., and 53,000 deaths in Italy, to mention only a few statistics. (You might be intrigued to know that the latter figure was 90,000 only a few weeks ago. But a new law passed by the center-right Italian government instantaneously "saved" almost 40,000. We all are immensely grateful to our beloved Taliban minister – sorry, I meant Italian minister – Girolamo Sirchia). Oh, well, those numbers are little more than random figures, as is clear when you begin to look at where they’re coming from. So, the WHO and the whole coalition for WNTD warned that tobacco is "the first preventable cause of death in the world." This is false. Not true. It’s a lie. In fact, the first preventable cause of death in the world is another one, which the WHO, anti-smoking activists and health fascists never questioned. It is abortion. Every year, 40 million abortions are performed worldwide, 1.5 million in the U.S., and 150,000 in Italy. So, for every old guy "killed," say, by smoke-induced lung cancer, 13.14 children are murdered around the world, 3.75 in the U.S., and 2.83 in Italy. Moreover, according to a survey, about 98% of the abortions are performed in the U.S. for reasons other than rape, incest, or saving the mother’s life. So, what about it? Why doesn’t the WHO complain about it? Why does nobody in the public health arena seem interested in organizing a World No Abortion Day? Of course, it is self-evident that anti-smoking zealots aren’t interested in saving children, because they have no interest in human life. Rather, they often hate children for the very same reason they hate smoking (and, along the same line, fatty food, alcoholic drinks, cellular phones, and so forth). They despise all that may result in more joy and happiness. They are ugly people who can’t even figure out the meaning of a pure laugh. So, since they are sad people, they want all other people to be sad. And can you imagine a sadder world than one without any pleasure, including cigarettes, whisky, chocolate cakes, and children playing in the garden? Anyway, this is not the real point. The problem is that modern society is experiencing a dramatic lack of conscience about true values. So, "health" or "nature" or "choice" are seen as values in themselves, no matter what this means for human beings. So, in order to protect "public" health, the government is allowed to tread on individual liberty; in order to save nature, it may deny that any property right has ever existed; and in order to give people a choice, it may even kill children. Because abortion is murder, whatever you may think. You may say that a fetus is not "alive," or a child is not a man; yet, a fetus is the same thing as a child, and a child is the same thing as a man. This is so obvious that only those generations who conceived national-socialism and communism could even dream of putting it in doubt. But, when the government is given enough power to move the line between legitimate and illegitimate actions – that is, between life and death or, if you prefer, between right to life and murder – then something in that society is wrong. Jeff Snyder is completely right in defining abortion as "The Right Right For Our Time," that is, "The things we recognize as fundamental rights acquire that status at some point in history, such that they uniquely fit that time and place, and crystallize for us the distinct character of the men of that time." And nothing fits with our time more than "a woman’s right to choose." I’d like to make three final points about abortion. First of all, even if you’re not a libertarian, and think that taxes may be justifiable sometimes, you should recognize that a strong minority of the population, if not the majority, regards abortion as an immoral thing. So, abortion should at the very least not be paid for with taxpayers’ money – or, to put it another way, if one wants to abort, one should pay for it. Secondly, as Dave Kopel and David Stolinki put it, "If [a woman] became pregnant and suddenly decided on an abortion, her husband would have no legal say... This woman’s control over her body includes the right to an abortion with no regard for the fetus’s life or the father’s wishes." Instead, the father should have some right over his child, before the mother performs an abortion. In the third place, women often "choose" to abort because they have no financial means to support a child. Well, relatives or other persons should be permitted to "buy" the fetus – that is, to give the lady some money not to terminate her pregnancy. If you are shocked at the idea of selling children, you should be even more concerned about killing them. All in all, anti-smoking zealots lie when they say tobacco is "the first preventable cause of death in the world." That cause is abortion, and if they really wanted to help saving human lives, they should campaign against abortion in the first place. In fact, they often say they are not prohibitionist, and that they aim to educate people (who do not want to be educated – not by them in any case). They also say they aim to protect nonsmokers’ rights, especially children’s rights. If they are consistent with what they say, they should also engage in educating people about natural rights, including life, liberty, and property. The very first way to protect the right to life, in particular, is to protect the right to birth. June 7, 2003
Copyright © 2003 LewRockwell.com
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