By DONALD DeMARCO
Rudy York (1913-1970) had a successful career as a first baseman for the Boston Red Sox and the Detroit Tigers. According to the story, he was once hauled from a burning bed by an irate hotel manager who accused him of starting the fire by smoking. York’s response, in a desperate attempt to deny personal responsibility, said, “That bed was on fire when I got into it.”
We can safely say that the ballplayer’s argument was unconvincing. In fact, it was laughable. When backed into a corner, a person’s defense lacks the logic to convince anyone, not even the person himself. “The devil made me do it” carries little weight. On the other hand, there are similar breaches of logic that somehow are convincing, though convincing only to some people.
This places the logical thinker in a quandary. How does he convince illogical people that their argument is both illogical and unconvincing?
Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) identified with the class of blacks who were oppressed and enslaved. He was frustrated in his attempts to use reason in order to convince his oppressors of their injustices. He did not despair, however, but sought a more passionate approach: “At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument is needed. . . . For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be restarted; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.”
The slavery and abortion issues have much in common. Can rational argumentation be effective against an entrenched defense of abortion? Or will fiery rhetoric, no matter how eloquently phrased, be more effective? Ginette Paris, author of The Sacrament of Abortion, contends that abortion is “a sacred act” and regarding it that way would foster increased respect for the sanctity of life. Similarly, Brenda Peterson, in an article written for the New Age Journal, proclaims abortion as a “sacrament” and a “sacred act of compassion.” Abortionist Henry Morgentaler has argued that we need abortion to ensure “the integrity of the family.”
Such defenses of abortion as advanced by Paris, Peterson, and Morgentaler seem as unconvincing as that offered by Rudy York. How does one counter them? Reason seems impotent against such self-contradictory assertions. Yet the passionate approach urged by Frederick Douglass also seems ineffective in today’s world. Defenders of life would inevitably be accused of resorting to irresponsible rhetoric.
The late Fr. Richard John Neuhaus has made the comment that “When, God willing, the abortion controversy is behind us, partisans of the pro-life and pro-choice positions are going to have to live together in this society.” Neuhaus was favoring reason and rational arguments as the best way to bring the two sides together in peace. After all, we are all “rational animals.”
Reason is a universal faculty. If it can be denied, it can also be roused to life.
The abortion debate (if one can call it that) is not simply about abortion. It involves something that transcends abortion. It raises the perennial question, concerning how can human beings live together in peace? We cannot solve the abortion issue without solving the human relations issue. The task, then, is formidable. One looks to God for assistance.
Will logic, passion, and divine intervention be enough? There is another factor. Some people must learn the hard way, through the consequences of their mistakes. “The gods are just,” wrote Shakespeare in King Lear, “and of our pleasant vices make instruments to plague us.” Abortion inaugurates a series of misfortunes. Like slavery, its effect is widespread.
Abortion adversely affects the woman, marriage, the family, medicine, law, politics, and the quality of culture. We now live in what St. John Paul II has labeled a Culture of Death. The death imbedded in culture is not merely cultural, but has profound and negative effects on individual people who live within its ambit. In Evangelium Vitae, Pope John Paul II reasons that wholesale abortion leads to “the breakdown of a genuinely human coexistence and the disintegration of the State itself.” The abortion issue and that of the human relations issue are inextricably intertwined.
“Abortion has coarsened us,” wrote Justice Robert Bork, in Slouching Towards Gomorrah. “If it is permissible to kill the unborn human for convenience, it is surely permissible to kill those thought to be soon to die for the same reason.”
Abortion is not a solitary act, an act that can be contained. It has a dynamic that spreads and affects everything it touches. In 1996 two circuit courts ruled that some individuals have a constitutional right to commit suicide. As it spreads, it affects more and more people until its ugliness can be detected even by those who were most zealous about promoting abortion. This inevitability is a kind of argument from nature. Neither God nor nature can be mocked with impunity.
Reason, passionate rhetoric, and divine intervention all have their rightful places. The dire effects of abortion, however, may intertwine and justify these three factors and make any argument in favor of abortion in the future as unconvincing as the desperate defense of our aforementioned first baseman.
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