Trig, Turning the Tide

[Guest guest]

Trig,

Turning the Tide

An infant’s impact.

By Dennis Teti

What

is it about powerless infants that brings out the best and the worst in human

beings? I ask, naturally, because of the astonishing responses to Trig,

Palin’s baby, who has Down Ssyndrome. What can we learn from the warm

public response — and the antipathy of powerful elites?

↓

Socrates, in Plato’s Republic, told a story that sheds some

light on the issue. A shepherd found a ring that made him invisible. Under

complete concealment, the shepherd recognized that he now had the power to do

anything he desired, “an equal to a god among men.†He made

himself king, released criminals from jails, and committed murders,

adulteries, robberies, and every conceivable kind of crime. Socrates

suggested that some human beings use the power of rhetoric in the same way,

covering their injustices up with attractive myths. With the power to commit

injustices and conceal them behind rhetoric, Socrates wondered, would anyone

willingly act according to justice?

Modern science can serve a purpose much like that of the shepherd’s

ring.

An unusually revealing example appeared recently, courtesy of an official of

Canada’s Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (SOGC), one Dr.

Andre Lalonde. The Toronto Globe

and Mail reported that Dr. Lalonde fretted about Governor

Palin’s “decision to keep her baby, knowing that he would be born

with the condition.†He worried that she “may inadvertently

influence other women who may lack the necessary emotional and financial

support to do the same.†The report concluded: “Dr. Lalonde said

that above all else, women must be free to choose, and that popular messages

to the contrary could have detrimental effects on women and their families.

‘The worry is that this will have an implication for abortion issues in

Canada,’ he said.â€

According to Lalonde, the mere example of a woman, a very busy but joyful

mother, choosing to bear and nurture a baby with Down Syndrome is a bad

influence on others in similar situations. All such women should abort. It is

difficult to read this medical professional’s statement without seeing

a desire to force pregnant women to abort unborn children with health

defects.

Under the façade of freedom to choose, abortion’s proponents made

abortion respectable as a “right†each mother might exercise. No

one else had an equivalent “right†to make judgments in thought

(or, according to the U.S. Supreme Court, in law) against her decision. But

as the ruminations of Dr. Lalonde make all too clear, the truth behind the

rhetoric of “freedom to choose†is the freedom of the powerful to

choose whether the powerless should live at all.

Whatever may be said in Canada, in the United States, the

“choice†rhetoric has to contend against a true rhetoric, which

is the greatest legacy of the American Founders. The Constitution they

established in 1787 rested on “self-evident truths†that had

provided the most profound justification for the War for American

Independence. The core truth, they declared, was that all human beings were

created by God and Nature with equal rights, including the rights to live,

remain free, and pursue happiness. These basic rights existed before any

government existed; indeed, government’s most important purpose was

“to secure these rights†against abuse by other persons,

institutions, or government itself.

Generations after the Founders wrote and published the true rhetoric of

natural rights, Abraham Lincoln demonstrated that those words were enduring

and living, and spoke against the rhetoric of slavery in the 1850s just as

they did against British tyranny in the 1770s:

The assertion that “all men are created equal†was . . .

placed in the Declaration . . . for future use. Its authors meant it to be,

thank God, it is now proving itself, a stumbling block to those who in after

times might seek to turn a free people back into the hateful paths of

despotism. They knew the proneness of prosperity to breed tyrants, and they

meant when such should reappear in this fair land and commence their

vocation, they should find left for them at least one hard nut to crack.

In Lincoln’s time, despotism meant the claim of some to deny natural

rights to others because of color. In our time, despotism means the denial of

natural rights because of birth defects. But the justification —

“freedom of choice†— is identical.

The principle of equal natural rights for all human beings is

foundational for Americans, and it is indeed proving, now as before, a very

hard nut to crack. The rate of abortions in this country peaked 18 years ago,

at about 1.6 million annually. Since then, the Guttmacher Institute estimates

that the rate has declined about 25 percent. The number of abortion clinics

in the U.S. has declined from some 2,000 to about 750 today. One state, South

Dakota, saw its only clinic shut its doors in July this year.

In short, the rhetoric about the “freedom to choose†has become

less convincing with time. In terms of popular opinion, in the U.S. at least,

those who would use that slogan to compel women to abort children with health

conditions are farther away from their goal now than they were ten or 15

years ago. The surprising and overwhelming public embrace of Palin

testifies to the growing understanding of the implications for the unborn of

the true rhetoric of equal rights.

— Dennis Teti, a writer in Hyattsville, Md., has taught constitutional

law, American politics, and political philosophy.

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YTI3MTA0YzA2YjU0MmE5MDc2NDYyOTMxYmIzOWY2ZmQ=