Like many of you, I made time to catch the most recent GOP debate this past Saturday night hosted by ABC and Yahoo. I winced through the usual back-and-forth between candidates and, at times, their evasive answers to controversial and defining questions. Per usual, abortion, gay rights, and health care were all hot topics.
After noticing the candidates’ responses to questions tailored toward gay rights and, more specifically, how ABC’s hosts were tailoring those questions, I couldn’t help to think of abortion.
Why is that the ABC debate hosts humanized and made you sympathize for gays who are treated unfairly – and rightly so – yet they wouldn’t even utter the words “unborn”, “child”, or even “fetus”? It seemed that the questions surrounding abortion heard in the debate were crafted from an aloof, constitutional rights perspective, but the issues of gay marriage came up from a connecting, human rights perspective.
I posed this very question on my Facebook status Saturday night.
One user promptly commented that maybe if pro-lifers acknowledged the humanity of homosexuals, homosexuals would begin to acknowledge the humanity of the preborn.
Should pro-lifers acknowledge the humanity of homosexuals? Absolutely. And we do. Should we also recognize the humanity of heterosexuals? Of course.
But the abortion debate isn’t about whether or not pre-born babies who are victims of abortion are gay or straight. Any attack on the humanity of anyone – born or pre-born, gay or straight – goes against the fundamentals of the pro-life movement. And anyway, this user’s comment assumes that most supporters of abortion are gay, and this simply isn’t true.
In our society, it has gotten far too easy to brush abortion under the carpet as just another option within the culture of convenience. We are right to condemn the dehumanization of homosexuals – or heterosexuals – in any context.
This isn’t a gay marriage debate; this is a recognition of the right to basic right to Life for all people.
Stealing is wrong, arson is wrong, embezzlement is wrong, and murder is wrong. But our moral compasses are rendered useless with the pressure to remain “politically correct.”
Abortion has been pegged as a “necessary evil”, something a woman “would never freely choose to do unless she had to”. Something that makes her life easier. But using a derogatory term to refer to a homosexual is downright chastisable. And we are right to chastise those who use these words to dehumanize anyone.
But how has the murder of pre-born children become an easier pill to swallow than ill-suited word choice? Both are wrong, but one is far, far worse.
