Subject: PLAGAL's January 22 Submission
From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 15 Jan 1996 18:17:22 -0500

SAVE THE WHALES!  SAVE THE RAINFORESTS!  KILL THE BABIES?

An Op-Ed or Letter to the Editor  from:

PRO-LIFE ALLIANCE OF GAYS AND LESBIANS

Post Office Box 33292
Washington, D.C. 20033
(202) 223-6697
Internet:  [email-masked]

For Further Information:

Philip Arcidi
747 Main Street
Concord, MA 01742
(508) 369-0700
Please Advise PLAGAL 
If  Duplicates are Received 
By Fax or E-Mail.

	The tail end of the car ahead of me was a patchwork quilt of political
correctness.  "Save the whales!" shrieked one bumper sticker.  "Save the
rainforests!" exhorted another.  "End vivisection!"  "Stop eating animals!"
 "Don't wear fur!"  And so on, down to one that said "Keep abortion safe and
legal." 
 
	I was tempted to pull alongside the other car and get a good look at the
driver.  What kind of person, I wondered, could seriously maintain that "meat
is murder" but abortion isn't?  Or that wearing fur is a "crime", and killing
an unborn child is a "choice"?

	Was it cruelty that the driver of the car ahead of me was protesting?  If it
was, how could the driver possibly defend scalding a child to death in a
saline solution, or tearing it to pieces with a vacuum pump, or cutting it up
alive?  Because that's what happens in an abortion -- even in a modern,
antiseptic clinic where the procedure is "safe and legal."

	Or was the driver objecting to waste?  It is a favorite argument of
environmentalists that the destruction of the rainforests is going to mean
the extinction of a wide variety of plant and animal life that could one day
be of inestimable value to humankind.  But if that argument is valid for
trees, or for endangered species, it is even more true of human beings.  Who
knows but that a child who was aborted today might have found the cure for
cancer, commanded the first expedition to Mars, or solved the deficit
problem?  It is not for nothing that the Jewish Talmud teaches that whoever
saves a single life saves the whole world.

	Or was the driver of the other car taking a stand for choice?  Did the
driver believe that a woman has an absolute right to choose whether to carry
a child to term or not, and society had no right to interfere with that
choice?  Well, if society has no right to condemn a woman's choice to
extinguish the life of her unborn child, then what right could society
possibly have to condemn that woman -- or anyone else for that matter -- for
eating meat or wearing fur?  Aren't these "choices" as well?  And isn't human
life of greater value than animal life?  Aren't people worth more than trees?

	Try as I might, I could find no logic that would reconcile a tender concern
for flora and fauna with a callous disregard for the fate of unborn children.
 Maybe the driver had never looked abortion squarely in the eye.  And may be
that was the whole problem.

	Environmentalists and animal-rights activists know the power of images in
today's society.  That is why their public awareness campaigns are heavily
laced with pictures of hunters brutally clubbing baby seals to death, or of
vast acres of tropical rainforests in flames.

	But how is it that some of these same people object when pro-lifers show
pictures of what goes on in an abortion clinic?  As Naomi Wolf, an
influential feminist and pro- choicer was honest enough to concede: "How can
we charge that it is vile and repulsive for pro-lifers to brandish vile and
repulsive images if the images are real?"

	Exactly so.  Confronted head on with unvarnished reality, it is impossible
for all but the most insensitive people to dodge a sense of moral obligation.
 If you want a sealskin coat after seeing the gory pictures of what it takes
to produce one, you have to wrestle with your conscience.  The same should be
true if you want to defend abortion.

	G. K. Chesterton once said that when people stop believing in God, the
danger is not that they will believe in nothing, but that they will believe
in anything.  The jumble of vague, contradictory, feel-good slogans plastered
on the car ahead was proof that Chesterton was right.

  	Once everyone believed that a benevolent Creator gave human beings
dominion over the earth and over all lesser forms of life.  And then that
same Creator laid down strict moral laws governing how human beings should
treat each other -- "Thou shalt not kill" being one of the original Ten
Commandments.

	When we cut loose from those moorings, it is easy for us to drift into the
kind of moral confusion that says "Save the Whales" and "Kill the Babies."
 And this confusion can lead to even greater evils.  As I thought about the
Chesterton's warning, I decided that I would not pull alongside the car ahead
to get a look at the driver.  Suddenly, I was a little afraid of what might
stare back at me.

	END
______________________________________________
The Pro-Life Alliance of Gays and Lesbians was organized in 1990 for the
purpose of opposing abortion on demand and advancing the Pro-Life argument
within the Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual community.  PLAGAL President Philip
Arcidi of Concord, Massachusetts, noted that  PLAGAL has participated in the
March for Life and its attendant gatherings since 1991.