Pittsburgh Catholic Newspaper

Editorial

Blurry reasoning
current editorial

We have read and heard it all before. A pro-choice person agreeing how terrible were the actions of abortion practitioner Kermit Gosnell at his Philadelphia clinic. Then almost in the same breath denying that anything so horrific goes on in any other abortion facility.

Sally Quinn, the Washington Post columnist whose article appeared April 28 in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, wrote, “I can’t imagine anyone who is pro-choice not being horrified by this story.” The headline on the article was “The lines blur on abortion.” Seems like the lines aren’t the only things that are blurry.

The “lines” that she refers to are the boundaries being expanded by technology so that doctors and patients gain earlier insights into fetal development. “Today, in the first trimester one can hear the fetus’s heart beating and see formed hands and feet. This obviously makes it a different discussion,” Quinn writes.

The question is this: Why? Why do medical advances — more powerful sonograms and other diagnostic tools — change the discussion? If, as Quinn claims, the overriding issue is that “a woman should be allowed to do with her own body what she chooses,” then what does fetal development matter?

And if the advancing development of an unborn child doesn’t matter, then what was so terrible about Gosnell’s work?

Logic dictates that the child’s stage of development is immaterial. If it’s morally wrong to kill a child who is within a month or two of being naturally delivered, then it’s morally wrong at every stage of development. And if the “sacred doctrine” of a woman’s right to choose is paramount, then what she is choosing doesn’t really matter. It doesn’t take a medical degree to see this.

It may come as a shock to some that human beings have been developing the same way from the beginning of time. They start out as tiny specks inside their mothers, then grow up to become men and women. No advances in medical technology will change that reality.

The “blurriness” that Quinn writes about is the failure to see the illogical — let alone unethical and immoral — nature of the pro-choice argument.

A fitting award

Word reached us that editorial cartoonist Rob Rogers of the Post-Gazette has been honored with the Thomas Nast Award for art depicting international commentary.

The Thomas Nast Award is named after the 19th century American political artist who specialized in virulently anti-Catholic cartoons.

We, therefore, believe the award for Rogers is well-deserved.