On Monday, I interviewed Dr. LeRoy Carhart, one of several physicians who assisted Dr. Tiller in Wichita, Kan. He and his wife, Mary, told me they are United Methodists. At one point, he added, he considered becoming a Methodist minister.
Instead, he ended up in Dr. Tiller's office, face-to-face with cases such as a suicidal rape victim who was 30 weeks pregnant. He aborted that fetus.
"At 30 weeks?" I asked. (My daughter was born at 32 weeks.) At that point, Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice President Carlton Veazey interjected that women have a God-given right to make such decisions about their lives.
Doesn't the fetus have the same moral rights as a born woman, I asked.
"God gave that fetus a 'guardian ad litem' when he chose the mother that fetus is born with," Dr. Carhart responded. "That mother, I feel, has been charged by God to make the right choices for that child during its unborn and early born years."
So, Veazey says that "women have a God-given right to make such decisions about their lives." But clearly women don't have a God-given right to decide to murder their six-year-olds. Veazey is assuming that the unborn is not a valuable human person, like the six-year-old. But that's the very question at issue.
Well-known late-term abortionist Carhart says: "God gave that fetus a 'guardian ad litem' when he chose the mother that fetus is born with. That mother, I feel, has been charged by God to make the right choices for that child during its unborn and early born years."
Sounds good. But strangely, Carhart apparently thinks this justifies abortion. To see the problem, insert the word "toddler" in place of "fetus":
"God gave that toddler a 'guardian ad litem' when he chose the mother that toddler is born with. That mother, I feel, has been charged by God to make the right choices for that child ... "
Therefore, a mother should be allowed to kill her toddler for any reason. What!?
If the unborn killed by abortion is morally on par with the toddler (i.e., a valuable human being with a right to life), then Carhart's statement doesn't work to justify abortion, just as it doesn't work to justify killing a toddler. It only can make sense given the opposite conclusion about the moral status of the unborn -- that the unborn is nothing morally significant and therefore can be killed for the convenience of another.
Thus Carhart, like Veazey, is committing an elementary fallacy called begging the question -- assuming the very point one needs to prove. Carhart and Veazey need to show that the unborn is not a rights-bearing human being deserving of respect and protection, like you and me. But instead of offering an argument for this position, they assume it with their rhetoric.
See here about abortion in cases of rape.
