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In an embarrassingly hypocritical legal suit, a Catholic nonprofit church has argued that “fetuses are not people” in order to get out of paying money for a wrongful death (emphasis here mine):






Now, what they’re saying is that state law defines fetuses as not people, not the Church itself. But, by using this argument, aren’t they throwing away standard Church doctrine on abortion and the right to life? With $15 billion, shouldn’t they just pay up?

Make no bones about it–I’m a pro-choice kind of guy. I generally follow Ayn Rand’s ideas on abortion. However, I understand–and sympathize with–pro-life arguments that equate abortion to murder. It does make sense; if the fetus is a person, then wouldn’t abortion be murder? I myself am not entirely clear on if a fetus is a person or not, but I generally move against it because, come on, a fetus doesn’t notice anything and isn’t performing cognition in whatever passes for a noggin. It’s a potentiality, nothing more. But, I will accept that, if we discover fetuses performing cognition, that maybe that’s the point where abortion should be denied.

What the above paragraph shows is that this is a deeply complicated issue, complicated over the simple fact that we don’t know when personhood begins. What both sides should realize that this is precisely the worst place for a ham-handed government to get involved.

Unfortunately, it has become clearer and clearer to me over the past few years that the pro-life movement is really not about it’s trumpeted principles at all, but just another way to gin up more votes or more parishioners. A lot of it is just a hypocritical grab for power over women’s vaginas.

I’ve written before that I would gladly trade abortion for gay marriage: take the pro-life, pro-gay route, just to end the stupid culture wars in America and get back to what is really important, fixing our economy and our fiscal problems. But these days, I don’t know if I can. The transparent hypocrisy is showing just a tad too much.

Here’s a grand idea, folks: let’s leave government out of the bedrooms and our private parts. This is not an area for government action. Let’s leave it be.