I know this is long, but bear with me, please. This is the first time I have ever put this to paper, so to speak. The mistake of rationalization I made for many years, and I bitterly regret it due to my distance from this subject, was this:
When confronted with a complicated issue, I like to stake the issue at opposite ends, then find the “cleavage point” in the line stretched between those opposite ends.
That “cleavage point” is where one thing or the other stops being true and becomes false. The string is black at one end point, and white at the other. In the middle are shades of gray.
With abortion, I did not even attempt to bring in the woman’s point of view on whether the baby was wanted, unwanted, expected or unexpected, or even its prospects in life.
I simply looked at one end, totally black, and viewed an ovum. Would it be wrong to destroy an ovum, I thought? I said to myself...no. An ovum isn’t human. It isn’t developed. It doesn’t have any human characteristics. It doesn’t feel pain.
Then I would say to myself (as a Catholic at that time) “How about a fertilized ovum that has split in two? Doesn’t the Catholic Church specify that human life begins at the moment of conception?” Same answer. In my mind, that fertilized ovum that split in two was still not human. it isn’t developed. It doesn’t have any human characteristics. It doesn’t feel pain. How about split into four?
And so on.
And on the other end, I thought “How about a fully formed baby coming down the birth canal seconds away from being outside the mother. Is that baby coming down the birth canal human? Of course it is. It is as human as any of us. To stop it from coming out so you can kill it does not make it any less human because the baby’s head didn’t come out.
How about a week before birth? Is that a human, and is aborting it murder? Same answer.
So, I kept walking it back, and rationalized to myself “There is a gray area somewhere in that development of a fetus when it becomes “human”.
But where?
And usually, that is where it would stop for me. Something else would come up, I would divert my attention somewhere, and I would think that “Yes. I have thought it through...”
But I hadn’t thought it through.
And this realization only came to me during the relatively recent actions by state legislatures which proposed approaches to abortion that...were not abortion. They were talking about allowing a baby to be birthed before killing it. Outright murder. Infanticide. It filled me with shame, horror, and disgust.
And the thing I hadn’t thought through was...the Left.
What I didn’t yet realize is, for the Left, there is no such thing a gray area when it comes to abortion. It is not even black and white for them.
For the Left, it is all black. There is no “white”.
If they advocate allowing a baby to be birthed, but still maintain it may be murdered for some reason or another, then...there is no end to it. No end.
ANY rationalization can be applied to justify the outright murder of a human baby that has been born. The debate would switch from well, is it an ovum or two or has it developed a brain cavity or feels stimulus to...is it a functioning, rational contributor to society?
So, within the last year, I have had to change my views. I have had to accept that human life begins at conception, because if we allow rationalization...we can rationalize ANYTHING.
And that power to debate it and allow rationalization, just like the power to debate and allow rationalization on surveillance of our citizenry, cannot be placed into the hands of people, most especially, elected people. Our moral compass as humans is too prone to evil that is explained away by rationalization.
Your essay underscores the debate regarding the use of conscience as the ultimate guide in determining the righteousness of human behavior. In some circles especially in the Church as led by Francis, established doctrine and the behaviors demanded by such doctrines are no longer being emphasized as the core of what dictates behavior. Francis has repeated often that it is conscience that is the basis of moral behavior. Yet history has shown just how easy it is to mold a conscience to accommodate immediate needs or desires. It is always interesting to study in retrospect the behavior of Hitler’s and Stalin’s henchmen who did the actual killing and performed the atrocities. Not only did they mold their conscience to function and do their duties but afterwards few if any publicly repented, committed suicide or sought forgiveness. Instead they seamlessly adapted themselves to the new realities and lost no sleep. This is seen in the behavior of abortionists, feminists, legislators, academics, media types and governors who celebrate and protect abortion even to the point of infanticide.They have molded their conscience and although inherently miserable people, function as part of the hedonistic and decadent Left. Legalized abortion was the first major crack in the reasonable social consensus that once unified Americans. Now there are many others such as open homosexuality with its inherent predatory destruction of children, neo pagan earth worship under the guise of environmentalism,drug and and sexual debasement just to name a few.