The confusion of certainty

The expression, "What was ___ thinking?", whether applied to ourselves or to another person, is an acknowledgment of how easy it is to become confused by one's own sense of certainty about an idea, a conviction or desire. It's a common enough thing for us all, to get attached to an idea that "sounds right" or maybe one which seems to go along with other ideas, and then we stop reasoning about the idea, to the point that we swallow it "hook, line and sinker."

Much of the time such confusion is harmless enough, and produces embarrassment but not much else. But often such disjuncture between conviction and reality can be tragic. In one of history's most horrific examples, the Nazi party managed to sway much of the German population into believing the idea of Jewish inferiority, to the point that genocide was thought to be normal. But no less horrific is the assumption, so firmly lodged in millions of minds, that a pregnant woman's right to choice in her own medical affairs should extend to the fetus growing within her, to the point that she may be exempted from the normal laws protecting the life of another person.

In today's local news, two stories stand side-by-side to illustrate this confusion of certainty. In one report, a Nebraska woman is charged with manslaughter for stabbing a pregnant teenager, killing the fetus in her womb. The teenager is expected to recover from her wounds, while the manslaughter charge is applied to the unborn child. Now, if the teenager had done the same with a tool of some kind or an abortive drug, she would be exercising her "choice", and subject to no consequences other than some people's disapproval. For another person to do that without the teen's "permission" is considered manslaughter.

The whole thing screams, "What's wrong with this picture?" We don't charge people with manslaughter for killing "tissue", or whatever the pro-choice people call the fetus to justify murdering it by abortion. But somehow the same legal system that doggedly protects a woman's choice also applies personhood to that same unborn child, in a case when its death is at the hands of someone else who makes such a choice.

And then, a second article concerns Dr. Leroy Carhart, whose abortion clinic in Bellevue, NE has already received a lot of negative publicity for years. Now, in the wake of the killing of Dr. George Tiller in Wichita, Dr. Carhart is aiming to raise the fallen banner of Dr. Tiller, known nationwide for his many late-term abortions. Dr. Carhart's mission is motivated by his conviction that, "We have to keep abortion available for the women of this country."

Compare that sentiment to our current legal situation in regard to assisted suicide. Obviously you wouldn't take a person to court who had just committed suicide, but neither are there indications in the legal code that it's unlawful to take your own life if you're suffering a terminal illness. But to assist someone in doing that, even with their permission, is still subject to prosecution. No one with any legal or social standing is saying, "We have to keep patient-assisted suicide available for the people of this country." And one who tried to make such a stand, Jack Kevorkian, went to jail for his convictions.

What can explain such a schizophrenic confusion among so many otherwise intelligent people? Perhaps the idea that a fetus is either a person or it's not, take your pick but don't try to have it both ways, is a bit too subtle a distinction in logic for those whose aim is to give a woman the unfettered freedom to end her pregnancy for her own reasons.

Let there be no confusion on this point: I'm all for supporting a woman's choice to become pregnant. And if she wants to make that choice, then let her be careful to avoid all situations where a pregnancy may happen. But once an egg and sperm combine to begin the God-ordained process of birth of a separate person, then the choice to end that life is not hers to make; anymore than it would be her choice to kill a terminally ill person, even with his permission. To say anything different seems to me, in Spock's words, "illogical."