Posted by
ClearCommentary.com on Monday, July 28, 2008 3:44:42 PM
You can be forgiven if you've never heard of the Freedom of Choice Act, but it's something every American should be aware of, because if Obama is elected he has pledged to sign it. This piece of ignoble legislation would abolish all state and federal restrictions on abortion, including those specific to partial-birth abortion, the heinous slaughter of babies on the cusp of birth that Democratic Senator Patrick Moynihan called infanticide.
Coupled with his support of sex education for kindergarteners, Obama's vision as a transformational candidate ought to give us pause. One of the more pernicious cultural aftershocks of the 60s is the left's adroit characterization of themselves as champions of freedom. It's an appeal that's difficult to refute at first blush because isn't that one of our nation's founding rights?
But it's not until you draw the curtain on Obama's plans that you realize his 'transformational politics' is predicated on an inversion of values, where 'freedom' is decoupled from responsibility, duty, and obligation. The counter-argument begins with what may be a revelation to many liberals and that is the fact that 'choice' demands an informed moral bearing, one that confronts rather than obfuscates the fact that an unborn human has rights.
That the legal protections are lagging the moral imperative only reflects the historical reality of the ethical evolution we've come to anticipate: To wit, whether it's civil rights or welfare reform, those in the vanguard understand that the legal apparatus is always out of step with the moral dimensions of human controversies. It's curious that liberals, who are fervent advocates of every victim, real or imagined, wouldn't stand shoulder-to-shoulder with those who defend the most innocent victims among us, the unborn.
But, despite the fact that ultrasound images show the unmistakable picture of an infant, its tiny beating heart a breathtaking miracle, liberals apparently dehumanize that reality which temporarily softens the agony of its destruction. Couching it as a 'choice,' and characterizing the burden of carrying an 'unwanted' fetus to term as an inconvenience, morally sanitizes an act they would never perform on a dog.
In this age where moral imperatives are something of an oxymoron and where gradations of truth are invoked to justify ethical malfeasance, it should come as no surprise that Obama, who is a faithful reflection of our moral confusion, should position himself as a cure for our partisan ills while positing legislation wholly antithetical to the spirit of bipartisanship.