The Right to Choose
When presenting the pro-life position on school campuses, I’ve sometimes begun by saying, “I am pro-choice. That’s why I believe every man has the right to rape a woman if that’s his choice. After all, it’s his body, and we don’t have the right to tell him what he can and cannot do with it.”
After I let the shock settle in, I ask them to tell me the fallacy of my argument. They point out that in asserting the man’s right to choose I’ve ignored the harm done to the innocent woman, whose rights have been violated. I say, “So you’re telling me you’re anti-choice, is that it?” After they argue more I respond, “So you’re saying that if I demonstrate to you that a woman’s choice to have an abortion harms or kills another human being, you’ll no longer be pro-choice about abortion?”
My hope is that the light will turn on and they will heed their own common sense, which is perfectly sound—but which they’ve failed to apply to abortion.
It’s absurd to defend a specific choice on the basis that it’s a choice. The high-sounding “right to choose” ignores the obvious: not all choices are legitimate. In fact—and nearly as many nonchristians as Christians will agree—some choices are downright evil. Some choices are good, others are bad. Therefore, we can’t be uniformly pro-choice or anti-choice. Rather, we should be pro-good and anti-evil. |
