In today’s Ottawa Citizen, we have a blasé defence all abortions, because, apparently:
They [fetuses] are not persons for they have no interests; they lack the self-consciousness necessary for having interests.
Professor Mark Mercer starts by saying:
That the fetus you are carrying is female is certainly a terrible reason to have an abortion
But really, after saying this is a terrible reason, everything he write after that speaks to the idea that it is not really so terrible. Why would aborting a non-person of the female persuasion be terrible? How could it be?
Here’s a link to Jennifer Derwey’s assessment of Mark Mercer debating Stephanie Gray from the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform.
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I read Dr. Mercer’s article and all I can say is that (apart from bringing to attention his annoying habit of using the royal “we” throughout the article) this guy has been in the ivory tower for way too long. Sophistry at its best (or worst)!
What an awful column, on so many levels, but mostly int the way that Mercer twists himself into a pretzel shape to say there’s nothing wrong with abortion, or sex-selective abortion, but let’s find a way to stop it anyway – at least for girls.
My husband, who is a lawyer, said that Mercer was just proving that he had read up on Canadian jurisprudence regarding the status of the fetus and abortion in Canada. If that’s the case, then our justices who could declare such things as no harm is done can be done to a fetus because it has no interests are totally out to lunch. How about the pain of abortion – of being torn to bits or destroyed by saline solution or having your skull pierced by scissors in a late-term abortion?
Just because Canadian law does not recognize fetuses as persons (is that true?) doesn’t make it true, or entitle us to kill them.
Rather than recognizing that killing a child in the womb is wrong, he suggests some pretty pathetic solutions – to protect girl fetuses. i guess male fetuses are just plain out of luck and can be aborted any old time. But does he honestly think that celebrating “girls and women as people living rich and accomplished lives” is really going to stop those who want a son at any cost? I don’t think so. And can a family who would kill an unborn child for any personal reason a mother chooses then turn around and “lead by example” to demonstrate “companionate and supportive family relations” Can someone seriously choose to kill a child they are carrying and not be marked by that somehow?
Finally, if St. Mary’s University has so little Catholicism as to have a person holding such views on their staff, perhaps it’s time to change their name because right now it’s misleading.