Re Charles Featherston’s LRC blog post:
This is sick and incredible. Look, I understand the Objectivist logic behind the right to abort. Sick though it is… unprincipled though it is (Rand herself waved off the crucial question of late-term abortion by saying that was “another matter”). But look at this vile stuff. They actually seem to believe there is a moral obligation to abort–to “squelch”–an “unhealthy fetus”–unless you are very rich, I guess. Look at this!! It’s incredible:
Provenzo:
So in the anti-abortion advocate’s eyes, a parent’s desire to raise healthy children by squelching unhealthy fetuses while the are still in the womb is little more than a pernicious quest, but it is not considered a pernicious quest to knowingly bring severely disabled children into this world. On the contrary, such a choice is held out as an great example of upstanding morality.
Diana Hsieh says it’s the “worship of retardation” (?!):
they want to create more mentally defective and perpetually dependent children by outlawing abortion.
The people who worship retardation reject human reason as a value. They’re as anti-man as the deep ecologists who regard mankind as a cancer on the earth.
Frankly, one wonders why such people don’t lobotomize themselves, if retardation is such a boon to their fellow man.
Update: In a recent Peikoff Podcast he says that if you have a retarded son and a normal son, you should love the normal one more:
Should a father love equally a son with mental retardation and a normal one? Should a father love equally a son with mental retardation and a normal one?
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Mr. Kinsella,
If I may offer my humble perspective;
Analysis and conclusion regarding issues of “right” and “wrong” are far more “absolute” than analysis and conclusions regarding issues of “good” and “bad”. But since there is no total “absolute”, any more than there’s a total “perfect” or “truth”, there are some cases where the “absoluteness” of a conclusion of rightness, or wronngness should be tempered by the relativity of good and bad.
I think the abortion issue is such an issue.
As I understand the technical or “objective” viewpoint, the fetus is the “property” of the of the mother untill it is a living and breathing and metabolizing individual. Fair enough, but I heard the good doctor say his first experience of abortion involved the cries of an infant. On top of that, I understand that in a hospital setting, most third term fetuses are salvageable. If the objective conclusion depends on ownership, then it seems appropriate to factor in the subjective “good and bad” into the analysis by scaling that ownership, similar to the level of responsibility that a parent grants to a child over time, or maturation.
I’m still an “objectivist”, but I still don’t believe in “absolutes”
Thanks
Hmm is anyone else having problems with the images on this blog loading? Im trying to find out if its a problem on my end or if its the blog. Any responses would be greatly appreciated.
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