Sometimes, there is no third way, even if people want to pretend that there is...

Over in the corner, K-lo has linked to one of the most disturbing things I've ever read. It's a blog entry from an abortion clinic worker and the title - "respect for life" - is horrifyingly inaccurate.

Abortion is an issue that I've not written on, and won't, often, because as a political debate, it occurs at the intersection of two diametrically opposed absolutes, each of which is a rational and defensible position. On the one hand, there is the position that human life begins at conception, and therefore abortion is murder, the unjust killing of an innocent human being. The opposite absolute is that human life begins at birth, and therefore abortion is entirely the business of a woman, who, being the only human party to the decision, has the right to do as she pleases. The vast majority of Americans fall, I believe, somewhere between those extremes, but the issue is fought by the extremes.

In any event, while I can understand both of those positions (even the one with which I disagree), what is inconceivable and indefensible to me is the state of mind that would say "yes, it's a baby, it's a real, live human baby, and we can name it and even baptize it and still kill it while respecting life." But that's exactly the state of mind represented here.

our clinic is the kind of place where women can ask, as one did today, if we would bless and baptise her baby. i was able to do that for her. honoring her pregnancy as she herself chooses is part of what we hope to do for each woman. using water (she had planned to bring holy water with her but had at the last minute forgotten it) and saying the words i know from my catholic upbringing, i did as she asked. she had a name in mind for the baby, one that could work for either gender and i gave it that name.

I almost threw up when I read that.

we want to be a clinic that respects life, that honors women's choices. the two are compatible. believe me!

Nope. Inconceivable. If it's not a baby, you can't name it and baptize it. If it is a baby, you can't kill it. You can't respect life and honor a woman's choice to terminate it. It is not possible. That's rationalization of the highest possible order.

C.S. Lewis once spoke about the people who were willing to say that "Christ was a great moral teacher, but not God."

I am trying here to prevent anyone from saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him [Jesus Christ]: "I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept his claim to be God."

That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic -- on a level with a man who says he is a poached egg -- or else he would be the Devil of Hell.

You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God,: or else a madman or something worse .... You can shut him up for fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon; or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come up with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that option open to us. He did not intend to.

The same thing is going on in abortion clinics. You can kill the non-viable tissue mass, or you can refuse to do so, and baptize a baby. You can pretend that there's a third choice, but there isn't...


Update: I notice that The Anchoress wrote yesterday about the French "fetus" story, which shows some of the same contempt for the value of life that I see here...