Pro-life atheists

I suppose it would be too much to expect Christopher Hitchens- God bless him, even though he doesn't believe in God- to avoid the chance to be contrarian. And I don't think his inconsistent position on abortion is nearly the advance in the dialog on this divisive issue Newsweek's Lisa Miller apparently believes it is.

Nevertheless, Miller's brief article does highlight the surprising number of pro-life atheists out there. In so doing, it forces Miller to acknowledge the validity of a point secularists and the pro-abortion crowd generally like to avoid, even if they are aware of it: that neither abortion nor any other ethical question is intrinsically religious.

Some time ago President-elect Obama did us all a service by suggesting (despite the wrongheaded objections by various "Evangelical" leaders to this sensible observation) that there is no valid objection to anybody bringing his or her religious convictions as to what ought or ought not to be legal into the political arena so long as he or she is able to form the arguments in favor of that position in religiously neutral terms, accessible to believer and non-believer alike. In other words, while the president-elect frowns upon the (transparently self-defeating) argument that abortion should be illegal because one's sectarian religious beliefs see it as inherently evil (an argument which, by definition, is unconvincing to anyone who does not share those particular religious beliefs), he argues for the absolute legitimacy of a person who is pro-life arguing that abortion should be illegal because it dehumanizes us and thus adversely affects society.

The number of pro-choice atheists is small. But the fact that there are as many of them as there are not only illustrates that the case against abortion on demand can be made in religiously neutral terms, but made effectively.

There simply is no reason for those of us who are pro-life to allow our concerns to be banished to the realm of sectarian religious conviction. Atheists have every bit as much of a stake in human life being treated as sacred as believers do.

HT: Real Clear Politics

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