Sunday, August 17, 2008

The candidates on abortion

From Rick Warren's interviews with the Presidential candidates last night, a question that defines a very important difference between them:
Warren:...At what point does a baby get human rights in your view?
Obama: Well, I think that whether you are looking at it from a theological perspective or a scientific perspective, answering that question with specificity, you know, is above my pay grade.
....
Warren: ...At what point is a baby entitled to human rights?
McCain: At the moment of conception. ....
At what point is the result of human conception a human being entitled to human rights, and most fundamentally the right to life, without which no other right can ever be exercised? Obama says he doesn't know - the question, he says, is beyond his competence - but, he went on to say, he doesn't believe that abortion should be legally restricted. If he is truly uncertain about something as important as the humanity of an unborn baby, shouldn't the doubt be resolved in favor of the preservation - not the destruction - of what he apparently believes could possibly be a human life.

More. 8/18, Ross Douthat:
...Warren, to his credit, didn't pose a metaphysical question, or a biological one. He asked a legal question: "At what point does a baby get human rights, in your view?" Obama tried to dodge by saying that from a "theological perspective" or a "scientific perspective" the issue is "above his pay grade." But Warren asked a more narrow question, and one that any politician who votes on abortion laws should be able to answer. And of course, as a supporter of Roe and Casey, Obama does have an answer: He thinks that a baby acquires rights when it's born - well, perhaps depending on how and why it happens to be born - and lacks them at every juncture before birth. He just didn't want to come out and say it.
Saddleback Civil Forum on the Presidency, Satuday, August 16, 2008, Ross Douthat: Above His Pay Grade?

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