Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Personhood, Race and the Unborn

From the Observer:
Group starts petition in support of Obama

"The College Democrats, the NAACP, the Black Students Association, La Alianza, the First Class Steppers and the Hispanic alumni group MEChA have given their support to the petition drive, according to Miller."
[...]
"'Being a Catholic isn't based on one particular thing and I just think that more tolerance is needed in this community,' said Tipton."

It's good to see reasonable, peaceful action from the other side (other than a few people simply showing up and shouting at speakers during ND Response rallies.) But I really wish that this issue would not be turned into an issue of race. I know I don't care whether Barack Obama is black, white, green or purple. I do care about his policies and how they affect the born AND unborn. I judge people on their actions, not on their skin color, because that's what I've always been taught to do.

1,452 black babies die from abortion every day in this country. And Obama seems not to have a problem with this. I wonder how many of these students know about Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, and her love affair with the eugenics movement which sought to keep blacks and other "undesirables" from having "too many" children.

It wasn't so long ago in our nation that black people were not considered persons, either. (Remember the Three-Fifths Compromise and the Dred Scott decision from your high school history classes?) Even after emancipation the repressive Jim Crow laws kept black Americans from exercising the full rights of citizenship. Yes, we have come a long way, and I can understand that the first black president is a powerful symbol for all that has been accomplished. Is it really something to celebrate, though, if that president denies the rights of personhood to another powerless, voiceless group - the unborn?

But for some strange reason, our opposition to Obama is being characterized as intolerance by our fellow students. I'd argue that denying the personhood of the unborn is about as intolerant as it gets.

2 comments:

Chad said...

The unfortunate point of this article is the fact that the arguments made by this group are essentially the same as those made by Fr. Jenkins. They don't stand up to reason. It is the "Faithful Citizenship" dodge, in which people try to claim that violating life issues are "not that bad" (as pointed out by the speaker on Sunday). And, as has been pointed out, the issue is also especially obedience to the Bishops, which has clearly been violated, and no good aspects of this Presidency will erase.

Christina said...

Yes, it was pretty flimsy stuff, and sadly they were taking their cues from the administration, especially with the bit about how he represents "our Catholic values."

Now I'm definitely biased, and I know the Observer doesn't always tell the whole story, but I didn't find their arguments at all compelling as stated in the article. "But Obama is so awesome, and I cried when he was elected" was about all I got out of it. (Yeah, I cried too, but for a totally different reason.)