Who’s being absurd?

Winnipeg MP Rod Bruinooge made headlines last week when he pointed out that “Canada has far greater protections for human kidneys than we do for human fetuses.” Chair of the Parliamentary Pro-Life Caucus, Bruinooge had the courage to bring the debate back into the spotlight of the media (even though the PMO has been clear that it won’t support the debate in parliament).

Brigitte at ProWomanProLife points us to a wonderfully confused article in the Post by Colby Cosh, in which he responds to Bruinooge by calling for deregulation of organ sales instead of seriously considering the question of the rights of the unborn. I’m not even sure where to begin, especially since Brigitte and Charles Lewis have both pulled it apart.

One particularly stunning claim that Cosh makes is that “it has only been in the last 40 years that there has been any real controversy about the ethical status of abortion,” as he rails on pro-life Christian groups. Lewis does us the favour of debunking this baseless claim: “as far as the Church, its position on abortion was first laid out a bit earlier than 1968 — around 100 AD in fact.”

I wonder if Cosh has heard of Google. Or the Hippocratic Oath.

UofT Students for Life is not a religious club, but it doesn’t take a religious club to understand the Church’s position. The question for medieval philosophers and theologians was “when does life begin?” or “when does the soul enter the body?” (and no one seriously suggested birth), not “is it right to intentionally end an innocent human life?” Modern science helps to clarify the questions — life begins at conception.

The title of Cosh’s article, “Pro-Life absurdity,” seems more of a reference to the absurd response we see from pro-choicers when their views are challenged than any sort of serious critique of the pro-life position. If this is what a debate looks like, no wonder pro-choicers don’t want to have one.