Star Parker has a column in USA Today in which she compares women who have abortions to suicide bombers.
Parker opens up her column by claiming that,
After Sept. 11, some evangelical ministers suggested the moral state of our country might have helped provoke the attacks — and they were condemned for saying so. But their basic point — that a moral accounting should be part of our national assessment of what went wrong and what needs fixing — is correct. That so many Americans don’t see this as relevant is an indication of the problem.
Count this writer as one of those who did not see the point in watching Americans investigating their alleged sinfulness. Frankly, I’ll take American-style decadence over the sort of morality that religious extremists of various faiths would prefer.
To recap, what went wrong on Sept. 11 was that a bunch of Muslim extremists used box cutters to hijack several jets and crash them into buildings. It had nothing to do with abortion, pornography, divorce, school prayer, gambling, or other alleged social ills.
Parker goes on to compare women who have abortions to Palestinian suicide bombers,
The claim that “I own myself,” that I am the ultimate arbiter of life and death, defines the common ground of the suicide bomber and the abortionist.
This is not a matter of defining at what point a fetus is a human being. This is a question of the attitude of the mother-to-be who says what is most important is that I choose, and not what the choice is.
It saddens me that Palestinians kill themselves and innocent civilians because they don’t like the choices they have. The Palestinian people have been given many choices, from the considerable territory given them in 1948 to the major territorial concessions made at Camp David. They choose death instead.
The same politicization of human life that produces suicide bombers has crept into our own society. More than 1.3 million fetuses are aborted each year.
This is the worst sort of argument by analogy — and terribly unconvincing to boot.
Source:
Countries in glass houses shouldn’t … Star Parker, USA Today, June 27, 2002.