KILLING FETUSES, BUSINESS
AS USUAL.
Written by R. D. Parsons to
The New York Review of Books,
January 17, 2007.

To the Editor:
One generally refrains from adding two cents to a kitty into which others have deposited $20 bills. However, vis a vis the exchange between Michael Sander and Thomas Nagel (“The Case for Liberalism: An Exchange,” October 5, 2006) I wonder if I might be permitted a question and a couple of observations.

The disagreement between the learned gentlemen seems to revolve around the question of whether the moral status of the fetus does or does not bear on liberals’ ability to defend the right of abortion in the face of religious claims that it does. Query why the right to abortion cannot be defended on the grounds that the state cannot properly (morally) kill the unborn in pursuit of an ostensibly greater good if it denies that right to its individual citizens?

We already accept the killing of children and fetuses. We accept killing them whenever the state regards its interests to be in conflict with the right of the child or potential child to live. We accept killing them both through the “natural” consequences of the pursuit of our economic and political self-interest and, directly, when we bomb or fire into any area where children or pregnant women live. It would seem that the real challenge for liberals in defending abortion rights is to confront abortion opponents (by which I mean those who believe there is never—or only in cases of life and death—any justification for terminating a viable pregnancy) with the facts of life they bracket from their arguments.

Emotional prejudices are not moral principles. Yet most who object to abortion on “moral” grounds are moved to outrage only when a woman makes the decision to end a pregnancy, not when a state or agents of the state’s interests take actions that result in the same end. It would seem that the principles of justice that define our basic rights and liberties ought to be neutral with respect to substantive moral and religious controversies so long as citizens of the state hold themselves harmless from moral judgment on account of what the state does in their name. Thomas Nagel’s concern that other values may, in some cases, overpower that of liberal equality ought to be moot. The conviction on “religious” grounds that abortion is never acceptable cannot be accepted as a moral position unless those who claim it are willing to hold the state to the same standards they wish to impose on individual women. It is not a moral principle when you are content to benefit from something you forbid others to do.

—R. D. Parsons
—Raleigh, NC

GENERALS FOR PEACE.
Written by Judith Schonebaum to
The Los Angeles Times,
December 31, 2006.

To the editor:
Now that we’ve heard how the great war leaders would handle Iraq (“Four War Leaders in History,” Friday, Dec. 29, 2006), how about equal time for the “generals” of peace? I’d like to see articles about what Gandhi, Jesus, Martin Luther King, Jr. or Paul Wellstone would have done take up a whole op-ed page—people who actually made seemingly impossible conflicts better—without killing anyone, taking land, freedom or dignity. We’ve heard from the administration that all options are on the table to fix this mess, but I don’t believe it. There has not been one word about the option of working as hard for peace as they do for war. They just keep trying to convince us that we can shop our way out of this one.

At the start of the New Year and the imminent passing of our 3,000th service personnel, I have to ask—what have we become—what kind of people are we?

—Judith Schonebaum
—Idyllwild, CA

EDITOR’S NOTE:
This is a response to four historians’ conjectures on how George Washington, Julius Caesar, Ghengis Khan and Abraham Lincoln would have handled the Iraq war.

Revisited
Written by Angelique Harris to
Jet Magazine • Sept. 25, 2006