As an intellectual exercise today, I’d like us to deal with an analogy.
a·nal·o·gy /əˈnaləjē/
noun -“a comparison between two things, typically for the purpose of explanation or clarification.“
Oftentimes when dealing with a moral problem, it helps to take a step back and look at the problem with fresh eyes and in a different context. So please bear with me…
Where I used to live in East Tennessee, there were several places where two lanes went down to a one-lane road. Often going under an overhead train crossing, or sometimes down a secluded country trail. Unfortunately, many of those roads had no shoulders on the sides. Instead, there were huge ditches that could ruin the underside of your vehicle.
Put that road going around the side of a mountain, and that drop off could mean life or death. This is a story about life and death. About rights and choices, and the lives they affects. Anyway, back to my analogy…
Let’s imagine you’re headed out for a court date. You’re barreling down the narrow one-lane country road from your house headed to your county courthouse. You have to answer to the judge for a bucket-full of speeding tickets. If you miss your court appearance and paying your fines today, you will most certainly spend months in jail. But right now, all your plans now have come to a literal stop.
A blind man is standing in the middle of that narrow road leading from your home.
You roll down your window and ask if you can help him move to one side. You explain it is dangerous for him to be in the middle of the road, and wandering in the middle of nowhere.
No response. He is either deaf as well as blind or mentally impaired. And you are about to be late for court.
The blind man doesn’t mean to obstruct your way, but he is scared and confused. In frustration, you tap your horn thinking maybe he might be able to hear that. That causes him to jump and frightens him even more.
Unfortunately, he is still not moving.
You step out of your car now, hoping to coax him to the side of the road. But he does not respond to you. And even if he did, fencing and high brush line either side of the road as is often the case in the country. There is no shoulder in the road where he can stand out of the way, and the road is way to narrow for your car to fit around him.
As you sit back in your car again in frustration, a thought enters your mind. Technically, he is jaywalking. You have the right of way, in fact you own the road. He is trespassing on your property. Whomever let him out is ultimately responsible for allowing him to wander away.
There are lots of things you can’t know, but one thing you do know: If you don’t hurry, you’ll miss your court appearance and be headed to jail for months. Maybe even as many as nine months.
Wow, that’s a long time! So what do you do?
Honestly, I don’t know. But I do know one solution that would fix your problem instantly. It’s an extreme measure, but you are about to lose all your freedom and go to jail. A year of your life and possibly much of your future may be ruined if you don’t act now.
So what’s my extreme solution? Well, you could always just run the man over with your car and breeze on down the road. Voila, problem fixed!
“Ridiculous!” you say.
“Oh really?” I reply.
People take innocent life everyday, all in the name of inconvenience. Just remove the blind man and replace him with a fetus.
My little analogy demands we answer the following question: When do I have the right to kill you? Most civilized people would answer I am right in killing you ONLY if you are trying to kill me. And not even always then. If I can incapacitate you or stop you from killing me in any other way, that would be preferable to me killing you.
In fact, all decent people will do everything possible to avoid killing another human being. Heck, I even swerve my car to avoid the rabbit that run out of the bushes at night and onto our street. How much more so should we avoid killing another person!
Why? Because that is the worst thing you can do to someone else – to end their life.
You have never violated human rights so much as when you end a person’s most basic right – to live.
But when you make the choice to back up your car, build up some speed and plow into the blind man, you’ve become the most selfish of humans. You’ve ended someone else’s very existence simply because they were inconvenient and threatened to change your plans.
You may argue I have no right to judge you for running the blind man over, since I’ve never been in your circumstance. Although you’re right, no reasonable person would argue I can’t put myself enough in your shoes simply because I’m not quite literally in them.
You also may argue that, since the man is blind, he’s not really as much human as you and me. He can’t function at the same capacity we do, so therefore it’s unfair to define him as human. So taking his life would not be a bad thing, especially considering you’d be putting him out of the misery of blindness.
I mean, who really wants a blind man anyway? “Every person a wanted person”, right?
With enough rationalizing acrobatics, you may convince yourself running him over is the right thing. Except no one with any shred of human decency would agree with you. That same argument about him not being quite human was used by people to rationalize slavery, and also the slaughter of the Jews in Nazi Germany.
Surely you don’t belong in that company.
But despite all reason, despite the man’s intrinsic human rights, and not to mention the thought that he, like you, was created in the image of God, you start backing up your car. You hear the gravel on the dirt road crunching under your tires. After you come to a stop a few yards behind, you hit the gas pedal.
Before the moment of impact, just to guard against any PTSD down the road, you close you eyes. Wouldn’t want that picture embedded in your memory. And if I should post of picture of that moment of impact, you’d surely attack me as insensitive and hateful.
There is still the problem of the sound of his scream along with the dull thug of his body again the hood of your car. But a few restful months spent not in jail should erase that memory.
Of course no analogy is perfect – they all break down at some point. You may protest my example isn’t a fair comparison, and you’re probably right in some respects. But it’s hard to argue that for any reason short of saving your own life you have the right to take someone else’s. That’s because its hard to drown out the sound of logic, no matter how loudly you yell about your own rights.
Having the right of way is important when it comes to traffic safety. But it has no importance whatsoever when balanced against saving a human life. Respect for another’s right to life is more basic than a religious conviction – it is at the core of simply being a human being.
When it comes to life, your right of way is completely irrelevant. Because life is the greatest right of all.
For further thought – https://notthebee.com/article/ten-quick-replies-to-common-pro-abortion-arguments-and-assertions
