Absence of billboards in the womb

With all the temerity most have for the treatment of a topic so uniquely inspirational for irrational lunatics of all persuasions, I would like to discuss abortion. Mindful that the zealots who missed the reference to themselves in the previous sentence are already sharpening their steel invective, I will rashly state my opinion at the beginning. Abortion is abominable. The longer I think about it, the more abominable it seems. If our society is lucky, our great-great-grandchildren will talk about us as condescendingly as we talk about the slave-owners on the wrong side of our nation's most violent culture war.

In case the thrust of your steely invective was to call me an irrational religious fanatic, zealots, I will admit happily to possessing a large number of unambiguously religious principles, though calling a sinner like me a fanatic seems a little too complimentary. I am perplexed, though, about why my religiosity is at issue, since my scriptures (the usual ones) do not forbid abortion explicitly. Sure, in defiance of all the evidence, Christianity and Judaism both consider human life to be sacred, but where do they say that fetuses are human? The Hebrew Scriptures do speak of being "knitted together" in the womb, but this is a rather dubious distinction. The argument from Scripture that fetuses are human will have to demonstrate more than kinship with sweaters.

The sacredness of human life is hardly an exclusively Judeo-Christian principle, anyway. Isn't the sacredness of the individual inherent in these civil rights that we moderns hold so dear? Unless there is something sacred about his being human, why should every otherwise worthless slouch be allowed to waste beautiful silence explaining his ludicrous notions to the world?

In any case, it seems to me that the abominability of abortion ought to be apparent to any rational person, though if it were not also apparent to many irrational persons, the pro-life camp would be much smaller. Even if protecting a small clump of cells does not seem morally intuitive — even if no fetuses with beating hearts were ever terminated — the rate at which these clumps are destroyed should trouble us.

I used to think that the terms "pro-life" and "pro-choice" were the mere sloganeering of well-organized propaganda machines. This is undoubtedly the case, but witlessly or not, the terms are singularly apt. The violence and hatred of our fellow patriots lying at the heart of our national discourse really concerns a war between life and choice. Which do we value more? The semblance of freedom that unmitigated autonomy allows us? Or life?

Sadly, we cannot choose choice. Like all the choices which allegedly disclose who we are — the choice to buy Pepsi or Coke, Reebok or Nike, PC or Mac — the choice to kill your unborn child is a pseudo-choice. Choosing between murder and a long life with a child you do not want is no choice at all. Real freedom and real respect for life do not exist in a culture where this choice is even thinkable.

But your choice must be preserved. So say the same voices that tell you to buy Coach and Lacoste disclose who you really are. After all, if you can return defective purses and polos — wearing imperfect articles would disclose who you really are as a shabby person — why can't you return the ultimate accessory to a glamorous sex life? As we speak, the bourgeois with forceps and poisonous chemicals invade the womb, a realm curiously free from capitalism in other respects. This perhaps explains why it is so easy to treat the fetus like a commodity, like an object subject to our consumerist preferences. This fetus does not choose and cannot buy anything. And what, we ask, is the use of a human being entirely immune to advertising? David Schaengold is a philosophy major from Cincinnati, Ohio. He can be reached at dschaeng@princeton.edu.