By Zach Horton ’15
The Daily Princetonian coverage of abortionist Willie Parker’s Wednesday lecture reads like a transcript of Parker’s remarks. It failed to give a balanced account of the extremely controversial event. Unmentioned were the more than 35 pro-life students and faculty present and respectful throughout the event. Unmentioned was Parker’s disparaging of pro-life activists and avoidance of tough questions.
Notably, the ‘Prince’ misquoted my question to Parker and failed to report his response in full. I urged Parker to show empathy and suppose for a moment that he believed, as I and many others do, that abortion is tantamount to murder — the deliberate ending of innocent human life. I asked, “How would you act? Would you regard that belief as a private moral opinion and do nothing?” Parker avoided the force of the question, only eventually responding that he would simply have to give up his day job. His answer, however, was damning.
Only refusing to commit genocide is not to fight genocide. Likewise, simply refraining from performing abortions is not to fight abortion. To my second question, then, Parker implicitly answered “yes.” This indicates his gross unwillingness to recognize the moral gravity of abortion, and it betrays his absolute refusal even to attempt to understand why we, the members of the pro-life movement, do what we do to fight it.
Most deplorable, however, was Parker’s perverse use of civil rights language to promote abortion — the biggest civil rights crisis of our day. Abortion is the widespread discrimination against — and commonplace extermination of — a class of human beings: namely, those still in the womb. There is even more pronounced discrimination against developing human beings with medical conditions (especially Down’s Syndrome) and those of a culturally-unfavored sex (notably women in China and India). It is appalling that this discrimination and total degradation of the dignity of human life would be defended with civil rights rhetoric and the very words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Respectfully,
Zach Horton ’15
Editor's note: Zach Horton is also a member of The Daily Princetonian Editorial Board, but is writing this letter in his capacity as a member of Princeton Pro-Life who was quoted in a Feb. 19 article, “Well-being of patients most important in abortion cases, Parker argues.”Read More
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