The “Extreme” Stance of Defending the Right to Life

According to one writer at The Daily Beast, Sarah Palin, Sharron Angle, Joe Miller, Christine O'Donnell, Rand Paul, Ken Buck and Carl Palladino hold an extreme stance: they oppose abortion in the cases of rape and incest.

The writer of this particular article, John Avlon, devotes his time attempting to portray the majority of the American people (including, he claims, Republicans and Tea Partiers, as supporting the idea of making abortion safe, legal and rare, that this is a hypocrisy on the part of the Tea Parties for opposing abortion and supporting limited government, and of describing what he sees as a growing trend amongst Tea Party-backed candidates to oppose abortions in cases of rape and incest as the “Palin standard”, blaming this so-called shift on Sarah Palin (what a surprise!).

Now putting aside the debate over how many Republicans are pro-life or not, how many Tea Partiers are pro-life or not, and the so-called hypocrisy of the Tea Parties (a load of crap, all of it, in my opinion), I have a few questions for Mr. Avlon: How is it authoritarian, how is it tyrannical, how is it extreme, to defend the right of children to live?  What did the baby ever do to become a child of rape or of incest, and thus have his/her life voided due to a horrific crime committed by a man upon his/her mother?  How is it crueler for the woman to allow an unborn baby to live because of how that life began?


As one who is pro-life, my stance has always been to oppose abortion no matter what, because the most important, the most sacred, of our unalienable rights as human beings is the right to life.  Without that right, we cannot enjoy the right to liberty or the right to pursue our happiness; there's frankly a reason why Thomas Jefferson put them in that order when he wrote the Declaration of Independence.

The idea of allowing the selection of unborn children to live or die is as barbaric as any act of genocide ever committed in the history of mankind.  Human life is the most precious creation in existence, more precious than any other form of life, because we are unique beings, with unique preferences, tastes, desires, beliefs, appearances, capabilities, skills; because we have souls.  How can we be anything other than heartless by supporting the selection of unborn children to live or die, no matter what the cause of that life?

Sarah Palin doesn't hold an extreme stance on abortion.  Sharron Angle doesn't hold an extreme stance.  None of the candidates mentioned by John Avlon hold an extreme stance.  They support the right to life, from conception to death; there's nothing extreme about that.  It's people like John Avlon, Lisa Murkowski, Mike Castle, David Frum, moderates, liberals, and especially progressives, who hold the extreme stances when it comes to abortion, because they hold little regard for all human life.