We are the choosers but must we also be hypocrites?

Let's cut to the chase on the issues of choice, abortion, and the right to life. They are all the same issue. They all tell us the same thing. If we want to choose who gets to come into the world we must then admit that we control and must choose to be consistent about it. What's the point of saying Charlie can get born if we routinely pay taxes to create armies that will have Charlie leaving in a box when he is 33?

Complexity

What is complex is not the choice but why it is a problem. The minute we admit we are in fact the stewards of life itself, we become the boss.

Do we thus leave God out? That is the right to life argument. But what if God is not on the side of human beings who deny our control over things. What if God is on the side of those who are willing to say who has the right to life from start to finish -- just like God would do if he wanted to withdraw choice from us.

We will not convince those who are comfortable with the right to life and massive military force, even though in this situation consistency really is bliss. The only rational and ultimately acceptable position is to respect life in every way.

Reverence

Albert Schweitzer is the model for cogent thinking on this matter. The smartest Biblical mind in the 19th century retired to a simple medical career in Gabon to free himself from the toxic debate which is still painfully with us.

I know women intimately whose opinion about right to life would be lethal if impulse could kill. We have evidence in continued attacks on abortion clinics and Trump bile against choice that the armies on both sides are loaded for bear. Big deal. It is boring, mindless, illogical and ultimately a lost cause.

One way only

We are the triage masters.

We always have been and always will be. That is why we need to evolve and are in fact building, a world based on mutual responsibility, acknowledged fallibility and the slow progress of continuity. We decide if pregnancy proceeds. Nature already zaps a zillion little indices of life as the deed is completed. We decide if thousands will die in a war.

We decide if we will open the world, Trumplike, to the depredations of airborne diseases. What we call acts of God are most often sins of omission.

This argument will not be won with these words. If words could do it, a few classic texts show us that what hobbles us is not our essential nature but the hypocrisies we create. Hypocrisies and double binds (Bateson) enable our lesser angels to prevail. The beat goes on. Making the world beatific is what life is all about.