Smart Catholic at LSU. Silly secularist at LSU.

Go read this great column by Emily Byers in Louisiana State University's Daily Reveille. Here's the clincher:

If you advocate abortion, you must be willing to admit that your mother had the right to "terminate" your life should she have chosen to do so. You must be willing to admit that your mother had the right to take a drug to expel your tiny body from her womb or to ask an abortionist to poison you, dismember you or by some other device end your life before you were born.

You're free of course to stand with the nihilists and cynics to say your mother could have aborted you, but it doesn't matter. You're free to cite reasons why "abortion should be legal but rare," such as pregnancies resulting from rape or incest or pregnancies which endanger the life of the mother.

On the other hand, you might acknowledge that abortion always means ending the life of a child in the womb and is therefore neither acceptable nor justifiable. This is why abortion is especially tragic for us: at least one-fifth of our generation was denied the right to life thanks to the "safe and legal medical procedure" of abortion.

We have no way of knowing what those killed in the womb could have
contributed to society. What if abortion murdered someone who could have
discovered the cure for AIDS? Or the next great saint of our times, the next
John Paul II or Mother Teresa? Or a future president of the United States?
Abortion has sent millions of our generation to an untimely death. Should your
mother or mine have chosen to "terminate" us, we would be victims not survivors
of the American holocaust.

Here's the exceedingly lame response, also in The Daily Reveille:

American statesman and reformer Carl Schurz said, "If you are to be free, there is but one way; it is to guarantee an equally full measure of liberty to all your neighbors, there is no other.

"This month's back and forth dialogue about women's reproductive rights has taken a repulsive turn for the worse. For some, our arguments have become irrational and unsubstantiated and for others we have not made clear the exact implication of our line of reasoning. Regardless, we cannot explicitly make evaluations impertinent and offensive and expect to be respected or even taken seriously.

It is my belief that college is a place to unearth your identity; a cultured encounter of how to deal with others' convictions that may vary from your own, a chance to teach and be taught and an opportunity to holistically become a well-rounded individual who is willing to compromise and sacrifice even if it is just a small piece of ourselves for the
betterment of humanity.

Have we become so meddling and uncompromising that we think it's our responsibility to interfere in other people's private matters and condemn them according to our limited knowledge of their way of life? We can voice our opinions generously, giving out as much advice as is welcomed or not welcomed in some cases, but we cannot forget that ultimately it is the entitlement of a single person to choose what is best for their lives. No matter what amount of philosophy, ethics or logic we doctor our opinions up with it is merely a judgment, it does not suffice to merit complete certainty, nor does it make us experts on any matter vital or dismissive.

Here's my first impression: ??????????????????????

ALL RIGHT, here's my second take: As a former Reveille reporter, editor and columnist, I am -- to say the least -- disappointed not only with Shanelle Matthews' fatuous reasoning but also with her slipshod execution (pun unintended). Even wrongheaded opinions deserve a better airing than this, so that they might be more clearly understood . . . and clearly rejected.

Here is my brief response to the central premise of "none of your business." I respond as a Catholic, and as someone who sees radical individualism as a dead end . . . and a lonely one at that.

If you seek to kill your child in the womb, it IS my business -- as an American concerned for the impact your individual choice has on our collective existence, and as a human being grieved that you want to kill my brother or sister. A fellow child of God.

That. Makes. It. My. Business.

Not only is that baby's life not yours to take, your life is not yours to use or misuse as you please. You see, Christ bought and paid for it at Calvary almost 2,000 years ago.

Now, let's look at Ms. Matthews' lede:

American statesman and reformer Carl Schurz said, "If you are to be free, there is but one way; it is to guarantee an equally full measure of liberty to all your neighbors, there is no other.

And if you are to be free, there is but one starting point; it is to have the inalienable right to exist. If the smallest, and weakest, members of the human race -- and biology tells us those would be children in their mothers' wombs -- haven't the liberty to even be born, we are utterly incapable of guaranteeing any measure of liberty to any of our other neighbors.

So . . . let's talk about neighbors for a second. From Mark, Chapter 12:

28
5 One of the scribes, when he came forward and heard them disputing and saw how well he had answered them, asked him, "Which is the first of all the commandments?"
29
Jesus replied, "The first is this: 'Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is Lord alone!
30
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.'
31
The second is this: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these."

And, for a pregnant woman, who is her neighbor? Without a doubt, her closest and most intimate neighbor is her unborn child.

Burning your neighbor to death with saline solution; dislodging him with RU-486; dismembering him and then vacuuming him up with a suction tube; or partially delivering him breech then puncturing his skull and sucking his brains out is not love. No matter how one tries to obscure the truth inside a semantic fog.

One does not free people by killing them. And one does not guarantee basic human rights through extermination . . . either in gas chambers or in millions of individual wombs.

Furthermore, if I have the fundamental "right" to kill my closest neighbor, by what twisted logic may society or its governors prevent me from killing whomever else I damn well please?

Which leaves the rest of Ms. Matthews' whining rant rather superfluous, doesn't it? I sincerely hope, during her LSU experience, she "unearths" an "identity" that does not confuse "individual freedom" with a license to kill.