Guest Opinion: When the Government Decides Who Lives and Who Dies

Isn't it interesting that even though every political expert repeatedly informs us that this election is all about the economy, the candidates and their super PAC's run commercials that attack the pro-life credentials of their opponents? If abortion doesn't matter, why does it keep coming up? Because the societal effects of abortion reach far beyond the single issue. 

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P>HARRISBURG, PA. (Catholic Online) - If the government can say that any of us need its approval to exist, it has actually said that about all of us.  And if our very right to our own existences has been stripped away, then we truly are just the property of an almighty State.

Isn't it interesting that even though every political expert repeatedly informs us that this election is all about the economy, the candidates and their super PAC's run commercials that attack the pro-life credentials of their opponents?

If abortion doesn't matter, why does it keep coming up? Because the societal effects of abortion reach far beyond the single issue. 

In the candidate discussions, we have been hearing a great deal about how Roe v Wade was an improper decision because the Supreme Court overstepped its bounds.  It did, but that is not why abortion is wrong.

It would still be wrong if it had been passed by Congress and signed into law by the President. The manner of legalization is irrelevant.  It is the thing that was legalized that matters here.

In the legalization of abortion the government declared that it had the ability to decide who had a right to his own life.  That legalization moved life from the category of unalienable right to privilege.  It made the existence of every person subject to the whim of the state.

If our very right to exist needs government approval, we should not be surprised when that same government is now deciding that it can impose limits and conditions on liberty or property ownership or personal opportunity. 

We should not be surprised when the same folks who defend this power of the state do not feel that they are bound by any of the rules that apply to the rest of us.  And we should not be surprised when the areas where government must grant approval for our existence begin to expand.

In the final analysis, abortion is not an issue - it is a line.  A line that says there are areas beyond the control of the state.  The right of each of us to exist is outside of that line.

In the ads currently running about abortion, some of the candidates are accusing others of allowing funding for "some abortions". 

And while the ads making those accusations are, to say the least, misleading in their presentations, the underlying fact reveals that many of the initiatives undertaken in the name of defending the lives of unborn children have allowed for exceptions to the protections being sought.

At one level, the use of the word "exceptions" is a travesty.  In a delivery room, no "exceptions" have ever appeared.  There are only ever little boys or little girls.  And no matter what difficulties surrounded the conceptions or gestations of those children - they are STILL children.

At a deeper level, the ads themselves point out the fact that the laws passed in those efforts were just as much on the wrong side of the line limiting the power of the government as Roe v Wade itself. 

It does not matter if the government declares that one person, one thousand persons, or one million persons can only exist with government approval - it's the "exist with government approval" that is the problem.

If the government can say that any of us need its approval to exist, it has actually said that about all of us.  And if our very right to our own existences has been stripped away, then we truly are just the property of an almighty State.

Fighting to protect the unalienable right of unborn boys and girls to exist is actually fighting to preserve the fundamental principle of our American heritage - that we are endowed by a Creator with rights that are beyond the reach of any government.

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Peg Luksik is the Chairman of the Center for American Heritage. Learn more about the heritage of this exceptional nation at www.centerforamericanheritage.com 

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