Passion is no excuse for spreading error
Upon seeing Hannah McLeod’s recent guest column published in these pages on May 29, my first reaction was that it belongs in the same category as those rants whose message boils down to, “It’s da Jooz.”
Ms. McLeod’s seething anger about what she perceives, rightly or wrongly, as the victimization of the identity groups she most cares about may explain her passion, and may even call forth sympathy for their — and her — wounds. However, her fervor does not excuse her vicious caricatures of the views and motivations of those with whom she disagrees and her distortion of facts that she should have checked before writing about them. As the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan said, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but no one is entitled to his own facts.” A basic principle of good analysis — which she ought to have been taught at App State — is to base it on primary sources before expressing definite opinions. This she evidently has not done.
A case in point is her description of the Alabama Human Life Protection Act (to give it its proper title). It is blatantly false to assert, as she does, that, “a woman who gets an abortion in Alabama after being raped could serve a longer prison sentence than the man who raped her.” Section 5 of the bill explicitly states that, “No woman upon whom an abortion is performed or attempted to be performed shall be criminally or civilly liable.”
It is also worth noting that the bill was written by a woman, voted for by women as well as men (who themselves were voted into office by women as well as men), and signed by a woman (who was elected to office by women and men). It is simply nonsense to represent this act by a democratically elected legislature as some dark conspiracy of the patriarchy, unless the real sense of such an assertion is to incite hatred against the group that is the target of her ire.
It is true that there are no exceptions for rape or incest in the Alabama HLPA. On the assumption that the lives being protected are human — which is an objective fact, there being no such thing as a generic zygote or embryo or fetus — it would follow that a bill seeking the protection of all innocent human life would have no such exceptions.
Ms. McLeod, and indeed any supporter of these exceptions (including, I’m sorry to say, Mr. Trump and too many Republicans) have yet to explain why children conceived as a consequence of someone else’s crime should receive a capital sentence when the perpetrator of the offence is not subject to a similar penalty. If punishing the innocent is morally repugnant, and it is, punishing the innocent while not as severely punishing the guilty is even more repellent, and actually puts those who do it on the same level as the infamous practice in Islamist cultures of stoning rape victims to death whilst letting their assailants off with lighter, if any, punishments.
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If Ms. McLeod intended to enlighten and inflame her readers, her column was a complete failure. The most (and I deliberately say “most,” not, “best”) it can have done was to affirm the existing bigotries — whether anti-old people, anti-Christian, anti-white European male, anti- conservative, anti-wealth, anti-American — of those who already agree with her. This means it was a waste of time (of which she claims to have so little) and of ink, since “haters gonna hate” no matter what.
If she intended to offend and inflame some of her readers, she had some measure of success –—perhaps more than she counted on in my case: I am not, in fact, among the class of conservative Evangelicals she so disdains. I am instead a Catholic who, unlike many prominent leftist politicians (Pelosi, Gillibrand, Biden, Durbin, etc.) actually believes all that his Church teaches.
However, any offense I have taken at what and how she has written, is far outweighed by prayer (in which I’m sure many of my Evangelical brethren join) that she be delivered from the anger that rages within her before it consumes her and others, and that she — and they — find grace, mercy and peace from the One Lord Who is the only sure Source of Truth and Life. For my part, I shall ask that a Mass to be offered for her.
Samuel Edwards is from Waynesville, where he lives and works. He holds degrees in music, religion and theology. Formerly an Episcopal and Anglican minister, he now helps prepare adults for Baptism and Confirmation in the Catholic Church at his local parish. This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
