What is life? What is freedom? Who decides?
When you discuss one of the most sensitive subjects in the national dialogue, words matter. And so America’s abortion debate has come to center on definitions: What is life? What is freedom? Who should defend them?
This journal exists, as I’ve described, to bring “intelligent discourse on the culture of life.” That is, to use words to articulate the crux of society’s disagreement over abortion rights intelligently–with facts, with insight, and with reason. If any of us–feminists, scholars, Christians–are to have an opinion on abortion, we must understand it enough to articulate it. In these pages, I welcome all arguments so long as they are laced with thoughtful intelligence.
Make no mistake: I have an agenda. I am Catholic. I believe that legalized abortion is a great blight in our nation’s history, and I believe framing it as an issue of “choice” is misguided. That said, I decided to launch “The Three Points” because I realize that one needn’t be a rosary-toting churchgoer to believe that abortion violates the principal right on which all democracies and just societies are based: life. This is for everyone.
By weaving in current news, scientific discoveries and political philosophy, this journal will present three weekly points to argue that the right to freedom must always submit to the right to life. In the ongoing abortion debate, citizens–not Catholics, or Jews, or Democrats or stay-at-home moms–must use reason to guide their voice. Otherwise, this clashing of ideas is just words.
