Wandering in the Wilderness

In his latest column, Andrew Sullivan praises Hillary Clinton's speech on abortion last week. He begins,

Hillary Rodham Clinton is absolutely right. I've waited quite a few years to be able to write that sentence, but, hey, if you live long enough... I'm referring to her superb speech earlier this week on the politics and morality of abortion. There were two premises to Senator Clinton's argument and they are quite simple: a) the right to legal abortion should remain and b) abortion is always and everywhere a moral tragedy. It seems to me that if we are to reduce abortions to an absolute minimum (and who, exactly, opposes that objective?), then Clinton's formula is the best, practical approach.

My questions are simple: Mr. Sullivan (and Senator Clinton), exactly why is abortion a moral tragedy, and exactly why should abortion be rare? The answer to both is ultimately the same: because abortion is the deliberate killing of an innocent human being. But if this is the case, how is the first of Senator Clinton's premises as outlined by Mr. Sullivan in any way defensible? Simple: it isn't.

Mr. Sullivan proceeds to extol the senator's recommendation of contraception as a means to achieve the goal of abortion as "safe, legal, and rare," along the way villifying the Catholic Church's teaching on the matter: "By focussing on contraception, she appeals to all those who oppose abortion but who do not follow the Catholic hierarchy's rigid restrictions on the surest way to prevent them."

The unfortunate fact is, Mr. Sullivan doesn't understand sex. He doesn't understand its purpose or its nature. And his lack of understanding pervades virtually every moral issue which in any way touches upon sexuality.

Someone send him Christopher West's stuff! (This article would be a good place to begin.)