Kate Cormack: All laws impose moral limits on our choices & bodily autonomy
Being pro-life isn’t about tyranny, it’s about the exact opposite
Stuff co.nz 3 June 2019
Family First Comment: Boom! Kate Cormack destroys the arguments of ALRANZ’s American lobbyist Terri Ballamak..
“No law can ever rightly be called a just law if it denies one group of human beings their fundamental human rights simply because they are deemed to be unwanted by another bigger and stronger group of human beings.”
#chooselife
OPINION: In her latest opinion piece (published on Stuff, May 30), Terry Bellamak, head of the NZ abortion lobby group ALRANZ, has come out swinging against MP Alfred Ngaro. She even goes as far as to suggest that pro-lifers are promoters of tyranny.
What Bellamak seems to be forgetting in the midst of her emotive hyperbole is the fundamental truth that all laws impose moral limits on our choices and bodily autonomy.
I can’t consume excessive amounts of alcohol, get behind the wheel of a car, while claiming that any law intended to stop me from doing this is somehow a form of tyranny against my bodily autonomy.
Nor can I assault another person in the street, and then claim that tyrants are forcing me to make unwilling sacrifices to cede to their moral demands if they intervene to try to bring an end to my actions.
In fact, this same basic principle is true of all abortion laws as well. They too are based on a moral framework, and place limits on when, where and how abortions can legally take place.
Or is Bellamak advocating we adopt an extreme approach to this issue? Does she envisage a New Zealand where there are no laws at all regarding abortion? That we should be free to abort anyplace, anyhow, and at anytime we like before the unborn child has left the birth canal?
The important principle that she seems to have missed is that just and humane laws always balance personal choice against the common good of the wider community.
No law can ever rightly be called a just law if it denies one group of human beings their fundamental human rights simply because they are deemed to be unwanted by another bigger and stronger group of human beings.
Being pro-life isn’t about the promotion of tyranny, just the opposite in fact.
* Kate Cormack is a media spokeswoman and educator for Voice for Life New Zealand.
READ MORE: https://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/113121733/being-prolife-isnt-about-tyranny-its-about-the-exact-opposite?cid=app-iPhone
