A PERSPECTIVE COMPARISON

This is in answer to certain political questions I've been asked lately.

Think about it this way.  You come home from a weekend away and find that a homeless bum has moved into your house in your absence.  He’s used your food, your water, your electricity, your heating, and stolen a few items here and there.  What’s more, when you politely offer to let him leave before you call the police, he insists that he has a perfect right to be there.  Why?  Because while you were gone he swept the floor and did the laundry and even washed the dishes.  Also, because – he claims – his great-great-great grandfather used to live here, so he’s got a right to the land, and the house, and everything in it.  What’s more, he wails, he’ll absolutely die – of hunger, or cold, or something – if you throw him out. 

Do you have a moral, as well as legal, right to cast him out? 

Now let’s pull back the focus and look at a larger scale.  You find that a bunch of uninvited people have sneaked into your country, have used a lot of your public (taxpayer-funded) services and stolen quite a few items here and there.  What’s more, they insist that they have a perfect right to be there because they’ve done a lot of menial labor cheaply.  Also, because their great-great-great grandparents used to rule this land, they have a perfect right to the land today and everything that’s in it.  What’s more, they wail, they’ll absolutely die of poverty if you send them back to Mexico. 

Do you have a moral, as well as legal, right to cast them out? 

Now let’s pull in closer.  You discover that, despite your precautions, you’re pregnant.  The embryo is leaching nutrients out of your blood, bones and organs, and threatens your health with continued, and increasing, physical stress.  Finally, it threatens your life – millions of women have died in childbirth – if it continues to stay.  Various advocates insist that you must leave the embryo where it is because it’s your “duty”, because – simply by being a “person” (though it isn’t, yet) it has a perfect right to use your body, and because it will die if you have it removed from your uterus. 

Do you have a moral, as well as legal, right to cast it out? 

Yes, ultimately they arethe same problem.  

--Leslie <;)))><