Joe Moran: Vote-winning values

Two May 12 news stories dealt with abortion – one about pending United States legislation (“Abortion bills looming in D.C., N.C.,” Under the Dome), the other about authorities in Paraguay not allowing abortion in the case of a 10-year-old girl who was raped (“Paraguay faulted in pregnant girl case,” news brief).

As flawed humans, we are complicit in life-taking every day, either directly or indirectly. We kill suspected terrorists with drone-fired missiles, and innocent family members are often the “collateral damage.”

We possess more than adequate resources yet do a poor job of addressing the fact that 5 million children in the world under the age of 5 die each year from hunger.

Abortion is not desirable, but there is something oddly disproportionate in members of Congress (the overwhelming majority of whom are male) bringing laser-like focus to the issue of women seeking an abortion while exerting comparably scant legislative effort to stem what is, in effect, the daily and untimely termination of the lives of 16,000 innocent children.

At the end of the day, it is difficult not to interpret this as having more to do with endorsing vote-winning “values,” and about the political dominance of male power brokers both religious and secular, than it does with universal moral consistency, much less with compassion.

This story was originally published May 14, 2015 at 5:53 PM with the headline "Joe Moran: Vote-winning values."