Abortionists, Suicide Bombers, and American Morality:
JR Steps into the Fray with USA Today and Star Parker

Update, April 2003: We just received a very interesting letter from a college student who had the memorable opportunity to see Star Parker speak in person.

JR notes: "I'm gonna write a letter about this!" As Rachel will attest, rarely a day goes by that I don't vow to write a letter about one of the indignities that we all encounter during our daily existence. As the busy days go by, the list of letters grows vast. But every now and then, I stumble across something so outrageous/ridiculous that a letter just spews out of me. This last happened in late June 2002, when USA Today published an editorial by Ms. Star Parker wherein she compared "abortionists" to suicide bombers in an attempt to prove what I felt was an ill-conceived point about American morality. I quickly jotted off a mocking letter to USA Today, but the real piece of work was the letter I sent to Star personally care of her organization (as yet, she has not responded back). Before you read my response, you'll want to get acquainted with Star's take on American morality, which is just a tad bit different than my own. It takes a lot to get a letter out of me these days. Congratulations, Star Parker.

Dear Ms. Parker,

I am writing you care of your organization to express my deep disappointment in the opinion piece "Countries in Glass Houses" you published in USA Today last week.

At first, the title of your editorial caught my eye. I thought you might be someone who was ready to raise the difficult moral issues our country needs to face. Since 9/11, it has not been easy to do that. Initially, I thought your article might go out on such a limb. Clearly, you understand that we have a number of very serious cultural and political problems in this country. We're not going to realize the promise of our ideals if we're not willing to go through a process of moral inquiry, both individually and as a country.

But as I read further, I realized that you were not putting yourself through that type of inquiry, rather, you were placing the blame for our country's moral crises on a specific group of people you call "abortionists." I honestly don't know of any such group. I have never been to, or heard about, a meeting of "abortionists." These co-called "abortionists" you are blaming for our moral decay come in every political flavor, and many of them are religious people. My mother, for example, is a pro-choice minister. Even George W. Bush, who is hardly an abortionist, has asserted that deeply moral people have to "agree to disagree" on this very difficult issue.

Your opening sentence is misleading. The evangelical ministers you cite took heat after 9-11 primarily because, under the supposed guise of questioning our country's moral fiber, they tried to assign some blame for the terrorist attack on American "pagans, abortionists, feminists, homosexuals, and the American Civil Liberties Union." They were criticized, I think fairly, for making divisive comments and singling out groups of Americans at a time when it was so important that we all try to stand together. These ministers' comments were a poor choice to refer to - I do not know of a brave moral inquiry that does not begin by taking a look at yourself (Before I go further here, let me practice what I'm preaching and acknowledge that I have a long ways to go myself. I have to look in the mirror and ask myself if there isn't more I could to help make our country a better place).

But the most disturbing part of your piece was the parallel you drew between "abortionists" and Palestinian suicide bombers. Having watched many women in my life agonize over the issue of abortion, I'm troubled by your assertion that having an abortion is the moral equivalent of blowing up as many people as you can for a cause. How can you possibly equate the taking of an unborn life inside your own body with the intentional destruction of others? If having an abortion involved putting a bomb in your belly that would later explode and kill those around you, then the parallel might be valid, but only then. Even if you are correct in your belief that all abortions are morally suspect, your analogy is reckless.

Something else you didn't address in your piece: Palestinian suicide bombers are deeply religious. In fact, the religious conviction that they will be honored in the afterlife is a key aspect of why they are willing to sacrifice their own lives. Is it possible that belief in the afterlife, a commonality in most major religions, is a crucial part of the problem we're dealing with here? You assert that when we don't have religious clarity, we don't respect or value our own lives. But what if the opposite is really what's true, and we'd value our own lives more if we couldn't fall back on eternal life for comfort? Your argument that suicide bombers lack the moral certainty that religion could provide them is accurate only in reverse: religion provides suicide bombers with the moral certainty to carry out their attacks.

Sadly, your statement that "respect for the sanctity of life is at the core of all religion" is wishful thinking. Most religions do not offer the same consideration to those who do not share their particular faith. That is why the Palestinians are able to kill deeply religious Israelis. The suicide bombers' reverence for Palestinian life does not extend to Israeli life. There is a parallel in U.S. history. Our forefathers' belief that God was on our side led to the doctrine of Manifest Destiny, which provided a religious justification for the killing of American Indians and the acquisition of Indian land by force. The Indians had their own devout religious beliefs, but in this case, we saw ourselves as the "chosen people" with the one true religion, and we had the weapons arsenal to back it up - thus establishing a morally complicated foundation that our country is still grappling with.

Reading your article reminded me of another parallel that you did not consider: the overlap between the world views of Islamic Extremists and Christian Evangelicals. Both groups generally find the relative acceptance of homosexuals and the relative power of American women (including the right to abortion) morally repugnant aspects of American society. In fact, Christian conservatives appointed by George Bush to attend U.N. human rights conferences have been teaming up with nations such as Iran, Iraq, Libya, and Sudan to oppose abortion and gay rights internationally. I am by no means suggesting that Christian evangelicals are terrorists. In fact, such a parallel would be just as unfair as your parallel between suicide bombers and abortionists. But I do think this example underscores how we all have to be willing to question our own belief systems to ensure we are not part of the problem we are criticizing.

Finally, your statement that "Americans are losing a sense of the sacred regarding how we live and even life itself" is misleading. In truth, throughout American history there have been struggles to get all human life recognized as equally sacred. True, modern American society has a great deal of moral decadence, but it's funny how whenever someone says that we are "losing our way" morally, they never reference a specific time period in the past that we should be looking to for inspiration. But of course, that's because there's no time in our country's past that is morally sounder than the present. Just to cite one example, recently there was an photo exhibit in Georgia documenting the morally abhorrent practice of lynching, which, thankfully, is now part of our past. Clearly, it is not as simple as saying, "we used to have our act together, but now we're out of control." In fact, each American era has had deep moral problems. Perhaps the only thing we can say with certainty is that we haven't made nearly enough progress as we should have. Perhaps we've made very little. One thing I will grant you: in an age of nuclear and chemical weapons and a melting polar ice cap, the stakes of human morality have never been higher. We all have to take a hard look at ourselves if we're going to move forward, and we have to somehow do it together. Now that would be a proud day for America!

And one more thing: let's both acknowledge that using the Middle East conflict to support our arguments about American society is ultimately manipulative and unfair. The situation in the Middle East is too complex and important to be used as an analogy like we both just did. To imply that either the Israelis or the Palestinians have the absolute moral high ground would not be fair to either party and what it at stake: the future of their respective peoples. Let's save that discussion for another time when it can be addressed thoughtfully, and lead to a greater understanding.

Thank you for reading my comments.

Jon Reed