Our Calhoun moment

The internal logic of the uninhibited abortion regime has resulted in a sacramental and/or positive good view of abortion. Before the revelation of his medical school yearbook photo display embarrassed Democrats, Governor Northam extended the cheery view to infanticide. Democrats want him to disappear and take the inconvenient questions he inadvertently raised with him.

The abortion regime will be with us long after Northam disappears (as will the Dems’ cynical use of race against political opponents as in the case of Northam v. Gillespie). Boston College Professor Paul McNellis, S.J., elaborated the sacramental view of abortion promulgated in the film version of The Cider House Rules nearly twenty years ago. Writing in 2000, he commented: “Abortion as a maturing, coming-of-age experience, as a myth to live by–is this what we’re willing to swallow? Apparently. And this is what makes the film a cultural watershed, for it could not have been made even 10 years ago. In fact, it took Mr. Irving 14 years and four directors to get from novel to film. He had to wait for his audience to catch up with him. That we have done so is testimony not to his courage or foresight, but to our own corruption….”

By the same token, our own corruption permeates the positive good view of abortion. Kyle Sammin explores the analogue in the evolution of opinion about slavery culminating in the thought of John C. Calhoun. Sammin’s excellent Federalist column was written before we had Northam’s thoughts to consider, but it generally illuminates the abortion mania Northam reflects.

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