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There is a difference between a good thing and the best thing. For example, a meal served with a delicious dessert is a good thing, but a meal in which every course is delicious is the best thing. Getting an A in one class is better than getting no A’s but not as good as getting all A’s. I think we can all understand this pretty easily. However, whether we understand it or not, sometimes we treat the good things as though they are actually the best things.
Where am I going with this? I’ll tell you. When we talk about women’s rights, we should consider whether they are good things or whether they are the best things, because many people treat them as the best things. Of course, I will say it is better to have women’s rights than not to have women’s rights, but the only way to put women’s rights first is if we are willing to say — which I am not — that women are better and more important than humanity as a whole.
If we agree human rights are actually better, then what does it mean for how we think about current issues? Well, there is one major implication which comes to mind immediately: abortion.
Whether we want to call them people or not, embryos are human, and they are a separate organism from their mother, not a part of her body. From its conception, an embryo is alive, has a different DNA structure than its mother and is of the species Homo sapiens.
In other words, it is a human being, albeit in the early stages of development. If someone doesn’t want to call an unborn child a human, that is his or her right, but it is only a sort of odd, arbitrary preference, nothing more. It is as if I didn’t want to call Idaho a state — no one could stop me, but that doesn’t change the fact that Idaho is, in fact, a state.
If we are truly concerned about human rights, then it should trouble us deeply it is legal to kill a human being in the U.S. as long as it is small enough. Not only this, but in the name of independence, they are being killed in vastly larger numbers than any other group in history. However, because we think that women’s rights are the best, rather than good, we allow this killing because it expands a woman’s choices. We love the right to choose for ourselves, but what about the right not to be killed in infancy?
It seems to me even if someone were concerned exclusively with women’s rights and didn’t care at all about human rights as a whole, he or she would at least object to aborting women before birth. Incidentally, about half of all the children aborted in the U.S. are girls.
Why aren’t women’s rights groups lobbying for them?
Women’s rights are good, but they don’t excuse killing. Standing up for the rights of all people young or old, male or female, big or small, strong or weak, especially when they cannot speak up for themselves — now that’s the best thing.
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