Continuing this series on false premises and lame logic, let's take a look at the abortion "debate." One hardly need mention the irrationality of killing someone because you think killing is wrong. The doctor who was murdered yesterday in Kansas was the victim of this illogic. So are the tens of thousands of victims of "collateral damage" in bombings in Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. Because "terrorists" killed 3,000 Americans in 2001, we're going to kill many times that number of innocent people in pursuit of said "terrorists" (and terrorize many times more whom we drive from their homes and traumatize by killing their family members).

But rather than trying to untangle that knot, let's just examine the premise that abortion is wrong because human life is sacred.

To believe this, one really has to ignore just about every aspect of human life. If human life is so sacred, why not protest avoidable poverty, tens of thousands of unnecessary infant deaths due to lack of water purification that costs pennies? Why not work to support anti-malaria measures that would save milliions of sacred human lives? Why not work to end war or to protect children from environmental contaminants that kill thousands every year? Why not oppose capital that kills innocents or long prison sentences for victimless crimes?

Those who claim they oppose abortion in defense of the sacredness of human life (and don't devote energy and passion to any of these other causes) are speaking non-sense.

Fellow PT blogger Peter Singer has written eloquently on this question. One argument he's made is that if human life is sacred because of and consciousness, then an adult chimp's life is more sacred than a brain-damaged infant human's. The chimp's intelligence and consciousness is undeniably more developed than the infant's. On the other hand, if it's simply being a Homo sapiens that makes life sacred, why is a three week old fetus more deserving of our concern than a three year old child in Guatemala – or one living in poverty within miles of where you're reading this now?

Dear anti abortion crusaders: Human life is not sacred. Save your breath.