Do You Feel Lucky?

(and feel free to comment! My older posts are certainly no less relevant to the burning concerns of the day.)

Thursday, August 31, 2006

The Tough Topics #4: ABORTION

Yeah, that's right. This is the big one. ABORTION. I bet you thought I wouldn't have the sheer brass to tackle an issue like this! In a blog? In fact, you'd probably be saying to yourself, who does this chump think he is? But you'd be wrong about that, as you can see.

Abortion is arguably the single most bitterly-divisive issue in American politics since Slavery. One might say no, "dude - Vietnam!" But I laugh at that suggestion. Vietnam was a deep ditch of agonizing hell and crisis for the whole country to drag itself through, no doubt. And actual physical war exacts tolls that no more purely political issue can touch. But in terms of lasting political impact - honestly, Watergate had more impact than Vietnam. Vietnam has ended up as merely the most prominent early entry in an ongoing series of handwringings over whom we ought or oughtn't invade.

Hey - which is not to denigrate that issue! It's an important issue. But I'm talking about ABORTION here. You bring up abortion in a crowded room, you can hear a pin drop. Nobody wants to open that can of worms! Nobody on either side of the debate even wants to hear the other side. The few times I've heard a conversation start between two people not-in-agreement about abortion, it's always ended up with both parties simultaneously reciting patches of the official position platform for their side, "talking" over each other at a volume just a tad under full scream. Decades after both the Fall of Saigon and Roe v. Wade, you don't see that happening in conversations about 'Nam. And I'll tell you something else - nobody's making any Sylvester Stallone movies about abortion, either!

This issue is in a class of its own. Global Warming? Secondhand Smoke? The Death Penalty? Evolution vs. Intelligent Design? Don't make me scoff. None of these issues gets people at each others' throats the way abortion does. No argument can crack it. All attempts by one side to pierce the shell of the other's position just slide off unnoticed, nary a dent.

But that's the challenge. That's why I had to tackle this issue in my blog. I take on the big issues. The Tough Topics. ABORTION.

That's just how I run it around here.

1 comment:

Magna said...

It's good to see someone is willing to tackle this issue at last.