(This is partly why such confrontations are avoided.) And the issue surely touches on deep questions: What are our responses to one another? Should we permit the state to intrude into the most intimate and personal aspects of our lives? Where are the boundaries of freedom? What does it mean to be human? Many partisans of differing views, we find, feel some disquiet, some unease when confronting what’s behind the opposing arguments. In contemplative moments, nearly everyone recognizes that the issue is not wholly one-sided. If in some of these tests we seem to go too far, we ask the reader to be patient with us–we’re trying to stress the various positions to the breaking point to see their weaknesses and where they fail. Is there no middle ground? We had to weigh the arguments of both sides for consistency and to pose test cases, some of which are purely hypothetical. Is it wrong to abort a pregnancy? Always? Sometimes? Never? How do we decide? We wrote this article to understand better what the contending views are and to see if we ourselves could find a position that would satisfy us both. Amid all the shouting, it is hard for the adversaries to hear one another.
Politicians check the latest polls to discover the dictates of their consciences. Families are divided, husbands and wives agree not to discuss it, old friends are no longer speaking. The contending factions call on science to bolster their positions. Doubtful arguments are trotted out as certitudes. The intent of the Constitution and the will of God are equally invoked. Partisans fling accusations of hypocrisy and murder. Instead, there are mass rallies, bombings and intimidation, murders of workers at abortion clinics, arrests, intense lobbying, legislative drama, Congressional hearings, Supreme Court decisions, major political parties almost defining themselves on the issue, and clerics threatening politicians with perdition. “The Question of Abortion: A Search for Answers”įor the complete text, including illustrations, introductory quote, footnotes, and commentary on the reaction to the originally published article see Billions and Billions. Here is a portion of Sagan’s article (here is a link to the whole article): I am going to respond to several points made in that article. Sagan went on to tell me that he was enclosing his article “The Question of Abortion: A Search for Answers”by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan. I was blessed with the opportunity to correspond with Dr.
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