(National Review) It is always good to see someone wrestling with truth. A progressive columnist in The Guardian writes about how she is coming to understand that human life has intrinsic dignity, but she doesn’t quite understand why.
Still, something very important is stirring within her. From, “I Am a Rational Liberal, Yet a Question about the Sanctity of Life Floored Me,” by Sonia Sodha:
Liberalism has much to offer, but there are risks in embracing it as an overarching political philosophy without a degree of humility about its shortcomings: its hollow silence over how to navigate knotty ethical issues where society needs some kind of shared understanding. This queasiness about morality means liberals sometimes look the other way when others smuggle in controversial ethical assumptions under the guise of choice and autonomy.
Sodha hosted a radio program about bioethics and was confronted with a question that challenged her conscience:
The most challenging moments of the series were when the people I was interviewing turned the tables to ask me not where I stood on the evidence but about my own beliefs. An old friend, David Reed, who is training to be a priest, wondered where, in light of my atheistic scepticism about assisted dying, my commitment to the value of life comes from?
Cue me umming and ahhing in trying to explain why my objections aren’t related to anything as icky as the sanctity of life. I’d reflected on my reaction by the time the former high court judge Nicholas Mostyn, a strong proponent of assisted dying, looked me in the eye and said, non-believer to non-believer: “You are obviously a person who believes very strongly in the sanctity of human life.”
Gosh, maybe I… do? Which doesn’t mean I think assisted dying is innately immoral if truly someone’s free will, but a belief that we can never be certain of this renders it wrong because the consequences are so terrible.
She’s waking up to the importance of human exceptionalism. She takes half steps in the right direction on issues such as surrogacy and prenatal screening and concludes:
There’s shame on the liberal left associated with admitting to moral instincts that can’t fully be explained through rationale or reason; a sense that what you can’t evidence you should toss away. But we would all do well to remember that some things are above evidence, and, liberal or not, we all have our own ethical codes. I think it’s healthier to be open about them than to pretend they don’t exist and look down on those who refuse to do the same.
That’s not enough. Some ethical codes are so important they need to be adopted by society to protect the general welfare and guard liberty — and the most vital of those is upholding the intrinsic and equal dignity of all human life.
Indeed, that is a crucial understanding reached by the self-described “Jewish, liberal, atheist pro-lifer,” the late, great Nat Hentoff decades ago. From a 1997 interview Hentoff had with Brian Lamb:
LAMB: When has a liberal been the most upset with you to your face?
HENTOFF: Oh, well, the most controversial subject-issue I’ve ever gotten involved in to this day was when I became pro-life. And liberals are very — many liberals are very angry at me because of that. In part, because — they could understand it, they say, if I came to it from a religious kin — a Catholic perspective. But I’m still a Jewish atheist, and that really bothers them. And I come to it entirely from the point of view of biology.
Hentoff understood that if being human — in and of itself — is not what gives us all equal moral worth, in the end, whose life matters and whose doesn’t becomes wholly a matter of who has the power to decide. That easily leads to tyranny and the worst forms of oppression, whether one believes in God or not.
Hentoff paid a steep price for his pro-life advocacy, losing his decades-long Village Voice column and suffering other career sanctions. He once said to me — we became pals in the last years of his life — that it was worth the lost friendships and career opportunities because his entire being was focused on telling the truth.
Sodha is on the way to an important understanding — some would say she is hearing the call of natural law — for which she is to be applauded. And good on her for having the courage to confront progressives with the most crucial question we face in the 21st century. Hopefully, like Hentoff, she’ll eventually get all the way home.
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published at National Review and is reprinted here with permission.
Tell President Trump, RFK, Jr., Elon, and Vivek:
Stop killing America’s future. Defund Planned Parenthood NOW!
