Chain Gang

The following are my views on current American cultural trends, and in particular on the criminalization of abortions.

Often times too much of a good thing can become a bad thing, particular when you are imposing your moral will upon another. Your right to an opinion reaches only as far as its delineated boundaries with everyone else's rights.

To provide one example: prayer. Very few people would argue that it is ever a bad thing. If you want to pray, you have that natural right, and that prerogative.

But what if politicians decided to mandate prayer? What if they forced people who did not want to pray to do so, upon penalty of arrest, incarceration, and ostracism from society, or even death?

Suddenly, what was a good thing becomes a very bad thing, and what was a hallmark of liberty becomes a punishment of despotism.

This is a problem that many cultures across the globe have struggled with over the aeons. Foremost among them are Fundamentalist movements such as the Taliban and the Islamic State, whose dictums leave no room for diversity of opinion.

And, truth be told, this has been a problem within the American legal system as well. Over the years, moral opinions, most of them a minority within this vast land, have been legally enshrined, and imposed upon the public without justification.

Prohibition of alcohol was perhaps the most egregious such example in the last century, but it has been far from alone. Criminalization of drug use has been another such moral interdiction upon an otherwise victimless activity.

And now, today, moralization has struck once again, in the form of penalizing abortion. As before, an otherwise legal question has been posed in strictly moral terms. And again, the inherent problem with all such legislative decisions over the years, both past and present, becomes obvious.

The sad truth is that if everyone's moral opinions were to become law, all of humanity would become criminals. Vegetarians would be throwing meat-eaters in prison. Celibates would be throwing fornicators in prison. Naturalists would be throwing polluters in prison. The drug-free would be throwing addicts in prison. And all of humanity would become slaves by one moral decree or another.

Somewhere, and somehow, there must be allowance provided for personal choice, and for personal freedom. Otherwise, there is no such thing as liberty. And it all begins with people of sound conscience understanding that, even as well-behaved as they may be, no one has appointed them as arbiters over the rest of humanity.