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The Moral Relativism of Abortion
A philosophical treatise

There is a reason why abortion in America is such an inflammatory issue when compared to many other cultures around the world. The controversy has its roots, in my view, in the conflict between progressive modernism and Judeo-Christian traditions. These traditions have been fueled by, among other things, taboo and guilt in the way that they look at sex, death, life and the sacredness of life. When these old world traditions are coupled with the prosperity and excesses of secular modernism and a capitalistic "free society" you get a sort of schizophrenic culture that is in denial of death and obsessed with sex. Or could that be, in denial of sex and obsessed with death? And do we need to ask what these two things have to do with abortion? They are intimately tied.

In other cultures more ancient than our own, death has always been a more accepted part of life to begin with. In our culture, secular modernism doesn't even want to acknowledge death except in movies and TV shows where it can be fictionalized and kept at a distance. Death, especially as a result of violence, is even glorified, as it has always been, as long as it remains within that context of our over indulgent, consumer society where we long to be entertained and satiated instantaneously, as long as we are insulated from the reality of it in our daily lives.

Christianity deals with death in requiems mostly only as a last resort, after the fact. Religions like Hinduism and Buddhism as well as the primitive animistic religions of old world countries and the pantheistic, earth centered beliefs of Australia's Aborigines and our own Native Americans all have a place for the unfolding of death as a natural and accepted rite of passage. Death is as sacred for them as birth and life, as natural a rite of passage as puberty and marriage. Death is not always viewed as such a terrible ultimate end with the fear of hell and eternal damnation waiting, but merely a passage to a new and better world or another life. Moreover, death in many of these old world cultures has always been more frequent, and more visible because of the lack of prosperity, the poverty that is ubiquitous, and therefore people are simply more used to it, they have no choice but to accept it as a natural part of their existence. When I lived in India in 1965 I witnessed death's long arms on an almost daily basis.

The point of all this is also to say that in

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