A Mother’s Right to Choose

The cult of individuality is an insidious virus that leaves us stranded
and alone.

So much focus has been directed toward individual rights to
make independent choices that I sometimes wonder if we ought not spend a little
more time on the global consequences of those choices. 

When you think about it, the key issues of the past half
century have been about choice — insistence on the part of the left to be free
to do anything, and resistance on the part of the right to offer choice to those
who are different. 

I recently participated in a rather left-leaning public
forum in Central Maine on some key social
issues.  Among those were abortion and
minimum wage.  It was an opportunity to
challenge popular thinking. 

On hiking the minimum wage, I called it a coward's economic
development program that hurts struggling Mom and Pop businesses that have been
the backbone of the Maine
way of life.  Raise the minimum wage as
high as you wish, but bundle with it a program to assist small businesses to
compete with the big box stores in the form of low interest loans and tax
relief.  In that way, everybody wins —
especially the economy of the State of Maine.

On abortion, often referred to as "a woman's right to
choose," I declared myself to be pro-life but had, as a legislator, voted
mostly pro-choice because of an oath of office to uphold the Constitution of
the United States.

The common theme of both issues is that, while we have
almost unlimited political and personal choice in this great nation of ours,
choice is not made in a vacuum.  All of
our choices affect the human family in which we live.  In the same way a hike in minimum wage hurts
the ability of struggling Mom and Pop's to succeed, so the choice to abort
often carries with it isolation from the social fabric that binds our lives.

As I watch Rudy Guiliani twist in the wind trying to appeal
to a right-wing caucus for the Presidential nomination, I am impressed by his courage.  Rudy is in deep trouble for his pro-choice
stance, even though he considers abortion to be immoral.  Mitt Romney, on the other hand, has altered
his stance on abortion as an appeal to a faction within his party that condemns
him because they consider his religion, Mormonism, to be a cult.  Stick a fork in Mitt.

I want to yell, "Rudy, it is not about a woman's right to choose; it is about a mother's right to choose."  That puts the choice on a more global level,
does it not?  That brings to the table
the idea promoted by Bill Clinton, who exercised his own selfish and destructive
form of choice, that abortion ought to be legal but rare.  When put into the context of motherhood, consideration
of a possible tear in the social fabric becomes a factor in the choice.

The cult of individuality is, I believe, creating a void in
political leadership that often bases its own choices on perception rather than
on principle.  That explains why we put
bandaids on programs rather than create ones that work.  Tax reform becomes targeted tax relief.  Economic development becomes hiking the
minimum wage.  Education reform becomes
"Let them have lap-tops!" 

Politicians are unwitting servants of a culture that values individual
beliefs and desires over the common good. 

The decision by a public servant to choose a particular
interpretation of the Bible over the Constitution tears at the very freedom of
worship and expression that permits such choices.  The decision by a public servant to choose
individual rights over the impact of those rights on the human family dooms all
three – the public servant to a colossal waste of time, the individual to
further isolation and the human family to irreparable injury.

We have become the product of our politics — individuals
screaming about high taxes, oppressive government, limited choices and the failure
of our dreams.  One might conclude that
the failure of our dreams is the chicken that has evolved from the egg.

The failure of forward-looking policy; the deterioration of
our infrastructure (roads, bridges, education, health care, access to information
and services); blind focus on wedge issues over the pride of progress are the products
of decades of little choices made by us all. 

The cult of individuality is an insidious virus that leaves us stranded
and alone.

The results of those choices cannot be changed with a bill
before the State Legislature or the Congress of the United States.  

Change must come from within.
 

Stan Moody is the author of "Crisis in Evangelical Scholarship" and
"McChurched: 300 Million Served and Still Hungry