From The Week (emphasis mine):
Some people think they’re “more Catholic than the pope,” said the Los Angeles Times in an editorial. Conservatives are lobbying to rescind an invitation to President Obama to speak during commencement next month at Notre Dame, the nation’s best-known Catholic university. They reason that Obama’s views on abortion are incompatible with those of the church—but Pope Benedict XVI has been cordial to Obama, so why can’t they?
Because Catholics believe abortion is the premeditated killing of an unborn child, said Patrick Buchanan in RealClearPolitics, and Obama is the most pro-abortion president this country has ever had. Notre Dame’s job isn’t to “join the secularists in their endless scavenger hunt” for truth—it’s to “teach eternal truths about God and Man,” including the sanctity of every human life.
No, no, no. Not every human life.
Every human life, except women like Tammy Watts, Viki Wilson, and Vikki Stella. And nine-year-old pregnant incest survivors.
Every human life, except for soldiers identified as having severe psychological problems, including clinical depression and suicidal ideation.
Every human life, except for a certain number of human beings lying in coffins, although not dead, still alive, awake, conscious, aware they are lying inside a coffin; or hanging just above the floor, in stress positions, tied by their wrists from hooks in the ceiling; or suffocated with water; or beaten and kicked.
Every human life, except for the 18 human beings who were executed by the state of Texas in 2008, and the one human being executed in 2009, already. (Texas is nothing if not fast and efficient when it comes to the death penalty.)
Am I being tiresome? I’m sorry. I just feel compelled to point out these inaccuracies of language and linguistic meaning. I’m an editor and a writer and a lover of words, and I care about being precise and honest in how words are used, and whether they really are true, or not.
And so, whenever I see that phrase, “the sanctity of every human life,” it just sets my teeth on edge. I would have so much more respect for the people who use such phrases if they said “the sanctity of some human lives under certain highly specific circumstances.” I would have even more respect for the people who use such phrases if they actually and truly did mean every human life, instead of just using that word automatically and unthinkingly, without pausing to consider what it means. There are some people like that, and I respect them for it. But they are all too few.
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