One day back in high school, a very interesting English teacher asked our class a moral question: if you could press a button and get a million dollars, but a little old man -- with no family, friends, or ties of any kind -- in the backwoods of China would die, would you push that button?

Approximately a third of the class raised their hands in the affirmative.

This story always comes to mind when I ponder the abortion question. The old line of the pro-abortion lobby was that they wanted abortion to be "safe, legal, and rare," implying it's some sort of necessary evil. Their reasoning always was, "Well, we don't know when human life begins, so whether or not to end a pregnancy should be the woman's choice." Of course, this position was never morally or philosophically sound. After all, if what lies within the womb is just an "unviable tissue mass," why worry about abortion being "rare"? Oh, yes, the pro-aborts aren't sure about the intrauterine being's status. All right, then what they're essentially saying is that they'll err on the side of recklessness. It may be murder, you know -- so we'll just do it a little bit.

Yet the truth is different still.

The militant pro-aborts couldn't have cared less about any of the above.

It was simply that pushing the button worked for them.

And now that we've descended further down the rabbit hole of atheism and barbarity, the mask is coming off. New York's Governor Andrew Cuomo just recently bloviated about keeping people safe from imaginary "assault weapons," but then in a later speech advocated abortion almost without restriction. He repeated passionately, "It's her body, her choice!" -- three times. Interestingly, this political tactic for manipulating the masses was recommended by Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf: he said that the average person had a very short memory, so you must use pithy, catchy slogans and repeat them frequently. Hey, now we know why talk-show host Bob Grant dubbed Cuomo's father, a former NY governor, "Il Duce."

But Cuomo the Younger has plenty of company. When Barack Obama infected the Illinois Senate, he voted against the Born Alive Infants Protection Act (BAIPA) and inveighed against it on the Senate floor -- on more than one occasion. And understand this law's purpose. It would sometimes happen that a baby was born alive during a botched abortion, and, well, a good contract killer always finishes the job. So these poor children would be left to die of exposure, perhaps in lonely, soiled storerooms. And BAIPA would have prohibited this. But Push-button Obama?

He clearly had no problem with it.

Of course, he did say during the 2008 campaign that the question of when human life begins was above his "pay grade." But how far above? Is it that the president believes human life begins when a person can vote Democrat?
A better explanation was provided by former Obama aide Neera Tanden, who said that her ex-boss "really doesn't like people." And, well, people are people, no matter how small (hat tip: Dr. Seuss).

In reality, however, my erstwhile high-school peers, Cuomo, Obama, and the rest of the push-button Baal worshipers are simply moving closer to intellectual consistency as they move further from moral sanity. After all, think about where the "pro-choice" position takes us. It doesn't really matter what month one says human life "may" begin because we're always presented with the same correlative questions. What week of that month? What day of that week? What hour and minute of that day? And, then, what second of that minute?

This lends perspective. For what we then must accept is that one second the intrauterine entity isn't a person, but the next second it - although I suppose at that moment we can say "he" -- somehow magically becomes one. And this isn't even the moment of conception, a seminal event without which there would be no development in the womb whatsoever. So how, pro-aborts, does this humanizing transformation take place?

And this logic also applies to the justification of abortion throughout pregnancy... and beyond. After all, if it's okay to kill the intrauterine being in a certain month, what is the exact week, day, hour, and second of that month before which it isn't morally licit? This is a case where when seconds count, the police will never come because the wrong second deems you push-button prey.

But here is the reality: that being inside the womb is a person. And forget the intellectual contortions -- the truth will out. If it's all right to murder an innocent person one second, there is no reason to think it isn't okay the next, and then the next and the next and... well, finish the progression. So is Obama's tolerance for killing the already born really surprising? "Already born" simply refers to a change in a person's location -- not status. And note, the same is true of "born a long, long time ago."

This brings us back to my question of how the post-conception, second-to-second humanizing transformation occurs. The only logical (which isn't necessarily synonymous with correct) argument is that the moment in question is when the being is implanted with a soul; this is, after all, why Christians say that conception is when personhood begins. Yet theological discussions would be pointless here because the vanguard pro-aborts are secularists who, by and large, don't subscribe to antiquated ideas about souls and "sky fairies." They are materialists.

And this is why the atheistic world view ultimately makes respect for life incomprehensible. For if we don't have souls, we're just some pounds of chemicals and water -- mere organic robots -- as Stephen Hawking says he considers us. And what could be wrong with terminating the function of a robot? This "insight" frees you from the burden of performing more complex intellectual contortions. Big robot, small robot, temporarily residing inside a larger robot; what does it matter? Robots are robots, no matter how tall.

Taking the matter further, note that if there is no God, there can be no transcendent Moral Truth. Following from this is that what we call morality is just a reflection of man's wants, which means there isn't really any such thing as right and wrong; as the liberals are wont to say, it's all just a matter of "perspective." And with no Truth but only taste, no virtues but only "values," the formula becomes, as occultist Aleister Crowley devilishly put it, "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law."

This is why I've said that if the leftists' moral relativism is taken to its logical conclusion, the result is sociopathy. After all, how does a conscience compute, fellow organic robots, if there is nothing to be conscientious about?

Now perhaps you better understand why leftists' behavior is often so sociopathic. And be afraid, be very afraid. Once the godless left has the power and the mask drops completely, it may be you who they push the button on next.

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