Apply fact-avoidance theory to life issues

(Note: I'm sending this to the local newspaper today. Again, I'm betting that my conservative viewpoint won't make it in the paper, so I'm taking advantage of self-publishing on my blog to vent.)

I couldn't agree more with the headline from a recent op-ed by William McCorkle featured in the Saturday, Sept. 3, edition of the Greenville News stating: We have moved on from the truth.

It's been decades since science concurred on important issues. However, the lack of consensus is more about political and financial gain than it is about fact avoidance. Let's review McCorkle's hypothesis. He says: “The overwhelming majority of those who have spent their lives studying climate say that climate change is absolutely happening and that human involvement is a major factor.” He then condemns the nay-sayers who pontificate on their blogs, Facebook pages or other social media. He also gets in a good dig to “the partisans” who dismiss conclusions of the scientific community. Granted, he criticized the right and left (although the left to a lesser degree). His conclusion, however, is right on target: “To realize that when we do this collectively it puts the society and environment in danger.”

So I take McCorkle to task. Can he and others like him agree there is probably no greater example of this reckless avoidance theory than that of life? Scientists have supported the fact that life begins at conception, yet, for decades*, the subject has become a point of political contention. Based on the facts, and the consensus of the scientific community, how can anyone deny that “a fetus” is not a child at the moment of fertilization? There are those who will espouse, as McCorkle says, the theories of nay-sayers, when, in fact, they are being fed a line of propaganda based on deception for political and financial gain.

Many of our politicians and their supporters now advocate abortion up to the moment of birth. In fact, partial-birth abortion (medically known as intact dilation and extraction), which many on the left support, actually induces labor for delivery. The baby's head remains in the birth canal, the skull is punctured and a tube is inserted to extract the brain so the cranium can be removed easily. This procedure is avidly supported by Hillary Clinton and others like her, who also want to prevent life-saving measures for babies actually born live before or during an abortion.

A truly studious person would ask why we tolerate such barbaric behavior? Why is there such a divide on life issues? I point back to the very same reason McCorkle mentions in his argument about climate change and thinly veiled rant on Republicans: “We have seen this unwillingness to accept reality on a more dangerous level.” Planned Parenthood denies that they are an abortion mill, and because politicians and the main stream media report the news as it suits their own agenda, many Americans buy into the rhetoric. Make no mistake: Abortion is a multi-billion dollar industry, which we now know profits from selling the parts of dismembered children. And yet, we stand by and declare this to be an issue about the rights of women.

The bottom line is McCorkle is right in his declaration of societal danger, yet the concept is only applied to his own way of thinking. This is the current fallacy of politics. Facts have become obsolete in our society. The truth is something we ignore and cast aside until it no longer matters what the truth is.

We need to stop McCorkle's assertion that “all of us reject reality at times if it does not align with our desires or interests” from becoming our own truth. And the truth need to be applied equally to all issues, not just those we cherry-pick for our own agendas. Climate change, abortion and many other issues need serious consideration outside the sphere of political influence and financial benefit.

*Just one list of such scholarly articles and references