Whew!
Walker Percy announced that he was speaking as novelist, not as a doctor. He gave his opinion as a novelist. He also complained that some of his allies give him as big a pain as his opponents on this issue. You don't give him credit for this admission.
As a free citizen with an opinion he has a right to offer it.
You don't seem to show that you think he has that right.
To talk about the authoritarianism of the anti abortionists without acknowledging that pro choice people have their own authoritarianism is to be either blissfully unaware or to leave out a big fact.
Your paragraph on your difficulty because you are autoimmune and don't like when scientific decisions are made by people with no scientific knowledge is apt. But then why would you celebrate government bureaucrats deciding your life and death decisions in a nationalized health care or insurance plan?
No one is working to keep you from getting health insurance. In fact you should applaud those who are working to try to make insurance more affordable and available. But you are assuming that only if the government provides it is it good. It seems to me you talk out of both sides of your mouth.
You ask what is the point of making something a crime if you can't detect it. Will you also decry Obamacare's plan to make it a crime if a doctor does not do exactly what the government forces him to do, to the tune of $100,000. per instance?
Is this what we want from our government?
You ask what Walker Percy is suggesting in this editorial. He is suggesting, as an observer of humanity, that when someone cavalierly destroys a fetus because a baby is an inconvenience, instead of thinking beforehand and behaving more responsibly, that he destroys his humanity and perhaps our society. Percy may be naive, but he is a free citizen and has the right to express his opinion. You can compare it to when Nancy Reagan said, "Just say no." We all know that is naive and impossible. People take drugs. They are self destructive and stupid, but some people just are that way. But how does it hurt our society if a public person tries to set a good example?
Walker Percy showed in the epilogue to The Moviegoer, I believe, that he had something like this on his mind. We should take responsibility for ourselves and for others. We should make choices that do no harm, or less harm. His writing this editorial is consistent with what he thinks. Why are you so threatened by what he is expressing here? What is it you see when you look in the mirror, I wonder?
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