Counterpoint

The Northeastern News printed the predictable counterpoint to my editorial of a week ago. The downside is the author absolutely ripped me, and did make some valid points in favor of abortion using pretty good English. The upside is that she discredited herself by her frequent use of generalizations and ad hominem attacks, stating in the first paragraph that I had "attempted to mask [my] personal agenda" by "using a thesaurus and some Introduction to Politics notes". Little does she know, I've never taken Intro to Politics. ;-)

In all seriousness, though, she never addresses the issue which I brought up. I would challenge any abortion advocate to either (a) intelligently refute my reasoning for the humanity of a fetus, or (b) state that even though the fetus is human, it may be killed anyway if that is deemed appropriate by the mother. Until my arguments are addressed, I consider myself unrefuted.

Naturally, I'd like to write back to the News, demanding an apology for the attacks against me, and exposing the fact that her whole refutory piece was off-topic (it dealt mostly with social, not constitutional, issues, and is thus valid in its own right but not as a counterpoint to my piece). However, I think it would be unprofessional, unscholarly, and probably unchristian to let myself be caught up in a war of words in my own defense. To defend myself I have to be too offensive to her for this to remain in the realm of scholarly debate, where it ought to in a university newspaper. I would, of course, feel vindicated if somebody else wrote in my defence, or to refute her tangential (but valid) points on social issues. I would feel even better if a pro-abortion professor wrote in calling her down for inappropriate argumentation, but that's a selfish desire to say the least.