The Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College
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2010 : 2009 : 2008 : 2007 : 2006 : 2005 : 2004 : 2003 : 2002 : 2001 : 2000 : 1998
Dec 31 “Safe, Legal, and Rare?”
Dec 30 Israeli Attacks on Hamas Justified
Dec 29 Lessons from the Oil Market
Dec 23 Social Organizations as a Path to Self-control: Does Religious Participation Promote Character Development?
Dec 22 Christmas Behind Bars
Dec 19 The Real Saint Nick
Dec 17 The Problem With Monotheism
Dec 16 Eat Dessert and Learn Economics!
Dec 15 Remembering an Unknown Hero: Morris Childs, America’s Greatest Cold War Spy
Dec 12 V&V Q&A: America’s Economic Illiteracy Epidemic
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10/22/2010 : Book Event: Executive Director Paul Kengor to Lecture on His Latest Release: "Dupes"
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09/21/2010 : The American Founders Luncheon Series: "Little Pink Houses: Private Property, the Founders and Susette Kelo's Story"
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07/07/2010 : Grove City College to Host YAF's Northeast Conservative High School Conference
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06/15/2010 : The American Founders Luncheon Series: "The Fall and the Founders"
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04/15/2010 : CVV Conference: The Progressive Surge and Conservative Crackup?
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04/07/2010 : Freedom Readers Lecture Series: By Dr. Jeffrey M. Herbener
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03/30/2010 : The American Founders Luncheon Series: By Dr. L. John Van Til
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03/03/2010 : Freedom Readers Lecture Series: By Dr. Mark W. Hendrickson
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02/10/2010 : Freedom Readers Lecture Series: By Dr. Shawn Ritenour
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02/03/2010 : Fourth Annual Ronald Reagan Lecture
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12/08/2009 : The American Founders Luncheon Series: By Dr. John A. Sparks
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11/09/2009 : Freedom Readers Lecture Series: By Thomas O'Boyle & Dr. Paul Kengor
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10/26/2009 : V&V Executive Director to speak at Eureka College
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10/14/2009 : Freedom Readers Lecture Series: By Glen Meakem
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09/28/2009 : "The Politics of Laura Ingalls Wilder"
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09/23/2009 : Freedom Readers Lecture Series: By Matt Kibbe ’85
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09/22/2009 : The American Founders Luncheon Series: “The Founders, the Bible and Political Discourse”
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06/09/2009 : American Founders Luncheon Series: "Abraham Lincoln and the Founders"
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04/16/2009 : CVV Conference: Faith, Freedom and Higher Education
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04/15/2009 : Freedom Readers Dessert: by Ben Stafford
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04/14/2009 : Dr. Bob Mancabelli Lecture: “Tablet PCs: Gateway to Change”
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03/31/2009 : Charles Wiley Lecture: "Modern Youth in a Time of Economic Crisis"
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03/17/2009 : Freedom Readers Dessert: "The Challenge of Affluence"
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03/10/2009 : American Founders Luncheon Series: Let Their First Word be “Washington” -- The Founders and Public Education
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02/18/2009 : Freedom Readers Dessert: "Rising Food Prices: Who is to Blame?"
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02/12/2009 : Bicentennial Lectures Honor Lincoln's Birth
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02/05/2009 : Third Annual Ronald Reagan Lecture
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01/27/2009 : Freedom Readers Dessert: "Free Markets and Funding the Arts"
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12/11/2008 : The American Founders Luncheon Series: “Give me Liberty” -- Patrick Henry and Religious Freedom in America
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09/23/2008 : The American Founders Luncheon Series: "The Founders and the Presidents: from July 1776 to November 2008"
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06/10/2008 : The American Founders Luncheon Series: “Gun Control, the Supreme Court, and the Founders' Second Amendment”
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04/10/2008 : CVV Conference: Church & State 2008
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04/02/2008 : Charles Wiley Lecture: "Principles for Developing a Sound American Foreign Policy"
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03/18/2008 : The American Founders Luncheon Series: "Hamilton and the Greenback"
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02/12/2008 : Second Annual Ronald Reagan Lecture
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12/18/2007 : The American Founders Luncheon Series: "The Significance of the Declaration"
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11/02/2007 : Heritage Foundation Lecture by Paul Kengor: "The Judge: Ronald Reagan's Top Hand"
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10/24/2007 : Albert A. Hopeman Jr. Lecture by Thomas J. Usher: "Engineering for Wealth Creation"
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10/15/2007 : Steve Mosher Lecture: "China's One-Child Policy"
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10/10/2007 : Lisa Thompson and Patricia Green Lecture
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10/08/2007 : Pew Memorial Lecture by Tom Ridge: “Security and the Future”
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09/11/2007 : The American Founders Luncheon Series: "James Madison and the Temptation of Terror"
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06/19/2007 : The American Founders Luncheon Series: "The Founders Abroad"
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04/12/2007 : CVV Conference: The De-Christianization of Europe
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03/20/2007 : The American Founders Luncheon Series: "The Founders, the Ten Commandments, and the Supreme Court"
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02/23/2007 : The Legacy of Ludwig von Mises
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02/22/2007 : First Annual Ronald Reagan Lecture
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02/14/2007 : Michael Kazin Lecture: “The Gospel of William Jennings Bryan”
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12/05/2006 : The American Founders Luncheon Series: “The Maligned Faith of Thomas Jefferson”
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11/03/2006 : 2006 Austrian Student Scholars Conference
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10/04/2006 : Wilfred McClay Lecture
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09/19/2006 : The American Founders Luncheon Series: “George Washington as the Model of American Statesmanship”
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04/05/2006 : CVV Conference: Mr. Jefferson Goes to the Middle East
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02/27/2006 : Global Perspectives Seminar
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02/22/2006 : Medicine and Theology: From Embryos to the Posthuman
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11/04/2005 : 2005 Austrian Student Scholars Conference
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07/20/2005 : Paul Kengor Lecture and Booksigning at the Ronald Reagan Library
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04/04/2005 : CVV Inaugural Conference: The Road From Poverty to Freedom
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The Twisted Relativism of Abortion
By Dr. Paul Kengor
January 22, 2008

 Dr. Paul Kengor
Dr. Paul Kengor
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America this week marks the 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. The court case is frequently a matter of debate, especially the breathtaking judicial logic on which it is based. The constitutionality of Roe is just one of innumerable facets of the abortion debate, from the legal to the medical to the theological. Consider, however, another facet: the confusing philosophical basis for the assertion that abortion is a woman’s “choice.”

Moral relativism means that truth is not absolute but relative to each and every individual. There is no single, absolute truth, says the moral relativist, but many truths; in fact, there are as many truths as there are individuals with separate definitions as to what is the truth. This certainly undermines Judeo-Christian belief, which says that there is a single, absolute truth that comes from God, not from each individual person.

Nowhere is this clearer than in the convoluted, tragic case of abortion. There are many ways in which pro-choicers are relativists. Most obvious, they do not favor a choice in the case of the father of the child in the womb or the even child in the womb itself; rather, they believe that the choice goes only to one party—the mother alone.

The very issue of the “choice” is completely relativistic—as is the question of its humanity. Who decides whether the life in the womb is a baby or merely a blob of tissue that can be discarded? Who decides if it is a life? The pro-choicer affirms that this decision is not based on medical science, theology, or anything but the mother alone.

Think about the contradictory implications of this assertion: If the mother declares the baby in the womb to be an actual baby, then pro-choicers—especially pro-choice liberals—will go to the mat to defend that mother’s access to the full scope of pre-natal health care. They will loudly denounce and perhaps even sue any insurance company who denies medical coverage to that woman. Any employer who keeps her from going to the doctor is judged a cretin who ought to be penalized, perhaps even assailed as a sexist by Senator Ted Kennedy or boycotted by the National Organization for Women. A compassionate government should provide that care for her free of cost if she cannot afford it.

In this case, obviously, they believe that the object in the womb is a baby that merits nurturing and protection. And why? How so? The answer is anchored in moral relativism: Because this particular mother in this particular case, on her own, by her own decision, declared it a baby.

Yet, if that same woman decided, on her own, almost magically, that the child in her womb is not a baby that merits nurturing and protection, then, presto, she can abort it if she so chooses. This means that the baby is not a baby at, say, conception, or the third trimester, or even once it breathes air, but, alas, is only a baby if the mother says it is a baby. Each individual woman (but never a man) can decide on her own whether and when a baby is legitimately a baby that will breathe the breath of life. The decision is hers. The rest of us, and the child in the womb, are at the mercy of an individual decision that can vary for literally every single woman walking the planet—and that is not an exaggeration.

As former First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton said in a January 22, 1999 speech to NARAL, the National Abortion Rights Action League, the premier advocacy group for legal, unrestricted abortion: “Being pro-choice is trusting the individual to make the right decision for herself and her family, and not entrusting that decision to anyone wearing the authority of government in any regard.” By Mrs. Clinton’s reckoning, the moral arbiter here is the mother alone—and no one else.

Pro-choice feminists believe that the morally decisive factor in an abortion decision is the mere right to make the decision, a right restricted, but varying in (acceptable) outcome, for each and every prospective mother-to-be. The father cannot be the moral arbiter in this decision because he is not endowed with the legal right of “choice.” The right of reproductive choice is judged the highest moral end in the equation, trumping all other rights, including a right to life for the unborn child.

Does this make sense? Does it seem fair? The result is over 40 million aborted babies in America alone since 1973—not to mention the butchering of a very simple concept, thrown into chaos some 2,000 years ago, when a politician first infamously asked Life itself, “What is truth?”

V & V

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Paul Kengor is author of The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism (HarperPerennial, 2007), professor of political science, and executive director of the Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College. His latest book is The Judge: William P. Clark, Ronald Reagan’s Top Hand (Ignatius Press, 2007).



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