No one has to walk the walk to talk the talk

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I have never been pregnant, given birth, or had an abortion.

For many people, that precludes me from having an opinion on being pregnant, giving birth, or having an abortion.

It precludes me from having an opinion on the morality of killing a child, or fetus, if you will, at the literal moment of its birth. It precludes me from having an opinion on women who murder their three young children, all under the age of 5, allegedly due to a condition known as postpartum psychosis.

Apparently, this is what empathy in the 21st century looks like: If you have not lived it, you cannot form an opinion based upon a general sense of what is moral.

In other words, your conscience and your intellect, not to mention your common sense, are irrelevant.

But then, I've never been raped. I am not Jewish. I was never an immigrant. I am not Black, Palestinian, I'm no longer a child, I was never a victim of domestic abuse, I was never a drug addict, I never owned slaves, I'm not gay, I never knew Jeffrey Epstein, and …you see where I'm going with this.

It is quite easy for me to condemn rape as one of the greatest societal evils, particularly when it involves a child or human trafficking.

I see the horror of Jew hatred as it metastasizes in our nation and around the world, especially in Western Europe.

I am able to win asylum cases only because I can put myself inside the body of a man who has fought the Taliban in Pakistan or a woman who has been beaten by her police officer husband in Guatemala.

I see slavery as our original sin, which still impacts our structures and institutions to this day. I cannot imagine what it is like to be in love with a woman, but I know and love people who actually do.

In other words, I am a human being, and I don't need to walk the walk to be able to talk the talk.

Apparently, though, to some people, and this includes a majority of the women who have just discovered my social media and the godawful fact that I oppose abortion at every stage in the gruesome process, I am prohibited from even speaking about the issue because, in the words of one commentator, my "uterus has cobwebs."

As a writer, I kind of appreciate the evocative nature of that description, which brings to mind Charlotte, Wilbur and the baby spiders.

Nonetheless, I find it strange that a person who has a functioning brain cannot be allowed to believe that abortion is never necessary to save a mother's life.

My uterus might need a good dusting, but my cerebral cortex is firing on all cylinders.

People who support abortion rights often employ this anti-intellectual argument that unless you are a woman, or have been pregnant, or have given birth, you are irrelevant in any discussion involving babies, abortions and postpartum psychosis.

The harmonic convergence of Massachusetts' newly minted descent into barbarism and the salacious trial of the woman who murdered her three babies is pushing all of the crazy buttons for them.

As an aside, the trial is taking place in Plymouth, so you have to wonder if there is something stronger than tea in MassachusettsBay.

And let's extend this reasoning to other things. Why should white college students who have never eaten falafel, let alone traveled to "Palestine" has an opinion on what they erroneously call a "genocide?"

Why should someone like Miss Rachel, who is apparently a U.S. citizen with no relatives currently detained in immigration centers, sing simpering songs about how cruel it is to be detained in immigration centers?

Why should people who have no problem checking the correct gender box on forms be concerned with the fact that there are men who want to be women and then play women's basketball?

Let's take it back a few decades. Why should an Irish Catholic lawyer like my dad have worried about the civil rights of BlackMississippians, and risk his own life trying to protect them?

Why should St. Maximilian Kolbe, a childless, unmarried priest, have been concerned with the welfare of a married man inPoland offered his life in place of that man, so his family would not suffer.

Why should Catholic priests and nuns have operated an underground railroad of sorts to help Jewish Italians get out of Fascist Italy?

Why should the Marquis de Lafayette have agreed to help those upstart Colonists?

Why should anyone consider helping anyone who isn't like him?

Simple. That's what happens when you stop belonging to a tribe and embrace all of humanity, all people, even the most invisible and unconsidered.

I don't need to have given birth to understand the tragedy of killing a child, whether on the surgical table or in the so-called safety of their home.

And to those ladies who have the arrogance to presume that they get to run the conversation on morality and virtue, I have a message: Good luck with that, sisters.

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