Here Be Monsters, Indeed

The Anchoress notes an instance of an ongoing phenomenon: liberals becoming more comfortable pulling off the moderate mask and saying what they really believe.

First, the liberal in question: Mary Elizabeth Williams on Salon.com, talking about abortion:

Here’s the complicated reality in which we live: All life is not equal. That’s a difficult thing for liberals like me to talk about, lest we wind up looking like death-panel-loving, kill-your-grandma-and-your-precious-baby storm troopers. Yet a fetus can be a human life without having the same rights as the woman in whose body it resides. She’s the boss. Her life and what is right for her circumstances and her health should automatically trump the rights of the non-autonomous entity inside of her. Always. 

... 

And I would put the life of a mother over the life of a fetus every single time — even if I still need to acknowledge my conviction that the fetus is indeed a life. A life worth sacrificing.

Um, yikes. The Anchoress comments:

So, immediately after the disclaimer that she is not some “death-panel-loving, kill-your-grandma-” Nazi, Williams argues that some human lives are more worthy than others, particularly the “non-autonomous entities”. In the less enlightened, less compassionate days or yore, a “non-autonomous entity” would be called a helpless and innocent person, one who deserved protection from efficient sorts who would, by negating their humanity, do them harm. Here, Williams is making precisely the utilitarian argument made by every totalitarian ideology that ever slaughtered people by the millions, because they were the wrong sorts of people, or were useless eaters, or they could not contribute to the advancement of society, or their quality of life just seemed too dubious to those who did not know and love them. [emphasis mine; go back and read that again - j] Immediately after expressing concern that “liberals” might look like monsters, she utters the monster’s line: you have no rights except those I give you.

The reason Williams, or any liberal, feels comfortable saying things like this in public is because they think the world has turned in their favor. They have won the argument that abortion is lawful. Now they're in the process of winning the argument that it's right. If the side defending the sanctity of life loses that argument, then we will truly be living in a world of monsters.