I wanted to recommend to you a newly launched podcast by our friend and colleague Wesley Smith, “Human Exceptionalism,” at the Ancient Faith website. Follow it here.
In the current episode, Wesley reflects with his characteristic insight and compassion on the ongoing Planned Parenthood scandal and the recent business about Cecil the lion. Wesley introduces a phrase from bioethicist Leon Kass that I hadn’t run across before — the “wisdom of repugnance.” While emotions don’t decide matters of right and wrong, the subjective experience of finding something repugnant isn’t to be dismissed either.
Those Planned Parenthood videos may or may not document illegal activity, but the disgust they arouse is not only a PR nightmare for the government-supported abortion advocacy group. Your gut response to those words and images also, I think, needs to be searched for the wisdom it contains.
See too Wesley’s column at First Things on the same theme.
Image by S. MiRK (Flickr: planned parenthood supporters) [CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons.