Beautiful and persuasive story. I hope you've captured many life experiences in such an elegant manner. I'd buy the book. It even involves moral reasoning. Cull to ensure the strength of the plants to be harvested. The moral reasoning here is that sanctity of life for all radishes would weaken the goal of producing excellent results at harvest. If you had been in a gardening competition, it would ruin your chance of success if you did not cull.
My parents had me help with the garden when I was little also. It was supposed to be a learning experience but I quickly realized it was a chore like mowing the lawn. I knew yard work being something no one else liked. It got me out of the house and into something I liked enough to label it a flow experience now. I spent some time as a professional gardener in my twenties and liked it also. I was able to notice that for almost any role you take on as a guardian of nature, or even just observing, there are lessons to be learned.
In this case, the idea of sanctity of life vs abortion is not universally agreed upon except in specific religious congregation or in a specific feminist ethic. Even the whole of religious congregations are not committed to the sanctity of life code when it comes to a fetus, and the feminine body is not committed to the choice mandate. So sanctity in this sense, is easily dismissed. The issue then turns back to a question of rights, which as far as I can see, still can't be answered universally.
Yet the idea of sanctity remains and is a seemingly necessary aspect of human nature. Certain aspects of human life and culture remain inviolable. Laws normally set those standards like, don't hang around hacking off other people's body parts for entertainment. That's an easy one.
However, the idea of culling was the analogy in the story. Why do we not (at present) make any effort to cull the infirm, elderly, addicted, heinous criminals, people so severely disabled that they require constant institutional care and who are incapable of giving back, or others who we could define as a burden on society? We don't at present, even though we do have the radishes problem, because we have a regard for individual rights that is inviolable.
So, we return to a question of whether or not fetus at any stage has rights. |
