Moral compass awry

Re the Jan. 30 story Former Table 8 owner sentenced for secretly giving girlfriend abortion drug: It’s disturbing that Joshua Woodward poisoned Gail Greaves, his pregnant mistress, with an abortion drug, intentionally causing her miscarriage.

During sentencing, Greaves said to him, “You don’t care who you hurt as long as you get what you want.” It’s not ironic that she didn’t think this about herself while having an affair with a married man. Nor is it ironic that the government charged him with “attempted murder of a fetus,” but would have permitted Greaves and her doctor to kill the victim.

Yes, Woodward took away her right to choose. While I support that right, why doesn’t a man have the same right to choose whether to keep his unborn child. None of this is ironic — moral dissonance has become the norm.

I believe that divine intelligence gave us free will to learn from the consequences of our choices. Many religious people fail to realize that taking away a person’s right to choose is interfering with this divine plan, but, perhaps, so is taking that right away from a 6-week-old fetus that if left alone will likely be born.

Morality doesn’t come from religion. It’s innately understood when considering how we would like to be treated ourselves. When we forget this, we lose our moral compass.

This story was originally published February 1, 2016 at 6:54 PM with the headline "Moral compass awry."