The House of Atreus: Abortion as a Human Rights Issue

Using clear language and unconventional examples, this book argues that abortion is not merely a medical or religious issue, but one that goes to the very heart of our conception of human rights. It explains that the unborn are living and human beings, that all human beings have a right to life, and that denying the right to life of some weakens the right to life of all. Bohan supports his thesis by pointing to human rights treaties, the Declaration of Independence, and the words of such luminaries as Albert Schweitzer, Frederick Douglass, Pearl S. Buck, Elie Wiesel, and Martin Luther King Jr. He also examines the connection between abortion and the recent push to legalize assisted suicide and euthanasia. Bohan explains why the Greek myth of the House of Atreus is an apt metaphor for our abortion-minded society that shows the distinction between abortion and infanticide is arbitrary. While the Supreme Court holds that the 14th Amendment does not protect the lives of fetuses, at the time the Amendment was drafted, American scholars were comparing the mental capacity of Black people to that of a white fetus. Bohan also explores the the common aspects involved in the destruction of the unborn and the destruction of Jews by the Nazis: the roles of dehumanization, euphemism, the medical community, science, idealism, and humane killing, among others.