Jonathan Capehart thinks that Focus on the Family is guilty of “hypocrisy” because it praises Tim Tebow’s mother for not aborting him while wishing to deny other mothers the right to make the equivalent choice. Capehart is mistaken.

He implicitly presents two arguments. The first is that Tebow’s mother could not have made a praiseworthy decision if the law had given her no choice. There are at least two problems here. The first (and most important) is that there is simply no inconsistency in praising her for making the right decision while wishing that the law did not make the child’s life or death her decision. I assume Capehart thinks using child labor is immoral and should be illegal; in a place and time where it was legal, would he refrain from praising the employer who eschewed it on moral grounds? The second is that even were abortion illegal, Tebow’s mother might have been able to decide to have an illegal abortion; following the law would then have been a choice, and one she could make for the right reasons.

The second implicit argument seems to be that the right not to have an abortion is the flip side of the right to have one. It is wonderful, Capehart says, that “she wasn’t forced by those doctors to end her pregnancy.” Is it really necessary to explain the logical error here? I don’t know where Capehart stands on gun control, but surely some of his colleagues at the Post are for it. He should tell them that their opposition to gun rights leaves them with no ground for objecting to a government that forces all its citizens to carry guns. Then he should report back to us on how persuasive that argument is.

Update: Oh, and one more thing. Even if Capehart were right and pro-lifers are being inconsistent, it wouldn’t mean they are hypocrites; it would mean they are wrong. As, in reality, he is.