Gary Wills fisked over abortion op-ed piece

Garry Wills' receives a handsome fisking for his recent L.A. Times Op-Ed article "Abortion isn't a religious issue," by Gregory Popcak, "Give Garry Wills that old-time religion" (The Los Angeles Times, November 9, 2007). Popcak says that Wills might just as well have begun his piece with the fairytale words "Once upon a time, in a faraway land, there lived a man named Gary Wills....":

In his essay, Wills cherry-picks Thomas Aquinas' theology; employs a simplistically idiosyncratic interpretation of Scripture and massacres history, science and philosophy, all in a fevered attempt to assert that people of faith should kneel at the altar of secularism because, he argues, Christian opposition to abortion is a Johnny-come-lately moral position founded on little more than thin air and pious politics.

Oh, really.

Neither faith nor reason supports Wills' claims.

From this point, the skewered subject is rotated slowly, fat sizzling and flaming over the fire, as Popcak prepares his well-studied barbecue. A good read.

[Hat tip to E.E.]