ABSTRACT
True tolerance of ultimate concerns would mean tolerance based on that concern which truly deserved to be regarded as ultimate. In every case, whether a creed tolerates other ultimate concerns depends on the nature of its own ultimate concern. It is in the nature of some ultimate concerns to demand tolerance, and in the nature of others to forbid it. But tolerance means different things in different creeds. Their ultimate concerns are of such a nature as to forbid abortion: to forbid it as the sacrifice of innocents. To know whether or not abortion falls within the scope of true tolerance, one would have to know which of these competing concerns truly deserved to be treated as ultimate. Among all creeds which require that the murder of innocents be forbidden, those who also say abortion truly is the murder of innocents logically cannot regard its accommodation as falling within the scope of true tolerance.
