Posted on 01/24/2013 10:55:31 AM PST by SeekAndFind
I had an odd moment today reading this Salon piece because within it is a paragraph or two I could have written and probably have said a dozen times:
I have friends who have referred to their abortions in terms of scraping out a bunch of cells and then a few years later were exultant over the pregnancies that they unhesitatingly described in terms of the baby and this kid. I know women who have been relieved at their abortions and grieved over their miscarriages. Why cant we agree that how they felt about their pregnancies was vastly different, but that its pretty silly to pretend that what was growing inside of them wasnt the same? Fetuses arent selective like that. They dont qualify as human life only if theyre intended to be born.
When we try to act like a pregnancy doesnt involve human life, we wind up drawing stupid semantic lines in the sand: first trimester abortion vs. second trimester vs. late term, dancing around the issue trying to decide if theres a single magic moment when a fetus becomes a person. Are you human only when youre born? Only when youre viable outside of the womb? Are you less of a human life when you look like a tadpole than when you can suck on your thumb?
This was the exact thought process that led me to the exact opposite position. I, too, noticed a distinction between how women approached an in-utero child when they wanted the child and how they felt about it when the pregnancy was unexpected and unwanted. Logically, it made no sense to me that the mother’s disposition should change the biological disposition of the baby. Therefore, it made no sense that it should change the ethics of the situation.
But Mary Elizabeth Williams goes a whole different direction, encouraging the pro-choice side to embrace the possibility that life begins at conception, which she imagines will allow them to gain some kind of lost rhetorical ground:
Of all the diabolically clever moves the anti-choice lobby has ever pulled, surely one of the greatest has been its consistent co-opting of the word life. Life! Who wants to argue with that? Who wants be on the side of not-life? Thats why the language of those who support abortion has for so long been carefully couched in other terms. While opponents of abortion eagerly describe themselves as pro-life, the rest of us have had to scramble around with not nearly as big-ticket words like choice and reproductive freedom. The life conversation is often too thorny to even broach. Yet I know that throughout my own pregnancies, I never wavered for a moment in the belief that I was carrying a human life inside of me. I believe thats what a fetus is: a human life. And that doesnt make me one iota less solidly pro-choice.
On one hand, I truly appreciate her honesty both for its boldness in its literal brutality and in the same way I wish gun-control advocates would just say they want to ban all guns if they want to ban guns. Then at least we’re having an honest conversation. There’s a reason the pro-choice movement must euphemize itself to within an inch of its life because many people don’t want to be on the side of not-life. In any other article, I’d assume “not-life” is a term meant to mock what pro-lifers believe of pro-choicers, but Williams offers such a clear argument on behalf of an actual not-life position, I’m not sure. At any rate, Williams dispenses with the euphemism, and gives us a look at a very different kind of pro-choice message like an Honest Movie Trailer for left-leaning politicians. “So, abortion ends a life. So what? There are a lot of lives that aren’t very important.”
Speaking of drawing “stupid semantic lines” and “trying to decide if theres a single magic moment when a fetus becomes a person,” doesn’t this position just require Williams to draw even more untenable lines where a life becomes important enough to save? That’s the argument Katrina Trinko makes:
By this same logic, isnt infanticide also fine and dandy? After all, if were talking about autonomy, kids arent exactly independent as soon as they are born. No infant can take care of themselves. And even later on in childhood, children rely heavily on the adults in their life to provide shelter, food, and emotional support. What about kids and adults who become disabled in life? What about quadriplegics? Theyre not going to be able to take care of themselves. Is it okay if we just off the lot of them? Heck, what about needy friends who seem to be falling apart unless we talk to them regularly and console them? Okay to just shoot a couple of them so that we dont have the burden? Should we ship the grandparents that spent all their money and are now financially dependent on us to the local executioner?
Yes, if the fetus is a life and a human being and not a clump of cells, that makes a huge difference. No one would ask a woman to respect the rights of a clump of cells. But it is valid to ask her, difficult as it is to have an unwanted pregnancy, to realize that the death of the child the child who was totally innocent and has done nothing except be conceived is not an appropriate way to handle this.
So. What? I’ll hand it over to you guys.
“What difference does it make?”
Yeah, Sandy Hook took human lives. So what?
Of this I am certain, there will be a day when each of us will be called upon to give an accounting of our life, what we said, what we wrote, and what we taught and urged others to do.
Abortion is murder as defined by the killer.
>So, abortion ends a life. So what? There are a lot of lives that arent very important.<
Could there be any doubt that quote was written by a sociopath?
I agree with your thought, a thought which—in rare moments of Divinely granted sanity—causes my heart to tremble. Pride in me tries to make me think I’ll escape that accounting. “If it is hard for the righteous to be saved, where will the ungodly and the sinner appear?”
Really weird thought process.
Concur. It is a chilling thought.
and thus you understand why our Lord calls them blind. why they can hear truth, understand it, and deny it, as they deny God, in the very same breath.
Frightening isn't it ~ makes me want to hug my guns even tighter.
hmmm....... yes, this lady is at least being honest, but her argument does indeed lead to the infamous slippery slope.
respect for life is the very basis of civilized society, protection of life is the govts. number one function, looks like we have some competing imperatives here.
this is a tough subject, as freedom loving people do not want to interfere in people’s personal lives; but what we have is govt. funding of abortion, tax breaks for abortion promoting orgs. a whole slew of problems.
now with ACA all of these problems will be exacerbated.
Pictures of the author required here ...
Please, please, do not do this. I just ate lunch.
Mary Katherine Ham ... ... google her ...
I read the whole piece. Her and Dr. Mengle would be great buddies
The article is chilling in its admission. The true author of this is Satan himself of this I have no doubt. His time is short...
Sorry, I thought you were talking about the author of the Salon article, not the Hotair commentary...
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