Lionel Shriver has written a fascinating piece of projection that attribues to pro-lifers the same power-mad motivations that drive abortion proponents on the left.
"In the history of the world, the true test of a civilisation is how well people treat the most vulnerable and most helpless in their society," the governor of South Dakota opined on Monday. "The sponsors and supporters of this bill believe that abortion is wrong because unborn children are the most vulnerable and most helpless persons in our society."Lofty rhetoric. But I have studied the eyes of the fanatics who regularly picket abortion clinics in the US and I do not see love of tiny unborn babies. I see hatred.
If there's hatred, is hatred for baby-killers entirely unjustified?
What is really going on here is the same culture war that has been raging in America since I was a kid - the same stand-off between the strait-laced, self-righteous toe-the-line types who wear hats to church, and the grubby, licentious long-hairs brandishing peace signs with whom I grew up. Both factions are still shouting at each other across the cultural divide, and these poor foetuses are just weapons flung like ripe tomatoes. The abortion issue in the US is not about babies. It's about control, about power, about who can tell whom what to do, about who despises whom and their disgusting lifestyle. In short, it's about grown-ups.
Only the pro-abortion crowd sees the issue as being about power and control, and that's always how they phrase their arguments. "Keep your laws off my body" and so forth is about who controls what. However, those on the pro-life side don't want to prevent abortion out of some desire to control women. It's true that many cultures do want to subjugate women, as is seen in the Arab and Muslim worlds, but the American right has no such intention. Many or most of the strongest pro-life proponents are women! If Mr. Shriver sees abortion as a battle over control, then he's merely projecting his own motivations onto his opponents. As hard as it may be for him to believe, we actually do want to save innocent lives.
The term "pro-life" could not be less apt. (Enjoy the irony that many a "pro-lifer" also supports capital punishment.)
Yes yes, and many a "pro-choicer" supports restricting the choice to own guns, etc. It should be pretty obvious to anyone involved in the abortion debate that the meaning of the labels should be kept in context.
Only the abortion rights movement has a genuinely positive agenda, the protection of a woman's right to make her own decision about an admittedly thorny moral issue whose implications are intimate. The emotional force driving pro-lifers is profoundly negative; alas, it is our negative emotions that usually pack the most punch. The anti-abortion movement is fired up with loathing - for permissive, Godless lefties who don't even get nervous when threatened with eternal damnation since they don't believe in it (which must be terribly frustrating).
How are pro-lifers' profoundly negative for wanting to protect what we believe to be innocent babies? That just doesn't make any sense. The implications of abortion are certainly intimate for the mother, but even more intimate for the baby who will be murdered. The crux of the issue is the question of whether or not the unborn child is a baby or "just a fetus". If we can reach agreement about that, even many who don't believe in eternal damnation will agree that murdering babies is wrong. It's clear that at least one side is full of loathing, but it's rarely the pro-lifers who spew the hateful vitriol.
The beliefs of pro-lifers are not important or particularly relevant to me. What is important and relevant, though, is what they will do to enact those beliefs in law. Will they be okay with the states that will undoubtedly choose to keep abortion legal upon the overturning of Roe v. Wade? In some states, we wouldn't be talking about slight majorities here on that either.
Will the people of South Dakota, for example, be okay with their neighbor Minnesota if Minnesota votes to keep abortion legal?
What do you think they would do, Mark? Kill the pro-choicers in order to get a majority? You seem like a reasonable guy, so this pseudo-conspiracy talk seems a little strange coming from you.
JC: I don't know what they will do. The questions I asked weren't meant to come across as "conspiracy talk".
Will the overturning of Roe and the illegality of abortion in South Dakota be enough for the people of South Dakota and other states who choose to ban abortion? Or will they seek to ban abortion everywhere through something like a federal abortion ban? Can Congress pass such legislation? What will they do if Congress can't get such legislation passed?
These are all unknowns, as far as I'm concerned.
Mark: I'm sure some people will push for a national abortion ban, probably using the same tactics they're using now.
I am not a lawyer, mind you, but as I understand it the grounds for overturning Roe would be such that a federal ban would be unconstitutional.
MW: And what if a national abortion ban fails? What's next?
I think it's unfair for you to imply that, "From the left's point of view", the abortion issue is really about a fight for power. Saying that the controversy over the abortion issue is just one facet of the liverals vs. conservatives fight for power (and nothing else) insults both pro-lifers and pro-choicers by denying the validity and importance of the issue itself. In other words, realizing the fallacy behind this Lionel Shriver piece is something pro-choicers should be able to do as well as pro-lifers.
I will grant you, though, that pro-lifers do have a better understanding of the most fundamental question of this issue than pro-choicers do. The issue is whether an unborn fetus is a person with a right to life, not whether a woman has a right to a certain kind of privacy. Because if abortion really is murder, I don't think many pro-choicers would support the choice to kill.
"It's clear that at least one side is full of loathing, but it's rarely the pro-lifers who spew the hateful vitriol."
I'm not so sure. To me, it seems like it's the pro-lifers who keep harassing and threatening "baby killer" doctors, and seriously disrupting the operations of abortion clinics through less-than-civilized means. I do admit that I could be wrong on this - my perspective on that particular question (whether it's pro-lifers or pro-choicers who protest more aggressively) could be biased beyond reliability.
"How are pro-lifers profoundly negative for wanting to protect what we believe to be innocent babies?"
I'm sure many pro-choicers agree that, if abortion is murder, then the pro-lifers' efforts are justifiable and understandable. But since they don't think abortion is murder, they think pro-lifers are disruptive, annoying, and trying to end a woman's right to do something that is not murder.
"The crux of the issue is the question of whether or not the unborn child is a baby or "just a fetus". If we can reach agreement about that, even many who don't believe in eternal damnation will agree that murdering babies is wrong."
Absolutely. So how do we go about having more forums and discussions around this defining question? I'm honestly asking. It does appear that honest public discussion of this question is the only way any progress can be made towards agreement. Until that is done, all we have are two sides shouting at each other.
I've always been a Republican, but I'm going over to the Democrats if these recent bans go through, because I *am* a Republican-- I believe in individual autonomy from imposition by the state in religious and spiritual matters.
I do not see a developing lump of cells as a living organism in any way until the development of a central nervous system, the development of the ability to feel sensations. To impose your definition of life upon me-- by saying without any scientific proof that what constitutes a human being starts at conception-- is to impose your belief system. I believe in freedom. And really, whatever the motives, there is no forced servitude so horrendous as being forced to bear a child.
And here people usually pull in arguments about 'responsibility', and 'the woman should have thought about that before having sex'. So the hell what? No one has the right to regulate by law sexual activity between two consenting adults-- even if it is considered immoral. Here abortion is being used as a means of control.
I respect that you have strong views, and you regard it as murder. But you should realize that you are not going to sway those like me who do not share your beliefs it is life, and see only that you are trying to impose what comes across as fundamentalist religious views upon us.
If you want to end abortion, how about the vast, pro-life groups and apparatuses unite to fund an enterprising scientist who can figure out a means of engineering an artificial womb/and or transfer a foetus to a willing carrier? Then everyone will be satisfied-- no unwanted pregnancies, no abortions.
I favor no further government involvement in the abortion issue. Abortions have been on the decline for more than a decade. This means that society is solving the problem on its own, without any force from the government. It's dealing with the problem not by arbitrarily talking about whether it should be legal or not. People are choosing not to have abortions, in spite of it being legal for them to have one. What does that mean? It means that government doesn't have to act for abortions to become rare things.
I realize that the government acted initially with Roe v. Wade, but further government action in the name of "fixing a mistake" is not necessarily a good thing, especially since it will likely have an effect on abortions directly opposite of what pro-lifers want. It may not "fix" anything. If you then say "so what.. Roe should still be overturned", that's fine, but what are you really after? I highly doubt that this much ire and vitriole is because of Roe's implications on federalism and the rights of the states. I have no doubt that you're concerned about states' rights, but don't pretend it's an equally important reason for your opposition to Roe.
.. and when I speak to "you" in the above comment it was a reference to the general pro-life public, not any specific person here.
Besephule,
Aren't you trying to impose your belief system?
Mark: Meanwhile millions of babies keep getting murdered at an ever-declining rate. Less than ideal.
Besephule: Who are you to impose your belief system on an unborn baby? I agree that some people can't be convinced, which means that those people will have to be defeated politically and lose their "choice". By the way, there are people working on transplanting unborn babies out of the mother as an alternative to abortion. Would you favor a law that required mothers to have their babies transplanted out of their bodies instead of allowing abortion?
MW: Getting the government involved, again, isn't going to be "ideal" either for the reasons I outlined in this and other posts on the issue. And if you can come up with an "ideal" solution to this issue, feel free to bring it up. Until then, discussion of options as being "less than ideal" is nonsense. Issues that affect large and diverse societies such as ours rarely have "ideal" solutions.
A society that convinces people to stop making a certain choice on its own, without laws, is a society that has truly conquered that choice. What greater demonstration of that can there be than a free choice (to have an abortion) that hardly anyone makes?
Mark,
"A society that convinces people to stop making a certain choice on its own, without laws, is a society that has truly conquered that choice. What greater demonstration of that can there be than a free choice (to have an abortion) that hardly anyone makes?"
What part of that argument doesn't apply to ANYTHING that is outlawed?
JC: Not all issues are analogous to abortion. Different issues require different approaches, but my underlying belief is that there should be as few laws/restrictions on liberty as is prudent and reasonable. I favor society-driven solutions to problems instead of government-imposed solutions.
Mark,
You are sidestepping the fact that your argument, if accepted, would conclude that we shouldn't outlaw anything.
JC: Actually, my argument, if accepted, would conclude that laws/restrictions on choices that hardly anyone makes are unnecessary. And if a behavior or choice is on the decline, without government intervention, laws/restrictions on that behavior or choice are unnecessary.