OK Everybody:
These are “the least of these.”
Explain to me how you think they’re not.
One Last Time
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Tag Archives: pro-life
Pro-Choice is Not The Virtuous Choice
OK, so let’s get down to fundamentals. If you are pro-choice, your argument is founded on an assumption of higher moral standing. You are fighting for rights, you are taking the high road, you aren’t one of those who want to control women, etc. You are more virtuous, and you signal that fact all you can.
But you are not more virtuous. In fact, your position has no virtue at all.
The prochoice position depends on dehumanizing or otherwise negating the worth of other human beings. Those human beings are the most helpless and innocent there are.
The pro-choice position depends on then advocating for their deaths!
It is all about death. Destruction. Hopelessness. Victimization. Elitism. The advocacy of privilege. The strong imposing their power over the weak. Manipulation. Disenfranchisement. Injustice.
That is my premise, as it ought to be the pro-life movement’s premise. Before you pivot/deflect to: “What about the women’s rights?” please deal with this fundamental question first.
Now please defend your pro-death position.
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The Disposables
There are two kinds of people. There are the people who are born, grow, live their lives, and die. For example me and you.
And there are the other people.
They are disposable. They are optional. They are possibilities that we do not want. They are not born. They are not given the opportunity to grow or live lives. But they do die.
Interesting science factoid: Scientists have yet to discover an intrinsic difference between the disposables and the other people. We have yet to find the difference, at any stage of development pre-birth, between a disposable human being, and you. Interestingly, there does not appear to be a demand for a genetic test to be used during pregnancy to determine whether you are carrying a real child or a disposable one.
Since our laws allow one unborn person of say, thirty weeks gestation to be called a person, nurtured, hoped for and loved; and another unborn person of thirty weeks gestation to be unwanted and extracted from the place of its sustenance in a manner designed to end its life, and discarded as waste (or sorted and sold); the age or developmental status of the person cannot be the determining factor.
“We have some young people in the audience who weren’t even born when Roe [versus Wade] was decided, and this is pretty important,” said Vice Presidential candidate, Sen. Tim Kaine (D).
That was true. There are also those people who weren’t in the audience because they weren’t born.
The recent Democrat candidate for president unflinchingly declared that “unborn persons do not have Constitutional rights.” In theory, that jury is still out. In real life, it is undeniably true.
In 1973, the distinction between the two types of persons was legally recognized. Since then, we have discovered disposable persons in huge numbers. We ought to be very thankful to Planned Parenthood and its affiliates for managing the enormous disposal issue so creatively.
I know what some of you are saying right now. That is not a person!!!!! (redundant punctuation included.) But arguments in support of assigning disposable status are, without exception: arbitrary, self-serving, agendized rationalizations which appeal to ludicrous internet scientism.
But since WordPress comment conversations have taught me the uselessness of arguing for the personhood of very young fetuses with people who raise this particular objection, I will, for the moment, allow personhood status to be undetermined.
But perhaps you can tell me why it is a moral neutral to dispose of a living organism which will become a human being.
Not potentially, not maybe. This small organism will become a person every single time. It will not become anything else. If it survives, the result will be exactly the same kind of organism that you are now. A human being.
The determination of the moment of personhood is irrelevant.
A human being is created in the image of the Creator of all things. Our nation is founded upon an idea that all human beings possess inherent and equal rights. We dismiss the disposables’ rights just before we dismiss their lives.
We must do the former, or we must openly admit that we are arbitrary granters of human rights, and that we openly confer rights to some and deny rights to others. And that would make us unfair. Not nice people. Hypocritical. That’s just not us.
What are the real implications? If we are honest with ourselves, the answer is too plain. We kill people for preference sake. We balance our logic and our integrity on a knife’s edge of rationalization, and we maintain hyper-vigilance toward any idea which would give us even a gentle push.
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Guest Post: “Life Privilege”
The following was written by a young friend of mine, Christopher Plumberg. He is a family man and a Postdoctoral Scholar at a major university. I cannot say this better than he has. Enjoy.
Privilege is real.
I hear a lot about male privilege. I hear a lot about heterosexual privilege. I hear a lot about white privilege. And I readily confess that I, sometimes unconsciously, enjoy many of the rights, benefits, and privileges concomitant with being a white, heterosexual male in our society, while many others – women, ethnic minorities, and the LGBTQ+ community, to name a few examples- have been wrongly deprived of those very same rights, benefits, and privileges. I get it: I enjoy real privilege, and it’s not okay.
Can I say that again? I really have it: honest-to-goodness privilege that I don’t deserve, that a truly just society would not afford to me without affording it to everyone else too. It’s not right that I have privilege which others do not. It’s awful, and it’s wrong. I get it.
But here’s an even greater privilege that I enjoy: I am alive.
I call it “life privilege.”
And, tragically, it’s not a privilege that our whole community has access to. See, whether you are pro-choice or pro-life, you enjoy one privilege that many other people have not had: being born. Whether or not you believe a woman has the right to terminate her pregnancy at her own discretion, you can necessarily only see the issue from one perspective: the perspective of a person who is already alive. There is, by definition, no other perspective that you can see it from.
And just like white privilege or heterosexual privilege or male privilege, the person who enjoys “life privilege” is often blind to the privilege itself. In fact, “life privilege” is much greater than other forms of privilege, because it is a necessary precondition for enjoying any other kind of privilege. It is the difference between having only some rights and having no rights at all. You cannot enjoy the right to vote or the right to worship or the right to marry if you have not first been given the right to breathe.
Abortion does not merely take away a person’s right to express themselves or to be paid a fair wage; it takes away his or her right to live. And those who advocate for a mother’s right to choose are necessarily advocating for it from an intrinsically privileged position, by having mothers who have already chosen in their favor. Every pro-choice advocate already enjoys the privilege of life.
See, the real privilege of life is the privilege of having at least one person who thought you would be more than a mere inconvenience. Someone who thought you were worth having around. Someone who loved you enough to keep you, despite the potential threat you posed to her career. To be pro-choice, when you have enjoyed so much privilege as to be breathing at this very moment, is like being a white, heterosexual male who uses his privilege to oppress those less privileged than himself. Whether or not it is with the best of intentions, the oppression is no less devastating in one case than the other.
Today is Sanctity of Human Life Sunday. Today, we remember the nearly 59,000,000 human beings who never enjoyed the privilege of life outside the womb. You and I enjoy the incredible privilege of being alive. Who are we to deny that same privilege to anyone else?
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My Female Parts Think Different Things Than Your Female Parts
The easy mention of what we used to call our “private parts” has become very much un-private. We have devalued the body, we have thrown around the clinical terms to the point of crassness, and I wince. Please excuse the crass and clinical language I must use in order to say this.
“…When you have a vagina I will take the time to listen to your viewpoint.” This often repeated argument, directed toward men who object to abortion, by women who defend abortion, is meant to be a trump card, an argument-winner.
Well, I have the standard full set of lady parts. Am I allowed to have an opinion then? I have a vagina, a uterus, fallopian tubes, and the typical collection of female hormones, and I disagree with you wholeheartedly.
First of all, I am a little puzzled. Are we supposed to be thinking with our vaginas? You’ll have to tell me how you do that.
I use my brain. The assertions that either we women are sharper (more insightful and intelligent) or duller (more emotional and therefore irrational) because of our female anatomy have always struck me as equally insulting. We men and women all have sexual anatomy, and we all have brains.
Yes, I have a perspective on childbearing, pregnancy, and child-nurturing that men cannot have. But a perspective does not equal sole rights to form an opinion. The right, and the responsibility, to challenge human rights issues belongs to every person, men and women. And preborn babies are the subject of the major human rights issue of our time.
I do not have a corner on convictions regarding human rights because of my anatomy. All people have the right to think, evaluate, discern, and form opinions. And in this particular place, they still have a right to express those opinions. That is a right that all persons share. That is, persons who are recognized by our laws as having any rights at all. The other ones have no right to opinions, and no chance to form any.
They apparently need defenders. Both men and women can and ought to speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves.
So, according to you, your opinion-forming processes are predominantly informed by your vagina. And yours tells you that your right to direct the course of your own life necessarily trumps the right of a child conceived by you…to live. Your vagina tells you that you may dispose of that child for any reason you choose, unquestioned, at almost any time during your pregnancy. Without consequence, without undue cost. Any restriction upon any of these conditions is injustice.
As a woman, with my woman’s anatomy and my female mind, I am convinced that I have no right to terminate the separate and distinct life I carry within my body. My female nature encourages me to celebrate and protect that life, and to know that it is a special privilege to carry and nurture that life.
It seems to me that if failing to possess a vagina excludes views, then we must exclude all men’s views. Why do some men have a right to support abortion rights, while other men have no right to object to abortion rights? So, keep your arrogant misogynist opinions to yourself, Bill Clinton, President Obama, and your favorite male celebrity!
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Quit Insulting Women
There is plenty of debate on the issue of abortion. Here are two small items I wanted to add to the discussion. The first because I’m amazed at the bold faced absurdity and the second because it’s something I’ve never heard mentioned before. Both offerings from the pro-abort side ought to be offensive to women…
There is a new publicity campaign out there, the sense of which is that abortion is painless, easy, even pleasant. Its designers are counting on an astonishing level of brainwashing and stupidity. It is insulting.
Emily Letts “filmed” her own abortion in order to show women a “positive abortion” story. I write “filmed” because it is extremely “edited” down to about 28 seconds of her idiotic smiling face as she coos about how cool it is. We see nothing of the actual abortion. Unseen is: the length of the procedure; any visuals at all of her body below the shoulders—which is off camera or afterward frantically covered by a nurse; pre-op; post-op; pain. It took her six weeks to get to her video equipment and film her post comments.
And let’s just say her interviews and comments in the media have the potential to set the intellectual status of women back about 100 years.
Take a look at this:
The 8 Biggest Lies About Abortion, Debunked by the Year’s Most Important Rom-Com
The author, Elizabeth Plank, is the Executive Social Editor at PolicyMic. This is unequivocally a progressive author and a progressive forum.
In this article we learn that the following are myths:
Abortion is painful.
Abortion is dangerous and often leads to death.
Abortion clinics are gross and scary.
Abortion leads to depression and tears couples apart.
And so on, all myths!
Do I need to refute the absurd claim that having a baby removed from your body surgically is not painful? Or that chemically forcing labor and delivery at home is not scary or painful?
On the same page we are offered another article: Politician Opens Up About Her Abortion-Shuts Down Republicans Who Think They Can Speak for Women.
Conservative men are chastised for condemning abortion on the grounds that it is presumptuous for them to encourage women to continue with their unplanned pregnancies. How dare they when they cannot know what it is to have your life derailed? And more honestly: How dare you comment on my sex life?
At the same time, liberal men are commended for extolling the ease and virtue, the panacea, of having an abortion. Joinin’ the fight for women’s rights!
I think I see a problem.
If conservative men have no business discouraging abortion for women, then liberal men have no business promoting abortion for women. If men on the right are presumptuous to lobby against abortion, then liberal men are presumptuous to tell me or my daughters that abortion is no big deal. That when you have an abortion, you are standing up for women’s rights against their oppressors.
Then men have no business speaking on the experience of abortion at all.
Why are liberal men permitted to pontificate on the benefits of abortion? Male advocates of abortion make it sound as though having an abortion is easier than having a tooth out. How is this not dismissive of women’s experiences? Why is this not as arrogant as when conservative men decide “what we can do with our bodies?”
You try having a small human surgically removed through your reproductive organs, a procedure requiring anesthesia, sharp instruments, strong drugs, bleeding, and extended recovery time. Not to mention the necessity of transitioning from a state of pregnancy to non-pregnancy suddenly and in an unnatural manner, with the attendant physical and psychological changes. Recovery takes weeks or months.
You may want to be a cool guy who is, sort of, all supportive of modern women, but you, sort of, really don’t have a clue about what you’re talking about. You will never know what you are talking about, so be quiet.
I am pro-life and anti abortion. But I cannot imagine how any woman is not outraged at both these things. The extent to which the abortion industry and its promoters insult you every day is undeniable.
Messages from the Mythical 