The recent Supreme Court decision to return abortion to the political realm, to be decided by the States and elected representatives, was a victory for the law and the Constitution. But this by no means supposes that those that hold human life to be valuable have won the argument. They will have to prevail in each of the 50 states and likely will fail in some, and win in others. For the Left, this has been a bruising experience. Although they have been losing in the court of public opinion for some time, the Left championed the idea that the way to advance their agenda was by non-democratic means, especially using unelected judges. Having failed that, they are getting hysterical and in some cases, their true motive and ideas are revealing themselves.
As such, you can expect them to re-tool some of their arguments again. You know, the baby is not really alive, is not human, it is part of the mother, and therefore part of the control one wishes to have of one’s body.
But as mentioned previously, those arguments were failing for some time to convince the public and it is likely most states will place some kind of control on abortion, especially after science has indicated viability at a much younger age than previously thought.
So, not surprisingly, we will likely see some new arguments develop, that perhaps reveal more about the Left’s agenda, and their view of life generally.
A good example is the feminist writer, Sophie Lewis, writing for the reliably left-wing The Nation Magazine. We don’t read the Nation very often, but when we do, it is always a deeply disturbing experience. Here are a few choice excerpts:
“There is something infantilizing about denying the fact that embryos die when we scrape them out of the bodies of which they are a part. It sentimentalizes pregnant or potentially pregnant humans as fundamentally nonviolent creatures to imply that we can’t handle the truth about what we are up to when we opt out. And it patronizes abortion-getters to insist that we are only making a health care choice, rather than (also) extinguishing a future child. In my view, recognizing that gestating manufactures a proto-person requires acknowledging that abortion kills a proto-person. A baby is completely dependent on human care in order to stay alive, but its needs could be filled by any person—whereas a fetus, a proto-person, is ineluctably dependent on specific person.”
As we interpret this, she is being frank with her readers. Quit kidding yourself. You are not making just a “healthcare” choice, you are killing a baby, or in her words, ” a proto-person.” Further, the baby takes control of certain biological functions of the mother, and therefore, it is not really a part of the mother’s body but has a body of its own that feeds off the mother. In a sense, she disposes quickly of two arguments often repeated robotically by abortion enthusiasts that attempt to obscure what is really happening. In a strange way, we admire her candor, but then it takes a deadly turn.
“We humans do kill, when necessary: Victims of assault sometimes kill in self-defense, targets of persecution sometimes kill for justice—or just to reduce the number of their persecutors—and the colonized sometimes kill for liberation. Mothers living in unspeakable conditions (including chattel slavery) have been documented to kill their children as an act of mercy. Of course, these examples are instances of necessary violence, generated by the conditions for which we struggle to render extinct. When it comes to abortions, it seems possible that the conditions that necessitate them may never be wholly eliminated, even if vasectomies become generalized, and perfected ectogenetic technologies become universally accessible. As long as people are performing pregnancy on this earth, they must be free to change their minds about seeing it through. The adoption industry could be revolutionized and child welfare lavishly subsidized; regardless of the available supports, no one should be pregnant involuntarily. The science of medicine dictates that when foreign organisms inhabit the human body unwelcomely, we tend to eject them.”
In a way, there are passages here of considerable confusion. As long as we humans are “performing pregnancy” as opposed to just having protected sex. With the wide variety of ways to avoid pregnancy; self-control, and birth control, where is all this forced pregnancy coming from? Is a baby an invasive species, like fungus?
She seems to be suggesting that killing a baby is like killing for self-defense. It is like hand-to-hand fighting at the Chosin Reservoir. It is “kill or be killed”.
Or maybe it is like defending the home against an unwanted home intruder. In this case, killing an unwanted intruder who has hijacked her body. There is no recognition of the possible consequences of sex and that she created the intruder herself by her actions.
Moreover, she forgets that humans also kill for domination of others, to take other people’s stuff, and sometimes, just for the thrill of it. This killing instinct is not a good thing about humans and it has taken us a long time to control these primal forces. It is part of what one would hope civilized society would do. But she seems to be drifting toward the idea that killing is not such a bad thing. After all, it is done all the time for a variety of reasons. In fact, the title of her essay is “Abortion Involves Killing-and that is OK.”
What is involuntary pregnancy? Most pregnancies are not the result of rape. A woman chooses to have sex with a man, has lots of choices about drugs and devices to avoid getting sperm and egg together, and has the choice to give up the baby if all that does not work. She surely can’t believe that the abortion issue is about the very rare occasion of forced insemination. It is about women having casual sex and being angered that by the laws of nature, they carry the consequence, the child. It is not fair that they can’t walk away as a man can. So in a sense, it is “involuntary” to be bound by the rules and regulations of nature? It is a rage against either God or Nature, take your pick.
Well, for the past 50 years, women could always choose abortion to get out of pregnancy but society is changing its mind about whether that is a good thing, either for the mother and certainly the baby. However, the coldness of her argument that follows, and the choice of the verbiage of “gestator” and “gestatee” are so clinical that we lose sight of the fact it is mother and baby. All mothers, of all species, defend their babies, except it would seem animals that have come through women’s study programs.
“But what’s the point of acknowledging this now, at a time when abortion rights are so imperiled? For one thing, it would seem hard to deny that the euphemistic, apologetic, placatory “pro-choice” strategy hasn’t worked out thus far. So, why not risk coming out for what we actually want, namely, abortion—a clearly documented public good? The pending Supreme Court leak thrusts us into a situation in which we have little left to lose. Rather than cleave in desperation to the rearguard missions of defending the rights (to privacy, rather than abortion) enshrined in Roe v. Wade, we could consider this moment a chance to reset the terms on which abortion is fought.”
“What would it mean to acknowledge that a death is involved in an abortion? Above all, it would allow for a fairer fight against the proponents of forced gestating. When “pro-life” forces agitate against feticide on the basis that it is killing, pro-abortion feminists should be able to acknowledge, without shame, that yes, of course it is. When we withdraw from gestating, we stop the life of the product of our gestational labor. And it’s a good thing we do, too, for otherwise the world would sag under the weight of forced life. It is a hard pill to swallow for a misogynist society, sentimentally attached to its ideology of patriarchal motherhood, but the truth is that gestators should get to decide which bodies to give form to. This choosing is our prerogative. A desire not to be pregnant is sufficient reason in and of itself to terminate a gestatee.”
The reader is urged to read her complete article so you can satisfy yourself that we are not cherry-picking passages here. In the previous two paragraphs, she gets stronger and stronger suggesting that killing a baby is completely justified or “the world would sag under the weight of forced life.”
She says to abandon arguments that are not working like “it’s my body”, “its privacy”, or “it’s not real life.” No, say it straight up. It is killing for convenience and women should be proud of that position?
She obviously has never been a parent. She sees pregnancy as an unbearable burden. But having a baby is just the first step in a long commitment to other people. In non-academic terms, we call this having a family. Ideally, both husband and wife are joint partners in a project that continues through to grandchildren and even great-grandchildren.
Those who have experienced this know it is a commitment that has great rewards and disappointments. It is part of the human condition.
She says basically in fancy language that if the mother is inconvenienced by pregnancy, you have a right to kill the baby. She adds we should acknowledge this without sentimentality. Killing is OK. However, most laws suggest lethal force can only be used to defend your life or another person’s life. Life is not ended with pregnancy so what are you defending against: Being inconvenienced, being distraught, being confused?
What if most of the inconvenience comes after birth? Do you still have that right to kill that which is bothering you?
My wife and I have three children. Two wonderful girls who have become fabulous women. And we also have a son, profoundly autistic and developmentally challenged. Oddly, we have learned a lot about life from him, even though some would view his life as a burden.
The Left has always had a thing for eugenics. The Left has always had a thing about abortion and the destruction of the nuclear family.
The problem is that once you justify killing a baby as a defense against inconvenience or extended responsibility, what do you do with all the handicapped folks that are not inconvenient for nine months, but can be inconvenient for life?
Not surprisingly, the logical conclusion has been in some societies to kill off the elderly, and kill off the handicapped. That, however, was among primitive societies living on the edge of extinction. Have we reached a point in our highly educated and opulent society that we are ready to kill off the people that get in the way of having a life free of expense, emotional burden, and frustration? Such a stress-free life could develop a new legal doctrine: your honor, I killed him because he got in the way of my narcissism.
We can think of only one advanced and wealthy society that thought it was OK to kill to make the race better and the world more convenient. I wonder if she has any sense of how close to sounding like a Nazi she comes.
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