At last, a pro-abortionist telling it like it is - abortion is killing, and women should be prepared to kill to protect their autonomy. Of course I think she is wrong, that it is the absolute worst thing a woman can do. To kill your own child shows a level of depravity, a coldness, that especially if done repeatedly can only be matched by serial killers.
Related link : Women 'Must Be Prepared to Kill' Unborn Children to Protect Autonomy: Times Writer ~ Life Site News
LONDON, U.K., July 6, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) - After contemplating the immense mysteries of human life and sacrificial love in comparison to a woman's "right to fertility control," a writer for the Times of London concludes that attempts by pro-aborts to dismiss the life of an unborn child are a "convenient lie" hiding the fact that, "Yes, abortion is killing.”
“But,” she concludes, “it's the lesser evil."
Columnist Antonia Senior in a June 30 column (available by subscription only) says that, despite the fact that the abortion debate hinges upon whether the unborn child is a unique life or not, women who wish to assert the cause of their freedom from male domination "must be prepared to kill for it."
Related link : Women 'Must Be Prepared to Kill' Unborn Children to Protect Autonomy: Times Writer ~ Life Site News
Here's my abortion provocation of the day:
ReplyDeleteIf abortion is murder then why can't anti-abortionists convince very many people that it's murder?
You might argue that it's because our society is lost or evil or immoral or whatever: but if an adult kills a child then 99.9% of the population recognises this as evil and describes it as murder. So there is still a capacity to recognise child murder as a crime - why don't we see abortion the same way?
Well some of us do see it as murder Danyl.
ReplyDeleteYou know throughout history good people have closed their eyes and rationalized away the evils that surround them - we are no different.
If you had been born white in the Mobile of 1800 you would have been surrounded by the human misery of slavery and almost certainly you would not have given it a second thought - it would just be a fact of life.
If the issue was as clear cut as you claim there would be no debate, no issue.
In truth we are engaged in a holocaust where a quarter of our future citizens are murdered before they are born for short sighted reasons and I find that heart wrenchingly sad.
Danyl, at least in the US (I don't have NZ stats) in the latest Gallup Poll, 50% of Americans think abortion is immoral, and only 38% think it is moral.
ReplyDeleteOn the same page, 47% call themselves "pro-life", which slightly less - 45% - call themselves "pro-choice".
If the stats were similar here, I don't think you could say that anti-abortionists can't "convince many people".
Perhaps people aren't in as much an uproar because it happens away out of sight; or perhaps they have been conditioned by being told over and over again that it is OK. Just look at Nazi Germany (yes, I know - everything has to come back to the Nazi's, but I think that is because it was a war with a clear black & white, unlike Vietnam and other wars that came after).
But in Nazi Germany, why didn't the German people protest? Especially about the killing of the Jews, or at least their rounding up and persecution? I think it was Goebbels who said, "If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it". The same goes for abortion. Western society has been told that it is OK. And it's legality seems to confirm that. They believe it not only because they have been told it many times, but also because they want it to be true. Because it lets them get away with the pleasurable things they want to do, and takes away any responsibility or accountability they might have had toward themselves.
But just because something is legal doesn't make it moral or true.
Snap, Andrei beat me to it!
ReplyDeleteI would like to add my small voice to those who see it as murder also. Fletch made this comment on Kiwiblog recently which I would like to repeat here simply because I can't see how it can be rationally agrued against:
ReplyDelete"Eszett, it doesn’t need a religious argument.
It’s very simple.
There can be only one point that life begins and that is fertilization of the egg and sperm during sexual intercourse. How is that “absurd and illogical”? Before fertilization occurs, the woman is not pregnant. Right? After it occurs, she is scientifically pregnant (not 12 weeks later), and nine months later (if it is not interfered with) a baby results. There is only one natural action in the world that results in a baby, and that is it.
If you take one course (letting the pregnancy run it’s course), a baby results. Yes?
If you take the other option, something living and growing inside the woman is destroyed either chemically or by being forcibly removed and no baby results. I don’t see how it could be more simple. Doesn’t take a degree to work it out."
In truth we are engaged in a holocaust where a quarter of our future citizens are murdered before they are born for short sighted reasons and I find that heart wrenchingly sad.
ReplyDeleteSo you believe that we're engaged in a holocaust - but why can't you convince other people of that?
To restate my question: if the government announced that it would change the law to make it legal to murder children then I think 99.9% of the population would oppoose it. If such a law were passed then that party would get voted out of office at the next election (at the least).
But abortion is never a political issue. Religious parties that have an anti-abortion manifesto never even get 1% of the vote. So it seems clear that only a tiny proportion of the population consider abortion murder. Why do you think that is?
Danyl, abortion is never a political issue because it's such a big issue. Period. Most of the big parties don't use it as an election platform precisely because it's a big issue and no one wants to bring it up in case it might jeopardize their election chances one way of the other. Whenever the issue is brought up in blogs or the media there are very clearly defined and vocal lines on either side of the debate.
ReplyDeleteAs Andrei pointed out, if it weren't an issue at all then there wouldn't be such controversy surrounding it.
Danyl asked: "...but why can't you convince other people of that? "
ReplyDelete- Its a mystery to me why society believes it is okay to kill just before birth but not just after birth. I really don't know and I guess this is the point.
To say it is a religious issue is delusional. Why not look at the issue as it stands, on its merits? Danyl - put aside both politics and religion and see how it stacks up. We know that in most cases the mother and father both probably don't want the child. Okay. Is this reason to terminate the foetus? Is it? Really? Apparently this child won't have a dream life. Really? Welcome to the real world. What is a dream upbringing? Who are the pro-choice to define this? At 10 years old after a less than ideal upbringing would this child wish he/she was never born? Seriously? What politician, what pro-abortar has the right to make these decisions? So forget the religious argument and stand the situation on its own two feet. If your really believe that one should not be responsible for their actions, and if you really believe that a child - even after a tough upbringing - would wish that they never existed (teen angst aside :-), then maybe you are genuine. but I cannot imagine anyone who would know enough to take this position.
ps, Sean, thanks for re-posting my comment. That has never happened to me before :)
ReplyDeleteDanyl - most people wouldn't even think about abortion - I doubt that one in a thousand has any idea of the abortion rate in NZ and confronted with the number would shy away from thinking about it.
ReplyDeleteAnd no amount of sophistry with questions
if the government announced that it would change the law to make it legal to murder children then I think 99.9% of the population would oppoose it. will change matters either because those of us with an intimate knowledge of recent European history understand only too fully how barbarity can be imposed by stealth upon the most civilized and refined of peoples.
In 1977 when our current laws were enacted do you think anybody for saw that thirty years later that 1 in four conceptions would end in abortion?
And if this knowledge could have somehow been imparted to the law makers of the time do you think they would have proceeded?
References to Nazi Germany don't seem very germaine to me - people who protested against the government were imprisoned and/or killed. That's not the case here.
ReplyDeleteDanyl - most people wouldn't even think about abortion - I doubt that one in a thousand has any idea of the abortion rate in NZ and confronted with the number would shy away from thinking about it.
Doesn't that in itself tell you something? Compare that to the intense public interest in every child murder case that comes along. Why do you think people are outraged when children are killed but indifferent to abortions?
ReplyDeleteIn 1977 when our current laws were enacted do you think anybody for saw that thirty years later that 1 in four conceptions would end in abortion?
Not an accurate number since about 50% of conceptions fail to implant or are miscarried, but legalised abortion was a response to the public health challenge of high fatality rates of woman having illegal abortions - and it's been a success in that regard.
Actual quote: "…But you cannot separate women’s rights from their right to fertility control. The single biggest factor in women’s liberation was our newly found ability to impose our will on our biology… As ever, when an issue we thought was black and white becomes more nuanced, the answer lies in choosing the lesser evil. The nearly 200,000 aborted babies in the UK each year are the lesser evil, no matter how you define life, or death, for that matter. If you are willing to die for a cause, you must be prepared to kill for it, too..."
ReplyDeleteSo we have Antonia Senior's opinion, her feminst's ideology. And the problem is? Is she spokesperson for Every Woman? What has it to do with average Jane getting an abortion who isn't Antonia or a feminist? The women of the world are not units of a giant uber-brain, all connected to one mind receiving commands on what to think and do.
Danyl,
ReplyDeleteDo you think abortion is murder? Forget about everyone else for a change and just think about yourself. What do you think.
Mr Double Zero,
ReplyDeleteThe women of the world are not units of a giant uber-brain, all connected to one mind receiving commands on what to think and do.
You haven't been to many feminist websites, have you.
Starting with the "near born" category, we hear stories of reckless drivers crashing into a car with a heavily pregnant women and she loses the baby. Many instinctively think of that as tantamount to murder.
ReplyDeleteThere is the occasional story of a pregnant women being attacked and beaten and she loses the baby. Given that wasn't her choice, it seems pretty close to murder on the part of the assailant.
It's quite plain that you take steps to terminate a life, and the only issue really is the justification you wish to use, and there are many.
Most of the arguments applied would fail if applied to a just born baby (quality of life, mother's ability to cope, financial strain, impact on career etc), so the arguments ultimately rest on one of four areas:
1. The mother has absolute right over her body and therefore if she considers the life growing within her is unwanted, she should be able to terminate it.
2. A pre-born does not count as a fully autonomous human due to it's unborn and dependent state, and as an unborn, does not have a right to life.
3. The right to kill in self defence. This is where the mother's life is arguably in danger, and rather than adopt an approach of trying to save both lives, we have to regard this as an "either/or" situation.
4. The mother had no choice in conception (child a product of rape). This is essentially visiting the punishment of others on to the child (and some mothers would also view the child as another punishment for them) and becomes an argument basically amounting to "unwanted". However, it deserves it's own category as it is a complex situation.
Part II
ReplyDeleteAll of these arguments are easily addressed, although the relative importance of each of the above cases map to ones basic world view.
However, as we learn more about the unborn child, it becomes harder to refute the basic truth - we are willfully terminating a life because it is basically unwanted.
This is why it is fundamentally important for pro-aborts to treat the stage of life of a pre-born as "less than human".
Peter Singer and others have successfully argued that on this basis we could reasonably kill just borns too.
As an intellectual exercise, the arguments work just as well (or should I say they are just as bad?) whether the baby is 23 weeks in the womb (and just viable if premature) or 3 weeks out. But we run into the unassailable "truth" Danyl points out - once born, we know the gig is up, and it is infanticide pure and simple.
Once you accept and understand that, you see the arguments fall back into the standard issues outlined above.
Those that do recognise human life when they see it in the ultra sound scans, then fall back to the "draw a line" argument.
The less human it looks, the more reasonable it is to allow the termination.
In scientific terms, that might be at 6 weeks max. In practical terms, most women need a bigger window - 8-12 weeks, and by then it's already getting pretty dodgy. We see studies coming out justifying longer times, just don't show pictures!
The latest study is around claiming a fetus under 20 weeks or so doesn't experience pain in the same way as a matured baby. It's another attempt to characterise a fetus as "less than human" by focusing on the stage of development, and not the DNA.
Many pro-aborts are hung up on quality of life arguments and will suggest that lack of welfare and other forms of support to mothers that cannot cope with the thought of babies makes it a necessity, more than even a right, to offer abortion.
"Every child who is born should be wanted" is actually a slogan. The converse "we therefore must terminate every life that is not wanted, rather than change our attitude"
The way I see it, there was a lot of choice and options available for at least 50% of the cases, right up until the moment a women becomes pregnant, and after that, if they decide to end the miracle, they risk their souls.
The other 50% of cases are more complex, and it comes back to our world view on how sacred we hold such life versus the arguments for termination.
Do you think abortion is murder? Forget about everyone else for a change and just think about yourself. What do you think.
ReplyDeleteMost aren't since they take place in the first nine weeks of pregnancy before the baby has a functioning central nervous system (I'm not religious so I don't believe in the 'soul').
Once you get up to twenty weeks then I think you do run into huge ethical issues - at that stage maybe it is murder? I don't know the answer.
@ZT - all mildly interesting but irrelevant to my original question. Why can't the pro-life movement convince the public?
It's simple really Danyl.
ReplyDeleteThe public doesn't want to know. They're quite happy that someone else has told them: "it's all ok, you can do whatever you want, no repercussions", except, as has been illustrated above and before, there are always consequences.
"Why can't the pro-life movement convince the public?"
ReplyDeletePerhaps because the public has never seen a bucket full of bloody human body parts?
@Danyl - my comment wasn't attempting to answer your original question, but glad you found it mildly interesting.
ReplyDeleteI think the answers provided so far are quite likely - it's largely a cultural mindset. For the same reasons infanticide was acceptable in Roman Times, and other issues of human rights such as slavery, human sacrifice, arranged marriages, etc the current belief system is that the rights of the women to choose are deemed more important than a right to life of an unborn dependent.
Will it improve anytime soon? Doubtful. I think our current cultural trends will see things worsen for babies and children.
For the same reasons infanticide was acceptable in Roman Times, and other issues of human rights such as slavery, human sacrifice, arranged marriages, etc the current belief system is that the rights of the women to choose are deemed more important than a right to life of an unborn dependent.
ReplyDeleteYeah, maybe. That seems like a psychologists fallacy. If I decided that, say, necrophilia was moral and should be illegal I could argue that it's illegal for the same reasons human sacrifice was once legal and that a more moral and englightened culture would endorse it. You really have to make the argument to the culture you're living in.
Perhaps because the public has never seen a bucket full of bloody human body parts?
ReplyDeleteCongratulations on being one of the stupidest people alive. Briefly:
people are still opposed to child murders without having to see buckets filled with child body parts.
If I decided that, say, necrophilia was moral and should be illegal I could argue that it's illegal for the same reasons human sacrifice was once legal and that a more moral and englightened culture would endorse it.
ReplyDeleteSorry, did you say necrophilia or sodomy?
If the argument is cultural, then it isn't unreasonable to look at other cultures for comparison.
And there are a host of arguments made that do not hinge on cultural context. I outlined them above.
Danyl, your comment to KG indicates you are a little slow on the uptake.
ReplyDeletePeople see children every day. Some people are directly involved with children in a deeply personal way - parenting and so forth. It's easy to work out murder of children is a bad thing.
On the other hand, it is common to describe a 9 week old fetus as "just a collection of cells" on the pro-abort sites I've been to.
The whole ultra sound thing has really upset the pro-aborts that dislike the watering down of this idea and supplanting it with "gee, it's just a very small person".
As KG points out, seeing the evidence of this does have a very detrimental effect on holding on to pro-abort beliefs founded on "it's just cells".
There are many stories of nurses and doctors moving out of the abortion industry after faced with the evidence.
You too are playing stupid. And winning by the looks of it.
Danyl, I know you're a leftist and therefore mass killing is part of the ideological territory, so to speak, but do try to keep a civil tongue in your head when promoting it, eh?
ReplyDeleteAgain and again in a long, eventful life I've seen people who were either blase' about or indifferent to evil until they were actually confronted with it themselves.
There's an enormous gap between considering something in the abstract and being confronted with the sounds and smells and sights of the real thing.
If you don't understand that, there's no comment I need to make about your intellectual capacity.