Time to Shove Abortion Radicals Aside
Abortion played a less visual role in the 2008 election than in most of the previous presidential elections since 1980. The murder of Dr. Tiller probably places the abortion issue at the center of the national political debate again.
The abortion issue is intensely personal, and intensely divisive. Both those who favor allowing it and those who oppose it are disingenuous about what is involved, and whose rights should be paramount. Yes, as the self-styled pro-choice people argue, it is a woman’s body, and she should have a right to decide what happens to her body. Yes, as the self-styled pro-life people argue, the rights of an unborn child should matter, because this is the least powerful, and most vulnerable of living things. Both groups fail to recognize that there are legitimate issues raised by the people who disagree with them. There ARE medical issues which may endanger the mother, there are ethical issues about forcing a woman to carry a child conceived through rape or incest. There ARE legitimate issues about the fact that an abortion is ending a life. There is no way to finesse that.
I read a posting called “Coming To Terms With Abortion” which seems to make a lot of sense on this issue. Please take a look. the poster, Doctor Zero, makes a good case for some of the unspoken issues at work in the national debate about abortion.
I think there is a lot of food for thought in his post. In the wake of the murder of Dr. Tiller, we need a lot more quiet, thoughtful discussion about the subject of abortion, not a shouting match between offended extremists.
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I think the vast majority of prolifers have worked to shove the extremists aside for years now but no matter how loudly they condemn these actions, the left knows that they’re well served by asserting guilt by association of any and all prolife organizations and individuals.
Yes, Christine. Posts like Kathy’s at TMV today seem intentionally designed to exaggerate the numbers and influence of the radicals for a broader political purpose of permanently marginalizing ALL conservatives. In that sense, it is both cynical and dishonest.
But that’s hardly new from most of these characters.
Time to call “Operation Rescue” what it is, a terrorist group, and then ban the organization and arrest Randall Terry. Bill O”Reilly also needs to face trial for inciting hate. I’ve had it with right-wing nut jobs taking the law into their own hands and getting off scott-free for encouraging the worst kind of hate.
The hard-core “pro-lifers” are all a bunch of nuts, time to cull their numbers by whatever way we can.
You mean the same Operation Rescue that unequivocally condemned the murder of Tiller?
Nothing like using a crime to jail those that are completely innocent just because you think they have some of the same political beliefs as the guilty person.
Thank you, Michael, for showing the underlying authoritarian impulses of intolerant liberalism yet again.
And based on this comment, I urge readers to again consider whether the potential for violence is really solely on one side here.
Orson;
Read the post from Dr. Zero. As someone who is pro-life I agree with some of the sentiments of the post. However, its overall tone is “tilted”. This sentence caught my eye “For many young mothers and would-be fathers, abortion is not a procedure designed to remove an unwanted fetus – it’s a procedure to restore a life of casual sex and self-indulgence”.
Let’s be clear, we could eliminate all abortions and still have as much “casual sex” if everyone used contraception. Also, many having abortions are not in “casual sex” relationships.
For some time I’ve noted two separate and parallel arguments regarding abortion. One focuses on issues related to the fetus/child (“When does life begin?”, “When does the fetus has legal rights?”. The other focuses on the mother (and sometimes the father) “To what extent does a woman have control over her own body?”, “How do the circumstances of the procreation influence the right to abortion?”)
IMHO the problem with the “casual sex” argument is that its simply one extreme of the spectrum of circumstances of procreation with the other end being rape and incest. Is my worth as a human being defined by the circumstances of my procreation?
Finally, I’ve found that men and woman can “fully participate” in the discussions/arguments regarding the fetus/child. I’ve found that men are not welcome in the woman/mother arguments. I’ve experienced pro-life women get upset when I’ve weighed in on the woman’s experience with abortion.
I agree with some of the points you make about Dr. Zero’s article, c3, but not entirely.
I do agree that the one sentence you quote is rather loaded. I find it veers much too far toward assuming motivations and intents which aren’t necessarily true for many or all prochoicers, even if I do agree that the effect of having readily accessible abortions on demand is as he describes. But I don’t think it helps the debate to insult people’s motivations, when in fact many who support abortion rights are motivated by purer intentions of making sure that women have power and control over their bodies.
Where I do think he was more effective was in talking about the fact that the prolife perspective considers that choice can almost always be made BEFORE pregnancy occurs; women can choose to abstain or use contraception, and men should also bear the responsibility of abstaining or using contraception if they are not willing to father children. If this were the norm, there would be a HUGE drop in the number of abortions occurring (as the data shows that only a miniscule number are due to rapes, and a larger but still relatively small portion are due to failure of birth control.)
This point about women’s ability to control their reproductive faculty by controlling their sexual behavior (and men’s responsibility to participate in that as well) is generally completely ignored by prochoice advocates, who prefer to claim that prolifers do not consider the women’s rights at all or that they ‘want to enslave women’ or ‘force them to bear children’. Certainly the state has the responsibility to prevent forcible impregnation (or forced sex acts which don’t result in pregnancy) which is why we have rape statutes. But the state does not IMO have any responsibility to claim that women who became pregnant as a result of their own free will should have the right to terminate a fetal life.
I’ve experienced pro-life women get upset when I’ve weighed in on the woman’s experience with abortion. Really? In what way?
Thanks to all who have responded. C-3, I think Christine Stanley has picked up on a lot of my points about Dr. Zero’s post. Again, I think the challenge ofr us is to recognize the basic humanity of those who disagree with us, especially in a case of such emotional power. I respectfully think Cr. Zero is making the point that rights come hand in hand with responsibilities. The right to decide to have sex includes the possible responsibility of creating new life as a natural consequence.
I don’t think it helps for those of us not directly involved with such a decision to feel that we should become involved. But, as Dr. Zero notes, and Megan McCardle also addresses (in her on line post at The Atlantic On Line), is the problem with the arrogance of believing that no one with differing views has anything worth saying. Dr. Zero is generally opposed to abortion, Megan McCardle is generally in favor of the law as it is. Yet both have written thoughtful essays, recognizing the fact that there may be legitimate opinions that differ form their own.
We need to look for a way to defuse this. I will say I agree with Dr. Zero – Abortion is a festering wound that won’t heal. The reason is the way it was done. The haste to get legal protection for abortions was a mistake, because something this divisive needed to be a decision reached through the legislative process, not judicial fiat. Or through absolute defeat in a military sense. And even then, an imposed settlement is hard to make work. Why did it take a century to get the federal government to effectively enforce the 14th amendment. McCardle’s allusion to John Brown is sobering, to say the least.
We all need to turn down the heat, and talk. That means we need to recognize the basic humanity of people we do not agree with; people we dislike, and yes, even people we think are ignorant, misguided creeps. Intolerance and the dehumanization of those we disagree with makes it easy to shoot them. One at a time or by the thousands.
From the Leach “Salt Shaker” website (mentioned as being “scripturally” supportive of Tiller’s assassination), regarding killing abortion doctors:
“…so far, the only way to save hundreds, arguably thousands of unborn lives, now, has been to destroy abortion buildings or kill abortionists.”
Also: “But he does not take life seriously who condemns physically stopping the most brutal, violent murder in America today! He cares not about violence who sees it not in tearing unborn babies limb from limb but only in physically stopping it!”
Link:
http://www.saltshaker.us/AmericanIssues/Life/Prolife.html
These kinds of sites are the heart of the extremist anti-abortion movement of which Troy Newman and Randall Terry (Operation Rescue), and, obviously, Scott Roeder, are a part of.
These kinds of sites and their dogma should be more widely reported, to allow the world’s populace a closer look at the mindsets of these domestic anti-abortion terrorists.
Perhaps in bringing these individuals to light, we’ll prevent a re-run of yesterday’s Tiller tragedy.
Michael,
You would serve ‘your side’ of the argument better by silence.
Here you commit the very act that you consider a crime only one sentence before. Take a breath, calm down, then do nothing.