“Libservative” Demi at Pilgrim’s Progress doesn’t appreciate it when pro-choicers say “every birth should be a wanted birth.”
Am I “wanted” now? Was my life worth having?
I wonder if people realize how very devastating these “arguments for choice” can be to someone like myself, someone who so narrowly escaped the butcher knife almost 46 years ago? No, they don’t get it. Maybe they were “wanted children.” So I guess that means that their lives are somehow more appropriate than mine.
Sometimes I feel like I should apologize for even being here.
Look! My husband loves me, and he thinks I’m the best thing that ever happened to him!
Look! My students benefit from my knowledge and expertise, and my principal reeeally likes the way I do lesson plans on Excel spreadsheets (complete with automatic date-stamp on the tab code in the header!! I figured that one out all by myself!)
So now… may I stay? Am I “useful” enough? Am I “wanted” enough? May I stay?
That’s just a small sample of a very eloquent post. There’s a lot there that’s disturbing to pro-choice ears; most of us don’t want to think of ourselves as insensitive or hurtful. (Then again, since Demi suggests that Nazis during the Holocaust were on “higher moral ground” than pro-choicers today, perhaps she shouldn’t be quick to criticize other people’s insensitivity.)
I’m also disturbed about Demi using her position as a high-school teacher to preach pro-life thought to her students, which she does “every chance I get,” but I suppose that’s okay as long as she’s teaching at a private school.
The traditional abortion debate boils down, I think, to two questions. First, what kinds of self-sacrifice can be legally forced on parents for their children? (I seldom hear pro-lifers suggest that parents be legally forced to donate their lungs if their born child requires it to live. But logically, a born child of a father who refuses to donate his lung will be no less dead than a ten-week embryo whose mother gets an abortion; if we’re willing to legally force the latter, we should be willing to legally force the former).
The other question – which is more relevant to Demi’s post – is this: Is there an important moral distinction between preborn humans (zygotes, embryos and fetuses), and a born person such as Dani or myself? Or – to put it in short form – are zygotes, embryos and fetuses people?
Demi’s post uses a rhetorical trick that pro-lifers are fond of: Pretend that the “personhood” question is, rather than a major disagreement between people of good will, already settled. Assume that there is no difference between a zygote and Demi herself. And then – because pro-choicers say that zygotes have no right to life – Demi pretends we’ve said that Demi herself has no right to life.
It makes for a very stirring post – but lousy logic. Demi isn’t even debating the question; instead, she skips arguing the key question, assumes an answer, and based on that assumed answer pats herself on the back for being so very morally superior compared to us worse-even-than-the-Nazis pro-choicers.
Yes, it’s true; if we assume that pro-lifers are right about everything, then pro-choice thought is terribly immoral. (But then again, if we assume that pro-choicers are right about everything, then pro-life thought is likewise terribly immoral.) I don’t think it gets us anywhere to point this out over and over again – and that’s really all Demi’s post does.
* * *
Here’s my concern: Why are pro-lifers so uninterested in asking “in the real world, what policies are associated with the world’s lowest abortion rates?” You’d think this would be an essential question for anyone who thinks abortion is a terrible moral wrong. Yet I’ve almost never seen a pro-lifer consider the question.
I’ve said this before. It deserves being said again. Without exception, every country in the world with a very low abortion rate has either legal abortion, or bans so toothless that abortion is effectively legal. But what those countries (Belgium, West Germany, The Netherlands, etc) also have are cultures that strongly promote effective use of birth control, and that have strong social support programs that support poor parents – not just before birth and in the first year of infancy, but for life.
The abortion debate in the US can go on forever. We can have yet another round of clever, heartfelt essays like Demi’s, implying that the other side is immoral; or, if we want a better debate than that, we could argue for the millionth time about how to define personhood. But that will never get us anywhere. I will never, ever convince Demi that there is a fundimental moral difference between herself and a seven-day-old embryos; Demi will never convince me that it is sane, when running into a burning building and having a choice between saving a three-year-old child or a petri dish containing 10 seven-day-old embryos, to rescue the petri dish instead of the child.
Rather than rehash those questions, I’d like to ask Demi: Will there ever be an abortion ban in the United States that vastly lowers our abortion rate?
Can Demi point to a single case, anywhere in the world, where banning abortion has turned a country with a high abortion rate into an abortion rate comparable to Belgium’s?
If the primary purpose of the pro-life movement is to punish women who get abortions, then the pro-life strategy we’ve seen in this country makes sense. But if the primary purpose is to make the US abortion rate as low as possible, then it would make a lot more sense to look instead at strategies that have actually worked in the real world. And the pro-lifers, by and large, have demonstrated no interest in that.
Demi and I have common ground here. Demi’s a Kerry-voting, gay-marriage-favoring, pro-welfare pro-life liberal. She’s more open to solutions that will actually lower the abortion rate than most pro-lifers are. Nonetheless, it’s hard not to notice, reading through her blog, that she seems to loathe pro-choicers (especially pro-choice men) a lot more than she loathes right-wing pro-lifers.
Now, I’d rather not loathe anyone, but I’m not perfect in that regard, so I can’t expect Demi to be either. But I would point out that pro-choice lefties like me are not the people standing between the USA and a low abortion rate. Banning abortion does not, in practice, lower abortion rates by a large degree. What would lower abortion rates to a large degree would be free birth control, high-quality, high-quantity education about birth control, and generous state support of single and poor parents. And what’s standing between the US and these steps to a much lower abortion rate are Demi’s pro-life allies, most of whom would rather have a high abortion rate than take effective steps to reduce it.
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I really can’t even pretend to get it.
So if its monsterous to suggest that there should be fewer unwanted children, presumably that also means that it is also monsterous to advocate the use of birth control, or to suggest that rakes should use condoms. If Demi’s bio-dad had been more responsible about using birth control, she wouldn’t exist. Of course, she also wouldn’t exist if her bio-parents hadn’t been “loose,” so does that mean that it is monsterous to advocate against promiscuity? Does she spend as much time convincing her students to fuck as often as possible without birth control as she does trying to convince them not to have abortions. Many, many more people, many of them wonderful human beings, never come into being because their parents fail to fuck, or recklessly use birth control, or selfishly resort only to non-reprosex, than never come into being because the are aborted.
Admittedly, your line of response is probably more productive, but I just can’t help being confused by this.
“Then again, since Dani suggests that Nazis during the Holocaust were on “higher moral ground”? than pro-choicers today”
(insert expletives here)
Why even bother with these people? Don’t get me wrong, you always write excellent, thoughtful, civilised posts in response to even the wackiest stuff, but I just wonder – after seeing bloggers I appreciate take the time to respond in a civilised, thoughful manner to questions such as “when should torture be considered useful?” or “were leftist academics responsible for 9/11” – if perhaps this is a way of legitimising the questions themselves.
If someone doesn’t have even the basic ethical and logical foundations to be able to grasp those issues, what kind of argument can there be?
It’s not that difficult to understand the basic ethical, logical, political etc. grounds of the woman’s right to choose, even in such a difficult ethical issue as abortion – as opposed to a no-brainer like torture or genocide. But if someone is dishonest enough to actually compare the two, then I don’t know what kind of communication there can be. People who bring up the Holocaust on this topic have abandoned all reason and morality. And they get to preach from a soapbox about morals? Sorry if I sound so angry and oh “intolerant”, but we’ve had the Holocaust commemorations only less than two weeks ago, not that any special commemoration day is necessary to remind everyone what happened, but I just cannot believe the ignorance and the nerve. I don’t see a difference between those who make that comparison while frothing at the mouth, or those who make it in a nonchalant soft-spoken tone.
Why do so many anti-abortionist support the death penalty, bombings, torture, and show such disregard for the life and sensitivity of people once they’re out of that magically pure heavenly womb, that happens to be part of a woman whose life and sensitivity they also completely disregard? Because by then we’re all sinners, and only the unformed, undeveloped embryo is sacred? This is sick.
I appreciate your patience and I’m sorry if I cannot manage the same, but anyone who says a woman making such a painful choice is on a par with nazis needs to be shipped on a major tour of Birkenau and be left there until they rejoin human civilisation. Enough said.
MN, you’re right to be pissed off. Being compared to Nazis should piss us off.
However, I think it’s important to remember that everyone is more than their worst moment. Reading Demi’s blog, there’s a lot to like and respect about her. For instance, she’s passionately anti-death penalty, anti-torture, and anti-war. I think she’s someone who maybe is open to respectful dialog; and maybe as a result of reading this post (if she does read it) maybe she’ll think twice before making the Nazi comparison in the future.
But even when dealing with people who (unlike Demi) are clearly totally hopeless and unreasonable, I find it’s helpful to try and keep my tone even. (When I can – sometimes I lose my temper, of course). First of all, a civil, calm tone might be the most convincing to any “lurkers” who are reading the conversation. Often, the person I’m addressing isn’t really my intended audience.
Secondly, being nice really seems to drive some of the meaner folks up a wall. :-)
It’s really very simple.
Had abortion been legal in ’58, I’d be dead right now.
It’s that simple.
No you wouldn’t, you simply would never have existed. I’m in exactly the same situation, except it was Australia in 1966. If I hadn’t existed, I wouldn’t be around to regret that fact.
It seems to me behind this is a massive exercise of ego. You and I are just two tiny flecks of sand in billions of years of history, of no significance to the Earth, let alone the Universe. Whether or not an individual of your or my genetic makeup existed is of no significance whatsoever.
If you can’t live with that fact, then you are not living in reality.
If you think that “you” was “you” as an embryo more than as an egg. And I don’t buy that.
If my dad had been working the night I was conceived instead of at home, I would have been washed out with my mother’s menstrual blood like my other hundreds of perished siblings. Why should women be allowed to refrain from sex or use contraception? They could at least put forward a good faith effort not to “kill” their potential children every month, no?
Ha!
If abortion were still illegal today, three of my closest friends and two family members would _very likely_ be dead now–and, in fact, one of those deaths would have made _me_ a “neverborn.” I can’t think of a single one who would not have aborted, no matter how dangerous the procedure.
Are you going to weep for the children I’ll never have, after my hysterectomy cuts them out of the realm of possibility forever? Those potential human beings would have had as great a chance to grow up and use Outlook. My decision to not give conceive them is just as wilful and just as selfish.
You can’t regret having never existed.
As for the potential of a fetus, why do they always assume every pregnancy will be a wonderful contribution to the world? They go on and on about all the supposed Beethovens that have been aborted, but we don’t hear much about the Hitlers, Bundys, and Capones we’ve been spared.
Pointless Games.
You see, in a truly realized culture of life, none of those people would have been anything like they were. After all, a world that condemns abortion is a world where the Holocaust could never exist.
Oh, wait….
NB:
No you wouldn’t, you simply would never have existed… If I hadn’t existed, I wouldn’t be around to regret that fact.
DRA:
You can’t regret having never existed.
Bingo.
West Germany isn’t a country anymore…
Since when does feminism do backward summersaults and discuss such things as the “neverborn?” Give me a break. A woman’s choice is a woman’s choice is a woman’s choice. Period. No argument.
Demi: Do you pay taxes every year? If so, you’re a hypocrite in crying about what could have been your “death”. … because paying taxes is a choice — giving the State the needed funding to kill other humans. Not all choices are good, or comfortable, or without harm. Then again, it is hard to not feel that *some* choices are necessary.
Abortion was legal when my mother was pregnant with me, and sometimes I think that she should have gotten one. Now, this isn’t some sort of masochistic, self-denying hysteria – my mother’s health was severely compromised by her pregancy. Not only did she almost die before I was born (she was on six months of bed rest and then got toxemia right before my due date), her pregnancy contributed greatly to the deterioration of her kindeys. Without a transplant she would have died while I was in middle school. As a zygote I was not worth more than her life, her health. My mother had me because she desperately wanted a child and in the end she did get that transplant and we’re both now (relatively) healthy and happy. But if she had made the decision to not have me (through either birth control or abortion) then that would have been her decision, and it might have been a better one. Maybe she would have adopted and given a home to those orphaned and abandoned children that pro-lifers so rarely consider or mention. Maybe new research would have allowed her to have a safer pregnancy later in her life and her child would have been someone else. We’ll never know. And though I’m grateful for the sacrifices that she made on my behalf I would never require them of anyone.
I have to agree with Charles here. The argument that abortion is bad because of the potential life then argues that anytime a woman doesn’t have sex while she’s ovulating is eliminating a potential life, someone who could do great things. Birth control, even abstinence, is then eliminating a potential life. Admittedly the idea of abortion is more dramatic than not having sex that month or using a condom, but the end result is still the same.
I was a very accidental child. I never felt unwanted, and I have a great and happy relationship with my parents. But as I realized/found out when I was older, they never intended to have a kid right then. I’m sure it feels very different to know that you were almost aborted than to know that you almost weren’t even created, but the simple fact of the matter remains that if my parents had been more responsible I would never have been born.
As you said, this particular line of logic presupposes that the zygote is a person, and it also evokes a dramatic, emotional response. But it’s not particularly sound. There’s still a debate it skips over, and a very important one, too. And, also, if we are assuming that a zygote is a person, and that it’s murder to have an abortion, then the quality of the resulting adult’s life, and what they’ve done since shouldn’t be at issue, should it?
You know what? I’ve tried. I can’t be civil.
Suffice it to say that I find it rather rich that Demi decries the selfishness of women who want the choice to abortion available to them, but would force raped women to give birth against their will because they are, after all, not that important. Who cares if it compounds the trauma? Who cares if the rape survivor doesn’t want to go through with the pregnancy? Someone forced her to have sex against her will, we can certainly force her to breed, and further traumatize her. She’s nothing, after all.
I find it disgusting and callous that she would shrug off the bodily integrity, health and well-being of the woman involved and force her to put her body through a pregnancy and all of its potential complications as a punishment for having sex.
She’s talking about choices, condemning her biological mother for not contacting her, and refuses to impart a shred of humanity to this woman who, let’s face it, went through her own version of hell back in the fifties. A man who screwed around was just a man–a woman who screwed around was a slut and a whore. An unwed mother was the focal point of shame and scorn, and I doubt very much that she’s let these internalized messages go.
Every adoptee I know is pro-choice–strongly so. And you know, being born to your married biological parents doesn’t mean you were wanted. It doesn’t mean that they may not choose abortion if it’s available. And I have no problem with that–I’d rather my mother had the choice, that she had me willingly and gladly rather than be forced to have me. Because it’s not all about me.
The Nazi comparison–very cute. Moldy, but cute. BTW, the Nazis outlawed abortion and birth control. They thought women were no better than breeding mares, that we didn’t deserve a choice or a say in the matter (even though it would be our bodies that bore the burden of pregnancy).
Adoption isn’t like giving away a pair of shoes, and I’m sick to death of anti-choicers touting the adoption option like it’s so easy. Women supposedly have horrible trauma from abortion, but carrying a pregnancy to term and giving the resulting child away is apparently a cakewalk. Not. But demanding that every woman go through that in the name of penance and all things righteous and holy isn’t selfish. Not all all.
Oh, and–every child should be a wanted child. I won’t apologize for that. A child should not be a punishment.
Demi, rather than getting all weepy about your near miss with “death” and making the grossest violation of Goodwin’s Law I’ve seen in a good long time, why don’t you just celebrate the statistical unlikelyhood that you’d be here to complain in the first place.
of all the things that could have made you not be here to talk, abortion is less of a problem than, say, a wandering quantum singularity passing through our solar system in any time in history, the gravitational effects of which would make our planet uninhabitable.
or maybe one of the millions of near-misses with extinction level asteroids.
or maybe turning one of the hits into a near miss, which would prevent the Cretaceous extinction, permenantly screwing our biosphere out of human evolution.
which ALSO means you’d never be born.
then there’s also war and natural disasters, killing either of your parents, or any of their ancestors, for that matter, before they could procreate. or any of them having sex on a different occation, which would randomly fertilize a different egg, perhaps changing that ancestors gender, since until very recently, same gender fertilization was technically impossible.
so if your great great grandmother on your father’s side had sex with your great great grandfather at a different point in time, your great grandfather would have been born a woman, and so would never have sex wtih your great grandmother, thus religating you to the group of “neverborn.”
Any particular human being conceived is a long shot, at best. Were you unwanted at the time of your birth? great, that just means you had another bout of luck, and didn’t get aborted, or born in eastern europe, where, at the time, unwanted children were left in hellish, prison like orphanages.
You got lucky to be around and talk about it. just like premature babies are lucky to be around to share that experience.
on a completely different note: do you seriously think that no one got abortions in 1958? making abortion illegal doesn’t prevent them. at best, it just grants assholes who see women as property to look down on women who actually make the choice. If your mother really wanted to get rid of you, you still would have been aborted, but there’s a much greater chance that she and any other younger siblings you may have would also be relegated to the “dead” set, as it’s hard to conceive children when you die from an unsafe, nonsterile procedure.
Demi, did you ever consider that if abortion had been legal when you were conceived, you might be happier now? It makes just as much sense: Who You Are (call it a soul if you’d like) could have been transferred to a later conception, and you might have grown up in a completely different environment. You might own an island. You might invent something amazing. You might be a hero. You’d certainly have more time ahead of you, since you’d be younger. All the mistakes you’ve made, all the things you regret–many of them may not have happened.
Also, along with Amanda and piny, I’m wondering if you spend part of every day apologizing to all your eggs that never got fertilized. Because of your decision not to do what it takes to have as many children as you possibly can, you’ve essentially “killed” dozens of human beings. Right?
I went back and read Demi’s post. What a vile, creepy thing it was.
At some point when I was a kid, I realized that I owed my existence to the Holocaust. Had there been no Nazis, there would be no me. This caused me considerable pain for a little while. I was glad to be alive, glad to have my nice American life, and it was kind of awful to know that none of that would have happened had it not been for the thing that killed my great-grandparents and brought about my dad’s cousins’ deaths at the ages of 3,6, and 8.
And then I asked myself what if I could undo it. What if someone offered to wave a magic wand and create an alternate reality in which the Nazis never came to power, my grandparents never came to America, and I was never born. And I realized that I’d say yes without thinking. I love my life, but even as an eight or nine-year-old, I realized that my life was not the most important thing in the world. I realized that there were limits to my right to be born. I realized that other people’s suffering was not an acceptable price. And honestly, I think that realization, that the world does not revolve around you, is something that occurs to every normal, healthy person as they mature. It’s a necessary component of emotional adulthood.
What Sally said.
Apparently the most important thing in the universe is that *Demi* be born?
See, I’m just thinking not.
Or any one of us either.
Also, as others have suggested, if you follow her argument to its logical conclusion, not only should she be preaching the pro-life position to her students, she should be preaching pro-sex to them — they should all be out fucking like bunnies, all day, all the time — think of all those zygotes not being fertilized on her watch! All those babies not being born!
C’mon, Demi! Get to work!
Of course, my parents might have never met if it wasn’t for slavery, or ghettos. Does that mean those are good things? Not to mention, I(an accidental child, born after abortion was legal for 11 years) am around today because my dad was getting paid. Does that mean we have to give everyone a good paying job so that they’ll be able to keep a lot of babies? Also, what about girl kids dying from poor water supply? That probably kills a lot more eggs than abortion, not to mention, the millions of potential sperm ‘killed’ if a boy child kicks the bucket. Why don’t the pro lifers devote their lives to clean water projects?
There’s also a difference between an unwanted pregnancy and an unwanted birth. My mother, for example, really did not want to be pregnant with my youngest brother, conceived shortly after abortion became legal and at a time when she had 18-month-old twins and three other children under six, as well as a husband whose alcoholism she was no longer able to look away from.
She considered an abortion, seriously. And my brother was really damn upset to hear about that later on from my sister. But once Mom decided to go through with the pregnancy, she wanted him. He even became her favorite.
But no, she did not want to be pregnant.
One idea in the Jewish tradition is that if you save a single life, it is as though you saved an entire universe, because of all the possibilities that could unfold from that person. That’s how important life is, and how horrible murder is.
At the same time, abortion has always been permitted in Jewish law, and at times (extreme danger to the health of the mother up until the birth itself) is required.
I don’t see a contradiction here. Maybe other people do but they should realize it’s only based on certain, particular traditions or even relatively recent fads of thinking.
Demi, if you’re still reading, I wonder if there’s not more going on here. From the tone and content of the excerpt from your post, as well as your comment, I get the feeling you’re under a strain that isn’t entirely explained by the abortion conflict.
You tell us how your students benefit from you, how your principal appreciates you, and how your husband loves you. And you want to know if that’s enough. You passionately and desparately argue your case, and you want to know if you can stay.
Obviously, you don’t need to ask that of us. Of course you can stay.
You’re trying to argue an issue that’s important to you, and I understand that this is the context of your approach here. Still, what you’re choosing to say and how you’re choosing to say it strikes me as someone in a huge amount of pain. You say you feel like you should appologize for even being here, and I believe you. That’s a huge piece of suffering to bear, and I’m sorry that this feeling affects your life.
I know something about that kind of feeling, though, and I’m fairly certain of this: that feeling doesn’t come from a political conflict. Something that painful almost always goes deeper, goes back further in our lives.
When you say “Had abortion been legal – I’d be dead” you’re talking about how your mother would have aborted you. You don’t know me, or many of the other commenters here, or many of the memebers of the pro-choice movement. But your mother is very real in your life.
I wonder, did her not wanting you demonstrate itself in ways beyond leaving you with the knowledge that she’d have terminated the pregnancy? Was your experience growing up affected by a lack of care, of affection, of the feeling that there was room for you in the way your mother wanted her world to be? These things are independent of politics: the trauma to a child who doesn’t get her basic emotional needs met (feelings of safety and security, being loved and valued) is disabling to both pro-choicers and pro-lifers.
I’m not trying to embarass or belittle you. I’m not trying to suggest that the pro-choicers don’t genuinely upset you. But it can be very real, when an old trauma is set off by something in our current experience that hooks into it. And if we’re not clear on what’s happening, it can seem, in a very powerful way, that it is the current experience that’s causing all our pain and turmoil.
If you’re walking around with an open wound, every pro-choicer can seem like a threat to your very right to exist. Regardless of your political leanings, that’s a rough road to travel. A therapist well versed in trauma and recovery might be able to help lighten the load if you’re up for some heavy introspection. Again, I don’t say this in any sort of condescending way. This is coming from someone with lots of such therapy behind her, and in front of her.
Take care.
On the question of “then wouldn’t pro-lifers have to mourn all those unfertilized eggs?”:
Do you really feel that there’s no possible validity in seeing a difference between a fertilized egg and an unfertilized one? If you took one of my unfertilized eggs and analyzed the DNA, it would be my DNA, right? I would see that egg as being a part of Joan. If that egg that has Joan’s DNA passes on and becomes dead tissue, Joan didn’t die, I just shed a part of my body.
Likewise my husband’s sperm. It’s got his identity and no one else’s, just like his saliva.
I understand that you don’t see the zygote as a person, but seeing that it has its own genetic makeup, distinct from either of the parents, would you understand that someone could see a difference between a zygote and a sperm cell or egg without being nuts?
you can see all kinds of differences based on genetic makeup, but that alone doesn’t mean the differences should matter. i’m sure the symbiotic bacteria in my gut are genetically distinct from myself, but most of the time, i don’t care.
the important difference is between persons and non-persons. exactly what this is based on can be debated without end, but i’m really skeptical towards the idea that it ought to be based on genetics.
Sure, Joan, there’s a difference–but for the purposes of this particular argument, it’s a moot point. If someone is willing to argue that aborting the embryo that eventually became her would have been like killing her, then of course the egg that became the embryo should have been worth protecting, too, since without it, there would have been no embryo and, ipso facto, no her. And if you’re willing to make that argument, well, every egg is sacred (to paraphrase Monty Python). Every egg is a potential human being.
Do you really feel that there’s no possible validity in seeing a difference between a fertilized egg and an unfertilized one? If you took one of my unfertilized eggs and analyzed the DNA, it would be my DNA, right?
Actually, it’s only half your DNA. It’s already distinct from you. So, why not? Distinct DNA doesn’t make a person a separate human being–identical twins have the same DNA, but we consider them two separate people because they have two separate lives, brains, feelings, etc. You know, all those things a ball of cells in your uterus does not have.
Ditto Sally. We are all the product of random events some of which were profoundly tragic.
One set of my great grandparents died after drinking contaminated milk, causing their son to emigrate to America and produce my father and then by extension me. Not much of a reason to oppose pasteurization. My grandmother’s family pulled her out of school at the age of 11 so that she could earn money for her younger siblings by working as a servant for a family, through which she met my grandfather. Not much of a reason for opposing compulsory education through high school. In fact, quite the opposite. If my mother had more support in the hospital she would have been able to breastfeed my sister and I never would have been born (less than a year later). Not much of a reason for opposing lactation support to new mothers.
And if I hadn’t had an abortion neither of my daughters would have been born. The same can be said for many children born after abortion became legal. Don’t they have the same claim to making abortion legal as Demi does for making it illegal? Or should we just pretend that their mothers’ lives *somehow* would have accommodated both forks in the road?
Barbara – exactly what I was thinking, and an argument I’ve used a number of times. Had my mother and father not travelled from Texas and New York so my mom could get an abortion when it was newly-legal in that state, they would not have gotten married and had me five years later.
existence is a crap shoot, more or less; had a different sperm been a nanosecond faster, you wouldn’t be the person you are today. If you believe in God and any sense of intention in the universe (I don’t, but for the sake of argument), then the aborted fetii weren’t meant to be, for whatever reason.
So I should mourn everytime I have my menstral cycle, Demi? Those are “precious [potential] babies never being born”, so what about that? And where’s your morally superior, self-righteous outrage over the destruction of embryos in fertility clinics? Or does your outrage only come when you can make yourself and your emotional issues the focus of the discussion? And where’s the morally superior outrage over men getting vasectomies, because after all, isn’t that preventing the mother’s eggs or “potential babies” from becoming so?
What about all of the deaths that would occur if they illegalized abortion and made it a capitol offense for having and performing one? Do you really think that all women who have unwanted pregnancies will be happy and ready to carry the pregnancy to full term, and would never try to do something harmful to themselves in order to abort? You don’t think there would back-alley abortions, women ramming coat hangers inside of their vaginas, or women killing themselves because they have no choice? Do you really think that if abortion was illegal that all women with unwanted pregnancies would be joyful and happily move into one of Bush’s overglorified maternity homes, and there would be this “spiritual revival” of all women rejoicing over all of their pregnancies, even if they were the result of a rape? You really think that all women are the same and share the same feelings?
If abortion had been legal, and your mother did have an abortion, you would NOT be dead,….you would not have been, and we wouldn’t have to read these shitty comparisons of pro-choice advocates to the Nazis. And If any of our mothers here have had abortions we wouldn’t exist either, nor would we care because we DON’T exist. You don’t have feelings when you don’t exist; another foolish, sad-ass argument of the anti-choice zealots. I’ve personally never encountered a rational, scientific, and secular argument made by an anti-choice proponent and I’m starting to believe that they don’t exist.
Everyone’s existence is the result of “dumb luck” so to speak. A different egg, a different sperm, different parent, different time of conception could have seriously re-arrange or prevented one’s particular state of existence. But nevermind all of those others factors involved in the making of a particular existence because the anti-choice cult ALWAYS goes after abortion because it’s ever so convenient and easy. And if they did question all of those other factors it would mean that they would have to question their “divine plan” theories on life and questioning their own religious dogma.
Not to mention it would force to them to realize that not every woman becomes joyous over unwanted pregnancies and “magically” become driven by maternal instincts. And we all know it’s biological and societal heresy for a woman to not be driven by maternal instincts and place the “well being” of an embryo/fetus over her own, even if it would cost her her life due to complications.
I know how we humans always assume we’re “special” and apart of some kind of divine plan, but we’re not. We’re all the result of arbitrary happenings in time. Sorry, but we’re not special because we walk upright.
Demi’s comments; more absurd and irrational arguments made the anti-choice cult. Progressive my ass.
There is a big fallacy in Demi’s comments. She says Bio-mama went to him and, with the aid of another of her boyfriends, they demanded money for an illegal abortion. Clearly, this is not a child who is “wanted.” He said hell no, either because he was skeptical that I was his at all, or else because he was cheap. Maybe he didn’t believe in abortion. I’ve never asked him why.
In other words, the fact that abortion was illegal wasn’t what saved her it was the fact that it was expensive. By her own admittance, if her bio-father had ponied up the money her mother would have broken the law and had the abortion. Making abortion illegal had no effect on her mother’s decision.
If someone wanted to know why I never engage in the abortion ‘debate’, these comments would be a good reason to point to. What I thought was going to turn into a good discussion (based on the original entry), seems to have mainly turned into the same poor logic, non-sequiturs, name calling, emotional outburts and the like that every abortion discussion seems to get to. The gay marriage debate seems tame in comparison.
I guess what bothers me most is that all of the above seems to come as much from those I agree with as from those I don’t agree with.
Well, I am an adopted child as well, about the same vintage as Demi. I have never had an urge to seek out my bio-mother or other bio-relations, since the ground rules at the time specified closed adoption, and it only seems fair to all concerned to stick to that. I don’t feel rejected or angry at my bio-mother, nor do I think that she must necessarily feel either anger or hopeless longing towards me. The people I regard as my real parents are my adoptive parents, my real sibling is my adopted brother. Spending time wondering what my bio-mother was thinking really isn’t useful – it is time taken from my real family and my real community. If I have “issues”, I need to work them out with the people who matter, not moon over what might have been with people I know nothing about. My bio-mother isn’t to blame for anything.
I can understand that the decision to bear and keep, bear and give away, or abort was and is potentially wrenching for the woman. But I, that is, my consciousness, was not present at the gestational age at which women generally obtain abortions. To me, that means that any decision my bio-mother made was not my business.
Furthermore, I know that we are not the most efficient at reproduction. About 70% of all conceptions fail to implant or implant and die in the first few weeks of development, and worldwide, millions of women infertile from TB and other infections involving the uterine lining are shedding perfectly normal conceptions that would have been capable of growing in a normal uterus. I just don’t assign selfhood to those conceptions. If one is religious and wants to talk about souls, perhaps it would be worthwhile to talk about the doctrine of incarnation first. God uses what is available, and in humans, the reproductive process is inefficient and the brain structures needed to produce consciousness, the “soul-bearer” as it were, are relatively slow to develop.
I am more concerned about arguments for aborting gestations shown by genetic testing or ultrasound exam to inherit a non-lethal handicap, in that forceful argument can indeed put those with the handicap on the defensive. In my observations, most late abortions seem to be of anencephalics, by definition non-viable (they are infected within a day or two of birth and generally die in week or so). The disability rights advocates who are most emphatic are the ones who have disabilities for which parents do not seek abortions, so in a lot of ways the DR advocates are going after phantoms in their abortion concerns.
Anencephalics are genetically unique, but they are not persons, because they lack the substrate for personhood, the cerebral cortex. No wiring, no self! They have grasp and other reflexes, but these reflexes are brainstem and spinal levels.
The redefinition downward of “personhood”/”ensoulment” from the popularly understood “quickening” (fetal movements felt) to the fusion of egg and sperm seems to have inhibited productive thought by a certain faction of the “pro-life” public. Why is it more important to reduce availability of oral contraception or pre-implantation “morning after pills” than to treat low-grade uterine infections causing failure to implant? As mentioned above, the worldwide loss of normal conceptuses failing to implant in infected or otherwise inhospitable uteri is immense, and undoubtedly dwarfs the loss by abortion. Why is it moral to allow these infected women to go untreated because they don’t have health insurance, and moral to have poor women unable to get prenatal care and therefore have a higher risk of late fetal death, but immoral to use oral contraception? Why is the pregnant smoker (and the tobacco co. executives) moral, even though she has a higher rate of miscarriage, but the user of an IUD immoral?
Trey said:
“What I thought was going to turn into a good discussion (based on the original entry), seems to have mainly turned into the same poor logic, non-sequiturs, name calling, emotional outburts and the like that every abortion discussion seems to get to. ”
Really? I think it’s going very well. Many excellent and obvious points have been made and there has been little hyperbole. Care to elaborate on your objection Trey?
As a pro-choice woman, I have to say that these comments are among the most idiotic, infantile, and overly nonsensical stuff I’ve ever read. It’s increadibly embarassing. If we have to rely on such “arguments” to make our case (“Hey, if you’re gonna mourn the death of fetuses, why not mourn the fact that millions and millions of fetuses weren’t conceived because random people didn’t have sex / the fact that I have a menstral cycle every month?”), then times are bleak, indeed.
If the comments sound absurd, I suspect it’s because they’re mocking the original argument made by Demi.
Ampersand – actually, it’s not the “being compared to nazis” part that pissed me off. It’s the complete callousness towards those real people, fully grown and sentient and suffering human beings, who had to go through that very real thing that was genocide. I’m stating the obvious, but that’s what’s most atrocious about Demi’s Holocaust comparison. I don’t care if she thinks all pro-choicers are utter evil. She’s not the only one to think like that, I have different priorities, to each their own. But I do care that she choose to trivialise something so huge to make her point, a point she could have made in a million other ways. It’s not the first time we hear this Holocaust-abortion parallel but it’s always one too many.
I admit I stopped at that and didn’t check her blog. I admit I don’t really care what her other views and political positions are. That comparison shows such an utter lack of all sense of proportions and basic ethical sense and decency and reasonableness, and that is revealing enough to me to not want to even bother.
How could she even begin to understand the rights of women to not go through unwanted pregnancies, if she doesn’t even understand genocide is not a metaphor, not a term of comparison for hyperbolic tirades against those with different views, but a real thing?
How can she even begin to discuss this issue with people who have different views, if she believes with such extreme certainty, impermeable to all facts and all logic and decency, that a non-sentient, non-intelligent, non-developed embryo of human life has more rights than both a) the real, fully-developed, sentient, suffering woman with whose body it cannot survive and develop to become a person and b) the real, fully-developed, sentient, suffering children and adults who lost their lives in such horrendous ways?
It’s not something I can overlook – it’s a “worst moment” only when the person having it realises how bad it was and at the very least apologises for it. Where is the apology?
Again, this is not at all a criticism to your approach, which I respect, it works for you and I can see the benefits of having these discussions especially for people whose views are not so extreme. I certainly do appreciate your post and agree with it completely.
But personally I just cannot spare the patience to have a reasonable debate where only one party has to make up for all the reason that’s lacking on the other side. I have had discussions with anti-abortionists who at least showed some appreciation of the delicate ethical questions involved and were not so completely detached from reality. The moment someone decides to compare not going through with a pregnancy with putting people in gas chambers, they have left planet earth as far as I’m concerned. Personally I’d rather discuss any issue on its own reality-based terms, with reasonable people, than in response to such outrageous, immoral absurdities.
oops, that “woman with whose body it cannot survive and develop” should have been “woman without whose body it cannot survive and develop”, clearly…
>>As a pro-choice woman, I have to say that these comments are among the most idiotic, infantile, and overly nonsensical stuff I’ve ever read. It’s increadibly embarassing. If we have to rely on such “arguments”? to make our case (“Hey, if you’re gonna mourn the death of fetuses, why not mourn the fact that millions and millions of fetuses weren’t conceived because random people didn’t have sex / the fact that I have a menstral cycle every month?”), then times are bleak, indeed. >>
That’s sort of what we’re arguing against, though.
Look, admittedly, the rebuttal to Demi’s argument has the potential to become a slippery slope. This is, as others have pointed out, because Demi’s argument is a slippery slope. If you insist that _all_ potential life be protected, encouraged, and “saved,” you really would need to outlaw contraception. If you take the logic of potential=actual far enough, every choice that prevents a potential child’s existence is murder. Pregnancy would in fact be baby-killing: during those forty weeks when your womb is nurturing one fetus, you can’t conceive any others!
This does not mean, however, that cutting off potentiality at conception is any less arbitrary than cutting it off at some point between conception and birth. Forget the hyperbolic idea that tens of thousands of babies will never exist because I menstruate or use condoms, or because my grandparents left Ireland. What _about_ the more realistic cause and effect models?
I’m gonna be sterile soon; effectively, I’m already sterile. I love kids, and want kids. All other things being equal, I would have had a baby. As it is, I will probably adopt. So, that’s at least one child who will never exist, a child who almost certainly would have existed if I weren’t doing what I’m doing. Why am I not, therefore, morally obligated to stop taking hormones and go find some nice, stable man to have a baby with? Why does that potential life matter less because it’s been cut off earlier?
I love how the comments in response to Demi’s vitriol are deemed “infantile,” but her callousness towards pregnant rape survivors, women who make what she deems bad choices, and Holocaust vicitms and survivors are just dandy.
These comments are considered civil? Strange world you live in here. These attacks are worse than you find on the neocon sights. These are progressives? Ha! From my perspective, it sure looks like you’ve become that which you abhor.
It amazes me that folks get so worked up in a lather about this, to the point of bashing someone who poured out her heart on an issue she admittedly just began to explore. Why does it matter so much? The fact that it is such a hot button seems to suggest a defensive position. Using bully tactics also suggests a defensive conservative position. Hard to tell the two apart nowadays, it appears. Same tactics, same denial of reality, same heat with little light.
The inconsistency on sanctity of life issues is one of the primary reasons the conservatives are slowly taking over. Face it, eventually someone has to state the obvious; that abortion as a form of birth control is an act of murder, equal to euthenasia, capital punishment, and just war theory as an ethical issue. Even Hilary is on board that train now.
If these comments are an example of the future of progressives, I’ll have to say no thanks. And, if you want to believe it or not, almost everyone I know would have the same reaction. Thanks for opening my eyes to the “real” soul of the progressive movement.
On second thought, could you just delete that comment I just made? No point to it; I’m just adding more heat. Besides, using “sights” instead of “sites” is now driving me crazy!
Please forgive my intrusion.
If you like to engage in “what if” games (and what the hell, why not?), here’s another one. A dear elderly woman friend of mine lost her mother due to an abortion (obviously illegal) back in the 1920s. As a motherless child, her life was very difficult. Had abortion been legal and safe, wouldn’t it be right to go back in a time machine and make things right for her, so my friend would have had a mother?
Unfortunately, I think that all of us, at least under 45 or so, have a tendency to not put this in context. We have some vague notion of women in developing countries dying either from abortions or from pregnancy/childbirth complications, but don’t necessarily see this as anything more than UN statistics. My own dear mother, a Republican red-stater, is, paradoxically, even more pro-choice and less patient with angst-ridden moral nuance than I am. Why? ‘Cause she served in the trenches. She used to work in a public hospital emergency room back in the 1950s. She saw the women with their guts hacked out. After a while, I too get tired of all the metaphysical arguments for and against abortion. Because the reality is, if you ban it, you go back to what my mom saw. Especially in an environment where health care and other service supports for all people are being undermined.
The issue here is that one side views the conceptus at any stage as a full-fledged person with rights equal to any live-born individual and exceeding those of the woman-container, and the other side defines personhood at birth (Jews, among others) or at viability or at attainment of functional neurological complexity sufficient to support some kind of consciousness. Between these views, there can be no effective communication.
Jake, the husband of Demi, is a thoughtful writer, and I can’t blame him for taking offence at some of the things said here. I think Demi has issues around being adopted, etc, and I think there is real pain that could be acknowledged gracefully even while pointing out that it is highly inappropriate to compare a zygote being lost due to early abortion, emergency contraception, or an infected inhospitable uterus, to my neighbor’s grandparents who died in the Nazi camps.
Jake says:
“On second thought, could you just delete that comment I just made? No point to it; I’m just adding more heat. Besides, using “sights”? instead of “sites”? is now driving me crazy!”
Oh no Jake, please, continue admonishing us for not being as reasonable and diplomatic as you. Show us the error of our ways with your brilliant example of a conciliatory post. We are shamed by your extremely perceptive and fair comparison of us to frothy, deluded neo-con bullies, just like we are shamed by Demi’s completely sensible and accurate comparison of us to Nazis. It’s a good thing that completely unbiased folks like you are around to maintain the level of the debate.
I’m sorry that Demi is in pain, NancyP. But she is a grown-up woman, and she is still responsible for the garbage she spews. There is no way to justify this:
It’s imbecilic: the Nazis did not increase their food supply by diverting resources to butcher my family. It’s also putrid and stinking and vile. I would like to give Demi the benefit of the doubt, but I have my own pain, and I just can’t. It’s one thing to compare my great-grandparents to zygotes: I think it’s wrong and offensive, especially since it’s coopting Jewish suffering while ignoring Jewish beliefs, but it wouldn’t set me off. But to suggest that the Nazis can be excused for wiping out my family…. it’s just incomprehensibly evil.
Abortion being the contentious topic it is, offense will be taken at the posts here. Much like offense was taken at Demi’s callousness towards rape survivors –there are rape survivors who post here who don’t appreciate people telling them they are murderers if they wanted an abortion or EC after their attacks. Much offense was taken at being compared–unfavorably–to Nazis. First, because it trivializes the holocaust, and second, because it does just what Jake, Trey, and Abigal decry in this thread–attack and villify the opposition.
Those comments were callous and beyond the pale. If that’s what being pro-life is about, well then, count me out.
In regards to my posts, perhaps I should clarify: I have no interest in being callous or offensive or anything like that. I have no qualms, however, in pointing out a stupid argument, and I have fewer qualms in using sarcasm to do it.
Perhaps Trey, Jake, and Abigail could explain exactly why anyone should take Demi’s original argument–that if abortion were legal, she would somehow be “dead,” and she wouldn’t like to be “dead”–seriously. Because, honestly, I think it’s a stupid argument. I’m sure she has lots of other good things to say, and the argument may have grown out of something meaningful, but it’s still stupid. And Trey, Jake, and Abigail sure haven’t said anything to change my mind about that.
Face it, eventually someone has to state the obvious; that abortion as a form of birth control is an act of murder, equal to euthenasia, capital punishment, and just war theory as an ethical issue.
No. No, it isn’t. At all. But this sentence indicates that you aren’t even a little bit willing to consider that the abortion issue might be a nuanced one, so I won’t waste my time explaining why.
Two caveats:
1. I found Demi’s post one of strained logic, emotional and not well-written.
2. I am ‘pro-choice’, as it is mainly defined in modern American terms. I want Roe vs. Wade upheld, and abortion legal and safe.
But this discussion seems to have started and continued to be like every other discussion i’ve read on abortion. A ‘pro-life’ person makes uncompromising statements and strains logic, the ‘pro-choice’ people counter with the same.
Lots of uncompromsing statements in response to Demi’s uncompromising statements:
“Why even bother with these people?”
“Since when does feminism do backward summersaults and discuss such things as the “neverborn?”? Give me a break. A woman’s choice is a woman’s choice is a woman’s choice. Period. No argument.”
“You know what? I’ve tried. I can’t be civil.”
“I went back and read Demi’s post. What a vile, creepy thing it was.”
“Apparently the most important thing in the universe is that *Demi* be born?”
“And where’s your morally superior, self-righteous outrage over the destruction of embryos in fertility clinics?”
and a good share of strained logic in response to strained logic:
This one popped up in various forms here…
“So I should mourn everytime I have my menstral cycle, Demi? Those are “precious [potential] babies never being born”, so what about that?”
“Birth control, even abstinence, is then eliminating a potential life.”
It is a false analogy ‘ad absurdum’ here. By this logic everything gets rid of ‘potential life’ back even to someone’s decision to go home instead of the single’s bar and thus conversely, nothing that gets rid of ‘potential life’ is ethically wrong. Are you really making that argument?
Of course these statements are not clear about the distinction of ‘life’ and ‘personhood’. By any definition of ‘life’ I can think of as a biologist, an embryo fits the definition. To exclude embryos from the definition of ‘life’, one would also have to exclude single-celled organisms, parasites, commensal organisms and just about half the earth’s biomass. I suspect by ‘potential life’, poster here mean potential ‘human personhood’.
Then there is this:
“It seems to me behind this is a massive exercise of ego. You and I are just two tiny flecks of sand in billions of years of history, of no significance to the Earth, let alone the Universe. Whether or not an individual of your or my genetic makeup existed is of no significance whatsoever”
By this logic, one would have to assume that getting up in the morning and eating is a massive exercise of ego. Of course we are insignificant in the greater existence. Not EVEN a dot in the vastness of space or time. So what? I’ve heard the argument in so many discussions and my first thought is always “what does this bring to the conversation?”. The answer to that is nothing. One could end every debate with the statement above. Example:
“My rights are being denied because I am gay and it affects my life and denies me my full potential”
““It seems to me behind this is a massive exercise of ego. You and I are just two tiny flecks of sand in billions of years of history, of no significance to the Earth, let alone the Universe. Whether or not an individual of your or my orientation is denied certain things is of no significance whatsoever”
Right, of course it isn’t of any significance in the greater vastness. But in this point in space and time, it is of overwhelming significance for me and less consequential perhaps for you, but still it isn’t of ‘no significance whatsoever’ whether someone lived or died or was oppressed or whatever.
If I came to this discussion as an undecided or ‘pro-life’ person hoping to find open minds and sound debate and discussion (as it seemed it would be by the tone and thoughtfullness of Ampersand’s entry), hoping to find someone to discuss with me my qualms and questions, if the uncompromising statements didn’t turn me away, the tone and logic would have.
Exactly how sweet and open-minded am I supposed to be when someone likens me to the Nazis–nay, says I am worse than the Nazis–for being pro-choice?
How kind and civil are the rape survivors who post here supposed to be when they are told that if they want to terminate a pregnancy resulting from rape, they are murderers? Worse than the Nazis?
What of their qualms, their questions? How safe do you think a rape survivor feels when she sees Demi’s callous and cruel dismassal of the trauma of enforced sex and enforced pregnancy? That little paragraph was an ugly, closed fist swung at the face of every woman who’s been in that situation, who’s had to make that choice.
How respected do you think a Jewish person whose relatives were tortured and murdered in the Shoah feels after reading her dubious equation of pro-choicers=worse than the Nazis? Relatives who were outside of the womb, relatives who were tortured, starved, and murdered?
On this board, there are rape survivors and people whose relatives were murdered by the Nazis. There are people who have had abortions for many different reasons, who are tired of being called “murderer” and “Nazi.” They post here. They read that diatribe of hers. You’ll just have to excuse us if we don’t plump up the cushions and help Demi with her qualms. She sure doesn’t seem to give a hoot about our qualms, or our experiences.
You want to take the first line of my post and ignore the points I raised in the rest of it, fine. But kindly get your wagging finger out of my face. I’ve had about enough of the slander and the vitriol from so-called “pro-lifers” who perversely appropriate genocide and shrug off rape. If they are going to dish it out, they’d better learn to take it.
My wagging finger is now forever out of your face.
All this points to why Godwin’s, or Goodwin’s, law should be invoked. Demi started the Hitler/Nazi comparisons – she should not have been linked or quoted, if a polite rational discussion was what was desired. She flamed first, in a way that was guaranteed to offend and provoke offensive responses. Why have a discussion with someone who doesn’t obey the first rules of fair discussion, don’t do personal insults?
All that was sufficient was to say that some adoptees are opposed to abortion because if abortion was available, they believe that they would not have been born.
Oh, and Trey is not the only biomedical doctorate on the board. He objects to “strained logic” of folks mocking the “pro-life” position – “we should mourn our menses” – but in fact a large fraction of menses in ovulating women having regular and frequent sex without contraception will indeed have failed early gestations of the same general age as those that would be affected by the morning after pill/ emergency contraception – and many “pro-life” people consider EC to be abortion.
I will agree that invoking Goodwin’s law in most cases (including this one) is necessary to keep the dicussion from becoming a flame war. Though invoking Goodwin’s law can itself stifle real discussion (again, not in this case).
Oh, and Trey is not the only biomedical doctorate on the board.
Not sure what the point is, but great.. lets then have a discussion about biology, life and personhood based on science.
He objects to “strained logic”? of folks mocking the “pro-life”? position – “we should mourn our menses”? – but in fact a large fraction of menses in ovulating women having regular and frequent sex without contraception will indeed have failed early gestations of the same general age as those that would be affected by the morning after pill/ emergency contraception – and many “pro-life”? people consider EC to be abortion.
This again brings up a point of logic I don’t get in this argument. “nature does this so it is ethical/right/good/ok/means nothing” (or the converse usually used by religious right “nature does not do this so it is unethical/wrong/bad/not ok/means something”). Yes, I know that most women “having regular and frequent sex without contraception will indeed have failed early gestations”, in fact something like 2/3rds of pregnancies end in failed early gestations. It does not follow that then deliberately doing the same is ‘ethical’ (unless that is the philosophy of ethics one holds to). Pre-modern infant mortality was also high (over 50% I’m sure), but it doesn’t inform our ethical stance on infanticide.
I really don’t like aruing for a ‘pro-life’ position I don’t adhere to, and my ‘wagging finger’ is unwanted, so I’ll bow out.
I should have made my point more clearly.
Trey seems to indicate that only “sins of commission” count. What about “sins of omission”, a concept familiar to at least the Catholics in the debate.
The fact that women with uterine infections are left untreated despite cheap antibiotics undoubtedly results in some loss of early gestations. My assumption is that a “pro-life” individual who considers the morning after pill to be abortifacient would be interested in preserving embryonic life at jeopardy for other preventable or treatable reasons. Failure to treat, and failure to advocate for treatment, suggests to me that preserving embryonic life per se is not their goal. It is well known that lack of prenatal care increases risk for fetal and neonatal death. Yet I do not see a concern for providing prenatal care to poor women. Now, the embryo or fetus or newborn is just as dead from lack of antibiotics or routine medical care as it would be if it were intentionally prevented from implanting or it were aborted. So it seems that they believe that the mother owes every possible duty to the embryo or fetus, but society owes nothing to it. Sins of commission count, but sins of omission do not, unless it was the mother who omitted some duty of care by using drugs (only prosecuted if poor), or by choosing her own cancer treatment over the care of the fetus, or by failing to persuade an ob-gyn to take yet another non-paying patient.
Fact: Some U.S. inner city neighborhoods have neonatal mortality rates of average third world countries, despite the presence of world-class medical care available to paying white customers in the same cities.
Trey seems to indicate that only “sins of commission”? count. What about “sins of omission”,
And where is it that I indicate that? You are arguing past me, building straw men. First, I have never called this a ‘sin’ of any sort. I don’t consider abortion an individual’s ‘sin’. It takes a leap of logic to then say I ignore the ‘sins of omission’ heaping all guilt on the individual (when I have not argued such), and absolving society of its sin (when in fact I am politically progressive). In fact I could have easily written the same argument you wrote in full agreement.
This is one of the maddening aspects of this debate and discussion. People have their staked out position and then make huge leaps of assumption about other’s postion, usually an assumption that if it isn’t in 100% agreement… the other’s opinion _must_ be totally from the ‘opposition’ and then argue positions the other doesn’t hold.
Its the mistake you seem to have made here Nancy.
After reading through your comments again NancyP, I find much to agree with and topics I would love to see discussed more fully (one among several being “I am more concerned about arguments for aborting gestations shown by genetic testing or ultrasound exam to inherit a non-lethal handicap”). I didn’t see the ‘sins of omission’ argument until your last comment (the earlier comment seemed to be about spontaneous naturally occuring abortions), so I am glad you clarified because in this, as I said, I am in total agreement.
It is very difficult to write about such topics clearly without being misunderstood. Also, we have had yet another example of why Godwin’s rule is useful (roughtly, no Hitler/Nazi name-calling). Discussion inevitably ends up in the toilet.
A philosophical point. What is “natural” in humans? We have a “natural” ability to modify our culture and our environment on a scale and range that no other organism possesses. Is the ability to identify and use antibiotics “natural”? Or is it “natural” to die of sepsis for lack of medical care? Are most large-scale famines “natural”, or are they due to “unnatural” human mismanagement (wars, imprudent farming practices, over-population)?
If I came to this discussion as an undecided or ‘pro-life’ person hoping to find open minds and sound debate and discussion (as it seemed it would be by the tone and thoughtfullness of Ampersand’s entry), hoping to find someone to discuss with me my qualms and questions, if the uncompromising statements didn’t turn me away, the tone and logic would have.
Trey, here’s how I see it instead: I reckon that if someone undecided came to this discussion and was not at least a little bit turned away, no, repulsed, by the trivialisation of the genocide of millions of Jews and a few other hundred thousands non-Jewish dissidents, gays, gypsies and so on, the lack of respect and humility towards the victims of same, and the lack of respect for at least those women who have been violated and have had pregnancy literally forced upon them (and the non-fundamentalist, reasonable people I know who are generally not in favour of abortion being legal do at least get that that is one case where it should), then to me it means that someone is not so “undecided” after all, and most of all, that they have a very narrow tunnel-vision of ethics, history, politics, and not enough human decency, compassion, understanding and appreciation of real suffering to be able to discuss moral questions.
Is that clearer? I could rephrase it again in a million other ways, but that is what my “why bother with these people” meant, “these people” are the people who are so evidently callous and ignorant as to make that kind of stupid, offensive, fraudolent claim that having personal reasons to terminate an unwanted pregnancy is *worse* than deporting, starving, murdering people en masse. People coming up with that parallel make Prince Harry in his nazi party costume look *clever* by comparison. At least that callousness was down to being a spoilt little idiot who thought wearing a swastika was just a mindless bit of fun like getting drunk or stoned. The people who raise the comparison Demi raised, be they raving freepers or “liberal conservatives”, I don’t care, are people who are not going to a costume party to get stoned and drunk but actually pretend they are engaging in a discussion on an ethical debate. It doesn’t take a PhD in moral philosophy to at least possess the basics to engage in a debate like that, don’t you think?
If you want to take my “why bother with people who trivialise the Holocaust” as an example of “unpolite” or “uncivil” retort, then go ahead and please ignore everything else I or anyone else wrote. Different priorities and different concepts of civility, I guess. To echo Sheelzebub, who made my point even more clearly:
Exactly how sweet and open-minded am I supposed to be when someone likens me to the Nazis”“nay, says I am worse than the Nazis”“for being pro-choice? … How respected do you think a Jewish person whose relatives were tortured and murdered in the Shoah feels after reading her dubious equation of pro-choicers=worse than the Nazis? Relatives who were outside of the womb, relatives who were tortured, starved, and murdered? … How safe do you think a rape survivor feels when she sees Demi’s callous and cruel dismassal of the trauma of enforced sex and enforced pregnancy?
For me this has not so much to do with Godwin’s law – I don’t like the careless use of the “nazi” epithet either but it’s so widespread it’s no big deal anymore, sadly. But I can live with that. It’s the disrespect to the victims of the real nazis, real squared, like real for real. Because there is such a thing as basic human empathy, I don’t think anyone needs to be a Holocaust survivor or have family experiences or connections to that event to be offended, I don’t think you need to visit a concentration camp to realise in full how inexcusably offensive the Holocaust comparison is, and I don’t think anyone needs to have gone through the horrible experience of rape either to realise how atrocious it is to want to preclude abortion even in that case, but on the other hand, NO ONE who has had any of those experiences would even DREAM of being so nonchalant about it to exploit it so grossly to make a totally unrelated argument – which as it happens, is not even an argument because it also lacks basic logical premises. But before logic, there is such a thing as humanity. If you forsake even that, you don’t deserve my patience. Even though I and others here have indeed spared a lot of it anyway, undeservedly.
Frankly, I don’t think the problem was that Demi trivialized the Nazis. I wasn’t that fussed by the stupid Prince Harry thing, although it was certainly in poor taste. It’s that she justified them. She suggested that the Nazis were partially exculpated because there was a lot of poverty in Germany during WWII. But you know what? Jews suffered from that poverty as much as anyone. Jews didn’t cause it. Scapegoating Jews didn’t alleviate it, except that people derived pleasure from watching Jews suffer. The Nazis actually diverted resources from the war effort and the home front to build a very complicated network of camps that served no purpose other than to kill Jews and other supposedly-degenerate people. There would have been less wartime misery among the non-Jewish population had the Holocaust not happened, not more. The Holocaust served no function, had no logic, other than to rid the world of people like me. The Nazis were not akin to a woman who aborts a fetus because she doesn’t want to go through nine months of discomfort and inconvenience: my great-grandparents weren’t causing anyone inconvenience. The Nazis were akin to someone who, upon finding out that her 15-year-old son is gay, tortures and murders him because God hates fags.
I can sort of understand the argument that pro-choice people are as bad as Nazis, although I certainly don’t like it. But to suggest, as Demi did, that the Nazis were better than pro-choice people, that their crimes are more understandable, is, in some sense, Holocaust justification. It’s one thing to argue that both pro-choice people and Nazis are/were completely depraved, but for the Nazis to be better, there have to have been limits to their depravity.
And I do find that argument creepy and vile. I guess that in Trey’s world, I’m supposed to be a good little Jew and ignore the creepy, vile people who feel that gassing my great-grandparents was kind of understandable. But despite what he thinks, Trey is actually not the arbiter of appropriate behavior, and I’m going to continue to call it like I see it.
I agree that people shouldn’t be judged by their worst moments. But I also think that Demi could signal that she’s not a Holocaust apologist by amending her post. And since she’s so proud of having access to kids, it would be nice if she’d educate herself a little bit about teh Holocaust so she doesn’t pass on her misconceptions.
Sally, I had to finally go and check the full post on Demi’s blog after reading the first three lines of your comment, and boy oh boy, I wish I hadn’t… I had only read Ampersand’s quote from the full paragraph about the nazis, so I had no idea she had actually gone and suggested there was a practical and justifiable reason why the nazis killed Jews! Oh la la. (That’s substitute for a much stronger expression. I’m making a superhuman effort to avoid typing the string of expletives going through my mind).
You’re right, that’s not trivialisation. That’s full blown apologism. Not to mention utter ignorance and insanity.
May I quote the full passage from Demi’s post:
Not much difference there. In fact, if you look at it with the eyes of an ethicist, the wartime Germans had the higher moral ground, because they were starving, literally starving. I’ve seen photos of boys flying kites. The kites were made of Deutschmarks. At one point, it was cheaper to use Deutschmarks than to buy paper to make the kites. Beauty creams aren’t necessary to survival. Food is. They were STARVING, and Hitler offered them a way to survive. They bought into the rest of his agenda because they wanted to live….
May I now ask Trey and everyone else who’s so upset by comments from people who treated Demi with far more civility than she deserved – what do you make of the above paragraph?
And Jake, your “these are the progressives? ha!” – could you maybe kindly offer your opinion too? See, I think it would be wrong to read the above and conclude “these are the anti-abortionists, ha!”, as, personally at least, I luckily haven’t met anyone who came up with anything like that in “defense” of their positions (how it’s supposed to defend them I have no idea, but then, I have no idea how can any thinking person come up with that stuff in the first place!)
As far as I’m concerned, I cannot even begin to summon up the words in response to that. It is so deranged it doesn’t even deserve a comment. And anyone who needs to have it explained why, is just as far gone from the real world. But I wonder, how can anyone think it deserves not only a response, but understanding and appreciation and civility and respect and patience? Can anyone explain that to me? Please?
Sally – I agree that people shouldn’t be judged by their worst moments. But I also think that Demi could signal that she’s not a Holocaust apologist by amending her post. And since she’s so proud of having access to kids, it would be nice if she’d educate herself a little bit about teh Holocaust so she doesn’t pass on her misconceptions.
First, I second that fully. Second: she’s a teacher?!?
Oh dear. Oh man.
I actually was going to write at the end of the previous post, this question, to those so concerned that Demi hasn’t had a fair treatment in this discussion: if you were a teacher, and one of your pupils wrote that paragraph in an essay, what would you do?
The irony. She is a teacher herself! fantastic. Someone please pick up my jaw from the floor…
What mn and Sally said.
I have had contact with Demi on her husband Jake’s blog, and she had passed along uncritically some “pro-life”, grossly medically inaccurate statistics on condoms being ineffective at HIV prevention. Stuff that didn’t make sense – and I tried to correct the medical inaccuracies, since IRL I am a biomedical worker and believe that such misconceptions, particularly if spread around, KILL . (Our community has a high rate of HIV in heterosexual black women, not hitherto the subjects of HIV prevention education). So I suspect the Nazi trope is something she read on some “pro-life” loon site, and not original to her.
As for the starving and the Deutschemark kites: for one thing, there was a worldwide Depression in the 1930s. For another — someone with better knowledge of the period between the wars can correct me — if I’m not mistaken, one of the reasons that inflation was so terrible during the Weimar years was that other European countries, as condition of Germany’s surrender, imposed severe economic sanctions on Germany.
But of course, it must be the fault of the Jews.
Here’s the problem I have with references to Godwin’s Law: there are large numbers of people who actually believe in what the Nazis and the fascists believed. There are people who aren’t really bothered by being called fascists. There are people who would welcome a full-blown fascist movement, and would participate in it fully.
We need to deal with a real problem: some of the people who think women should be executed for having abortions, antiwar protesters should be executed, Arabs exterminated, and so on, actually mean what they say.
While I have to come out against the exaggeration that the US is already a fascist regime, I think it’s important to be on watch for the real thing. It’s a very real possibility.
Here is a message to Jake and Demi: If you want people to take your arguments seriously, use logic not loathsome analogies laden with bathos and emotion. I’ve seen the bumper sticker “Hitler made 6 million choices” or something like that. Well, in truth, he didn’t. He made a few and imposed them on the Jews with the more or less willing participation of his fellow citizens. Jews were the Other in German society, scapegoats for whatever ailed German people. There is no analogy with abortion — where decisions are made by individual women with individual life stories and circumstances, with no ethnic or social axe to grind against the fetus. I find the analogy so insulting and ridiculous mostly because it is so unknowing, evincing zero understanding of either the Holocaust or abortion, and using the experience of the Jews, once again, to make a statement in service to one’s own political goals. It doesn’t even hold shock value. At best it’s a lazy metaphor for one who can’t find a better way to convey how wrong she thinks abortion is. If Demi can “understand” why Germans murdered the Jews she has it in her to “understand” why individual women choose abortion. As I tried to convey above, we are all the product of some seriously random events many of which we would never have wished on our forebears, even if that means we wouldn’t be here as a result. I am, you are, this is life for everyone, not just those who considered abortion.
I said I’d bow out.. but I just can’t…
From MN:
Not much difference there. In fact, if you look at it with the eyes of an ethicist, the wartime Germans had the higher moral ground, because they were starving, literally starving. I’ve seen photos of boys flying kites. The kites were made of Deutschmarks. At one point, it was cheaper to use Deutschmarks than to buy paper to make the kites. Beauty creams aren’t necessary to survival. Food is. They were STARVING, and Hitler offered them a way to survive. They bought into the rest of his agenda because they wanted to live….
May I now ask Trey and everyone else who’s so upset by comments from people who treated Demi with far more civility than she deserved – what do you make of the above paragraph?
I had read her stuff earlier, but admit I skimmed some because I quickly found it to be a poor diatribe that started with a valid concern (that Ampersand picked up on) and degenerated into an emotional rant. I tend not to read posts like that very in depth (even though I’ve made them on my own blog at times :D ). I missed/skimmed this.. .so my opinion? Its a gross, emotionally wrought, historically incorrect and insulting statement.
Sally:
I guess that in Trey’s world, I’m supposed to be a good little Jew and ignore the creepy, vile people who feel that gassing my great-grandparents was kind of understandable.
Sally, this was really uncalled for and a leap of an assumption that you can’t get from any part of the very small part ‘Trey’s world’ you read here or anywhere.
But despite what he thinks, Trey is actually not the arbiter of appropriate behavior, and I’m going to continue to call it like I see it.
What I think? If you figured that this is what I “think” from what I wrote, you are bringing to the words something else than I put in them.
Actually, I don’t think that Demi was saying that the Holocaust was justified.
I think she was saying that people who are starving are more contrained in their freedom to make choices, and thus can’t be held as morally responsible for the choices they do make.
In other words, throw a drowning person a lifesaver, and they’ll grab the lifesaver. They won’t hesitate and say “wait, what agenda is this lifesaver attached to? Maybe I’d rather drown.”
Outside of the abortion debate, that’s not an unreasonable thing to say, and it could lead to a legitmate discussion of how morally responsible the German people in general (as opposed to the Nazis in particular) were for the Holocaust.
However, I obviously agree that bringing it up as she did within the context of the abortion debate was spectacularly insensitive and (as I pointed out in my initial post) assumes far too much.
Also, she’s absolutely standing by her analogy, which I think is a bad choice on her part.
They bought into Hitler’s entire agenda–part of which was poison, but part of which was quite good, to be fair–because he fed them, built highways for them and brought that much-beloved “Ordnung” (order) back to the country, after years of absolute chaos.
Actually, living standards dropped by 50% under the Nazis. Unemployment decreased, but because of the construction of a massive war machine. The “chaos” was a nearly successful socialist revolution, followed by Nazi street gangs murdering the people who’d led it and destroying unions and any other social organizations that benefitted or protected the oppressed.
On the one hand, this person is trying to distance herself from the Nazis, but on the other, she’s lionizing them for “achievements” that were inseparable from the most vile of their actions.
She didn’t extend such mercy to raped women–or in her post, a hypothetical raped teenage girl. They could “choose” adoption, and the ensuing hell and further trauma that carrying their attacker’s child to term would bring.
And any raped girl or woman who didn’t “choose” adoption, who chose instead to have an abortion (or use EC) was worse than the Nazis.
Sally, this was really uncalled for and a leap of an assumption that you can’t get from any part of the very small part ‘Trey’s world’ you read here or anywhere.
Look, Trey. You called me out for saying that Demi’s vile, creepy post was vile and creepy. You did that before you even bothered to read the post. When you did bother to read it, you found it “a gross, emotionally wrought, historically incorrect and insulting statement.” I don’t really see how that’s materially different from “vile and creepy.” Do you? Are you somehow entitled to pass that kind of judgement in a way that I’m not? Or do you owe me an apology?
Sally, you misunderstand what I wrote is uncalled for (and I did read the post, though skimmed, and I did condemn it before)
What I thought was uncalled for is the “‘in Trey’s world, I’m supposed to be a good little Jew, etc” as I quoted and explained. It had nothing to do with what you called her post at all, and everything to do with assuming that in ‘my world’ I think you should be a good little Jew (assuming I knew you were Jewish).
The quote which you cited as offensive was taken from a post in which I talked about how my great-grandparents died in the Holocaust, so you could have guessed that I’m Jewish. I guess you didn’t bother to read that, either.
All I’m saying is that your censorious tone was way out of line, considering that you didn’t take the time to read the post before condemning us for reacting to it.
Here’s something from her rebuttal that I really enjoyed:
We’re not talking about actual starvation and survival here, in the majority of our abortion cases–we’re talking about a culture composed of several hundred million spoiled brats who have too much money, too little self-control and self-discipline, too many consumer goods, and not enough sense to avoid getting pregnant–who want to escape the consequences of their own actions, which was having sex to begin with. Sex, I’ve heard, can lead to pregnancy.
If my parents hadn’t had sex, I wouldn’t have been born. I think we can safely conclude therefore that Demi wishes I had never been born.
Yep, I read that too. “You play, you pay, you selfish whore.”
A child as a punishment. Oh, how very progressive.
I posted to she and Jake about the tone of her original post, and why people thought it was so grossly offensive. I doubt very much they will actually consider my words, as they have yet to seriously consider Amp’s, or anyone else’s words. They are in a huff because we reacted angrily; however, they refuse to see their part in it. We are just selfish, in denial, and defensive because they speak the “truth”.
Sally, since you just find me and my posts insulting even though you misunderstand them, should this be our last interaction? It really isn’t adding anything to this discussion. I should have clarified the ‘assuming I knew you were jewish’. You made a statement that ‘in Trey’s world, I’m supposed to be a good little jew’. Its a condescending remark with no basis in what ‘my world’ is at all, whether the minute sliver you see here or the greater fullness of it. I never said that nor believe it. I meant to say I don’t assume ‘you’ (as in the greater everyone here ‘you’) are Jewish, Catholic, or whatever. To say I think you or anyone here should be ‘be a good little jew’ is making a false and uncalled for assumption.
ANd I never said I didn’t read the post, I said I read it but skimmed parts.
I will restate what I found disappointing here, if that doesn’t clarify it and you (all of you calling me on it) are still insulted, well.. so be it. This is how I see the whole thing:
1. Demi wrote an empassioned but illogical post (which I read, if however much I skimmed) with one valid point (lost in everything else).
2. Ampersand posted a very well reasoned reply with two main points (as I saw it), the question of ‘personhood’ (and the illogical point she makes and the futility of that discussion) and whether saying ‘every pregnancy a wanted pregnancy’ is hurtful/insulting (her original ‘point), and the second main point asking if banning abortion would bring about the results that the ‘pro-lifers’ want?
Being a pro-choice advocate who nevertheless sees questions of personhood, the meaning of ‘wanted’, and would love to see pro-lifers _really_ get down to the realities of how to reduce abortion, I had hoped from reading that entry the comments would be an interesting discussion about those topics.
3. That is, for the most part not what I saw. I was asked what I saw with examples. I gave them.
4. I’ve made people angry.
I would still love to see a logical discussion with pro-choicers about personhood and what ‘wanted’ means (NancyP touched on it) and a discussion with pro-lifers answering the question Ampersand asked. But I didn’t see that happening before and definitely doesn’t seem it will now, after in this thread. I guess I’ve contributed to killing that discussion by this very comment. And for _that_ I do apologize to Barry.
I’ve seen the bumper sticker “Hitler made 6 million choices”? or something like that.
Niiiice. Just when I thought I couldn’t possibly hear any worse. Where did you spot that? Just curious. I just cannot picture any place inhabited by a fair amount of literate humans where someone could drive around with that on their cars and not need to bring it in for repair at least every month. Not to mention, maybe, need to visit the ER once in a while too.
I really have a hard time imagining anyone doing that in the first place. Unless they’re aryan nation or something like that.
– Ampersand: except, she first used the word “nazi”, then slipped to “wartime Germans”, so I don’t see the slightest tangential hint about the question of the moral responsibility of the German people there; she has already decided it was univocally less immoral than abortion. In fact, to make her devious parallel, she is completely conflating Hilter and the nazi regime with all wartime Germans, which she personifies only in young poor kids flying kites.
Interestingly enough.
So, no, she’s not directly justifying the Holocaust itself. She is “only” saying that, because people had children that were so poor and so helpless… there is a “higher moral ground” in… being a nazi and shipping people to gas chambers. The connection? Lost on me. What does the poverty have to do with killing Jews? She’s probably not implying that poverty was their fault, although, she does a nice job of skipping the part about where that poverty actually was and where did it come from and who was it caused by. She’s “only” saying nazis, or wartime Germans, depending on where you start to read, were somehow more excused (than abortionists) for killing Jews (rather than terminating pregnancies in the first months), because they were poor. (So she must think women who have abortions and are poor are more justified than rich women? I’m lost, again).
There’s that disturbing acceptance of nazi propaganda about Jews not being real Germans – he “offered them a chance to survive” where that “them” obviously does not include anyone who was sent to concentration camps; Demi simply uses that assumption as premise for her “argument”. She doesn’t even question it. There’s also a disturbing ignorance of how such a dictatorship actually worked. As if it ever had the people’s interests at heart, or ever “offered” something to people. A dictatorship does not by definition “offer” anything that people can refuse. It imposes. There are still degrees of responsibility among the population, obviously, the closer to the hierarchy, the more direct the collaboration with the regime, the higher the responsibility (to simplify. The question of moral responsibility under regimes is indeed a fascinatingly, and disturbingly, complex one). But shipping people to concentration camps was not decided by a referendum; nor was it some marginal “rest of the agenda” that all Germans somehow overlooked because they were too busy flying the poor man’s kites. It’s like, she is picturing a world where either all Germans were vile nazi executioners, or they were all cute little kids and kids’ parents, naively deluded or justifiably indifferent en masse to the fact of living under a tyrannical regime that slaughtered millions of people. Obviously a fine grasp of nuances here!
So, even aside from the sickness of using all that to compare it to the experiences and choices and rights of women to be responsible for their own bodies and lives, it’s just all so wrong in itself, so offensive all round – to Jews, to Germans, to history, to memory, to logic, to women, to children, to teachers…
Why, why do people with enough nerve and stupidity to say the most appalling things get so much attention and credit?
Oh, she responded. No apology, quelle suprise. And her new comment contains this:
They bought into Hitler’s entire agenda–part of which was poison, but part of which was quite good, to be fair –because he fed them, built highways for them and brought that much-beloved “Ordnung” (order) back to the country, after years of absolute chaos.
Please note that “to be fair”.
Please note, kids, the teacher says Hitler “fed” people. And the trains were on time. (Especially those who led straight to Birkenau and Mathausen, one might add).
Why, if it wasn’t for those pesky Jews and dissidents getting killed, and that little fact of living under a dictatorship, my, it would have been so much better than today’s America. Where so many unborn babies get killed, which is a lot worse.
If that comment is only a “bad choice”, then I don’t know what…
– Trey – the other question implied in “what do you make of that paragraph” was, where do you see in it the civil, reasonable part that is worthy of civil, reasonable responses (which everyone is giving anyway, because I didn’t spot anyone showering Demi with foul epithets, no matter how well-deserved). If you see it as “a gross, emotionally wrought, historically incorrect and insulting statement”, then why are you so much more bothered by people taking issue with that insulting statement?
1. Demi wrote an empassioned but illogical post (which I read, if however much I skimmed) with one valid point (lost in everything else).
Yeah, well, pardon my hyperbole, but I’m sure someone could say that about Mein Kampf too. It probably contains one valid point “lost in everything else”. That “rest of the agenda”. The part that was not “quite good, to be fair”.
What about the standards for debate? anyone gets to have a “valid point” even if they’re being totally gross, historically incorrect, and insulting?
I would still love to see a logical discussion with pro-choicers about personhood and what ‘wanted’ means (NancyP touched on it) and a discussion with pro-lifers answering the question Ampersand asked. But I didn’t see that happening before and definitely doesn’t seem it will now, after in this thread
Because you cannot have a reasonable civil discussion as a reaction to totally insane, callou, historically fraudolent and offensive statements. That’s why.
For instance, in bioethics committees discussing the basis for laws on abortion, assisted reproduction and stem cell research, I would probably guess members do not bring up Holocaust comparisons, hence, discussions might be a little more productive and elegant.
There have been many such discussions outside of bioethics committees. I’m sure there will be a million other occasions to have that debate on personhood, proactively or in reaction to some other, possibly less deranged, anti-abortionist view, and I am sure Ampersand will bring up his excellent, reasonable, well-written points again. You just cannot expect everyone to be willing to have that debate with someone who is more concerned about being “fair” to fucking Hitler’s nazis and their fucking Ordnung, than to ordinary women. I mean. Seriously.
MN, for what it’s worth, I now agree with you. I was hopeful that Demi might be open to friendly, rational discussion, but her “defense” of the Nazi analogy has convinced me that my hope was misplaced. Oh, well.
From Demi’s last post, again:
As far as “implanting ideas” into the minds of my students, I teach in a Roman Catholic high school. We have a pro-life club.
And that’s just the way it is.
If you disagree, start your own “pro-choice” private school and preach whatever you please.
I see. No educational standards whatsoever. Good to know there’s no need to bother about that. Or about children as independent persons. Nope. They’re only independent persons to be respected when they’re not yet children but only zygotes, embryos, and tiny undeveloped foetuses. After that, they’re only there to be brainwashed by everyone, left or right, pro this or pro that. That’s what school is for. That’s the way it is.
High school kids can be smarter than foetuses, though, oddly enough. Sometimes, smarter than their teachers, too.
I have to say that I am rather disappointed in this whole episode. Demi’s husband Jake has his own religion-oriented blog (he is an Episcopal priest) with some good writing and interesting comments. No one violates Godwin’s rule there, let alone makes “well, the Nazis really weren’t all that bad” comments. So for some reason I expected his wife Demi to have enough sense not to compound her original post with more Nazi apologetics. Well, she is now a certifiable loon, and my reaction to loons is to not feed them. The poster upthread who mentioned therapy had a point – let’s hope she shows more insight someday than she has in her Nazi posts.
Ampersand, I am glad my multiple comments didn’t come across as obnoxious to you (don’t care what Demi thinks obviously), like I said, I do think what you wrote in response was brilliant stuff anyway, I just wished it didn’t come attached with giving credit and attention to something like that.
And in case it wasn’t clear, I wasn’t irritated at your politeness in the least, only at the people doing the “finger-wagging” as Sheelzebub put it. I still do admire your patience, however misplaced. Definitely worlds apart from those who’d sentence the supporters of something legal to share a circle in hell with the nazis…
(… or, in a circle even lower down towards the abyss, as it happens…)
Trey – the other question implied in “what do you make of that paragraph”? was, where do you see in it the civil, reasonable part that is worthy of civil, reasonable responses (which everyone is giving anyway, because I didn’t spot anyone showering Demi with foul epithets, no matter how well-deserved). If you see it as “a gross, emotionally wrought, historically incorrect and insulting statement”, then why are you so much more bothered by people taking issue with that insulting statement?
last part first, as I tried to state in my last comment, its not people taking issue with an insulting statement that bothered me as much as that instead of the discussion going the way of a good discussion on the points Ampersand brought up. Demi’s post was inflaming, admittedly, but I had hoped the discussion here would have been more on the points Ampersand brought up. I wasn’t and am not defending her, was only hoping for a discussion where I (and others) would feel comfortable it wouldn’t be a flame which the abortion debate always seems to start as and continue. I’d like to see someone actually just ignore the flame and talk.
The part which I think I implied in my comment, is the main point that Ampersand brought up, that ‘every pregnancy a wanted pregnancy’ can be a loaded term (and not just because ‘she might not have been born’, but just the ‘loaded’ meaning of the word ‘wanted’. It got lost in Demi’s post because it was poor and inflaming, but NancyP alluded it to it in one of the comments.
It’s a moot point with Demi anyway, reading her next reply. She is definitely not one of those who can thoughtfully discuss and see different points of view, that is for sure. Her reply just confirmed discussion with her is just basically poisoned.
The whole episode has just confirms my fears of never being able to discuss my own thoughts/concerns/doubts or whatever without the emotion escalating to a point of flames.
trey, any open forum discussing abortion degenerates into flame wars fast. Ever was it thus, back in usenet alt. domain days. About the best that can be done is to hold such discussions in person with folks that you can trust to stay rational, or to stay in like-minded (often closed) fora and analyse or fisk opposition statements. The problem with open fora is that unless ground rules for discussion are made – AND ENFORCED – someone will get on and accuse the other side of being worse than murdering Nazis. Getting a discussion going between opposite sides on this issue in a large public listserv or blogcomment effectively requires “full moderation” mode, so that the moderators screen out the inflammatory posts before they appear to the group, and the posts appear only after a time lag of hours to days. The time lag also reduces the instant gratification that tends to promote an emotional feedback loop that amplifies the name-calling. I think that the only open non-moderated forum that is capable of producing intelligent “debate” on abortion is the print media.
I remember some website railing against masturbation that I saw that said something like, “millions of sperm are killed every time a man masturbates, and every sperm is half a person. So every man who masturbates commits genocide.”
Don’t bother trying to figure that one out.
Karpad, I think you’re being insensitive about the cretacious extinction. Millions of innocent dinosaurs were killed, and millions more never were, because of it. Would you consign so many of them to death or never-existence for your own convenience/existence? That seems like Dino-Nazi morality to me.
On another note, I really, really doubt the Shoah did anything (net) to help the German economy. It’s true that Hitler stabilized the currency and reduced unemployment, but that had nothing to do with his policies on the Jews, Roma, gays, etc. It had something to do with the military buildup, but I think that, say, civilian infrastructural spending would have reduced unemployment just as well.
yes, I admit it.
I am the benefit from the deaths of preceeding dominant species, and various people worldwide at various points.
less sarcasm, I do recognise that my life would not be remotely liveable if not for various scourges throughout history, that indeed any moral person would fight to prevent. Polio, the black death, slavery, the worldwide oppression of women, World War 2, pogroms in eastern europe, and the genocide against the native americans are all events of which I am a beneficiary. and those are ones I have direct, specific evidence towards. without any one of those scourges, I would not be here, or at least not the same person.
I’ll work to end the ongoing suffering caused by any of those things, and I’ll regret that someone else had to suffer so that my life would be as it is, but I won’t apologize for events that were beyond my control and that I can do nothing about.
I’ll do the things that ARE within my power to amend (support affirmitive action, tell that creep who works in the office next to mine to shut his goddamn mouth when he’s being misogynist, donate to the red cross to help treat modern victims of polio, etc.)
No one can change the past. and people who do strike me as souls leading lives of quiet desperation. I’m no more impressed with “If abortion was legal, I wouldn’t be here” than I am with “oh my god! I was in the world trade center a month before the attacks!”
I’ll conceed your point: if things were different, they wouldn’t be the same.
The part which I think I implied in my comment, is the main point that Ampersand brought up, that ‘every pregnancy a wanted pregnancy’ can be a loaded term (and not just because ‘she might not have been born’, but just the ‘loaded’ meaning of the word ‘wanted’.
Actually, Trey, what Amp said was “Every birth a wanted birth,” which is a far different animal than “every pregnancy a wanted pregnancy.”
I tried to respond to Demi, and I even kept it civil. I didn’t think I could at first, hence me venting my spleen here under the heading: “I tried. I just can’t be civil.”
She’s more interested as babies as punishment, and insists that anyone who wouldn’t force a rape survivor to bear a child against her will was callous. She didn’t even touch my points about why her Nazi/Shoah comparison was so grossly offensive, and declared that she would no longer “talk with” Alas posters about this. I would call this shutting down the debate, but she did that with the “pro-choicers are worse than Nazis, who did some good things after all” line of reasoning.
trey, what NancyP said about ground rules. I understand you weren’t defending Demi’s callousness. But you have to understand a “flame” comment of the kind she made is not something that can be ignored. Especially when it’s at the center of the “argument” one is supposed to respond to.
It doesn’t have to be like that for all discussions of abortion, even with the tendency of the internet for flames. It has to do with setting the tone and deciding what’s worth of a reply at all.
Actually, I think Trey’s point is fair enough. But if you want to steer the discussion in a different direction, I think you’re better off posting on the things you want to discuss, rather than telling off other people for talking about the things they want to talk about.
The curious thing is that Demi’s husband Jake just posted a thoughtful essay on abortion on his website http://www.frjakestopstheworld.blogspot.com – the difference in tone between husband and wife is like night and day.
Demi’s husband Jake just posted a thoughtful essay on abortion
Impressively thoughtful.
I just read through the entire thing (this time without skimming :) and am impressed that he thoughtfully states his views and admits to doubts, questions and ignorance. God, if we all (not we as in here on Alas, we as in ‘the country) could discuss this matter similarly..
well, it probably wouldn’t be such a huge eternal fight.
I think I will try to formulate a response to that post and trackback (ampersand, what happened to trackbacks here? :( ). I’d love to see the discussion continue in that vein.
Interesting the contrast between the two :/
I replied to Jake’s post. No vitriol in my reply, though it rambled a bit, I’m sure.
Well he talks of “ensoulment”. Thank god he admits he doesn’t care for “hard science”. It is thoughtful compared to Demi’s, for sure. I still find the same disturbing refrain about raped women: “I’ve heard insisting that a rape victim give birth is “punishing” the woman for the rest of her life. I find that logic troubling. The potential child is innocent. Do we decide to terminate that life because of the possible trauma it may cause to the woman? Is that the greater good?
So, for all the disclaimers about not being able to imagine how horrible that experience must be, the assumption is still, even a raped woman is less of a person than even an embryo.
“Ensoulment” is not a concept that has any place in bioethics debates; it is a strictly religious one. “Personhood” is a philosophical ethical concept that is not predicated on religious beliefs. A human being as a person must possess the traits that define individuality. The main being, consciousness. You cannot have consciousness without a brain. Death is declared when all cerebral activity stops. Brain dead, dead. It is more complicated to try and define a precise time when human life starts, rather than when it stops. But at the very least the criteria of possessing a brain would have to be present, otherwise, there is no stopping that backwards slippery slope from embryo to zygote to sperm to egg to DNA… a fertilised egg has as much consciousness as a non-fertilised one. ie. zero.
I guess that’s the convenience of substituting “personhood” with “ensoulment”. It allows for more blurring of boundaries. After all, who’s to say where the soul resides? Since it is immaterial, and unscientific, its existence not proven by “hard science”, but only a matter of belief and sentiment, we could suppose it can reside even in one single cell or strand of DNA. Bingo.
I don’t want “abortion as birth control” either (it’s a straw man anyway – we want more birth control education, precisely to reduce the risk of getting to the point where you consider abortionI want as few women as possible to find themselves in a situation where they consider an abortion (another obvious response to an obvious traw man), I am not pro-abortion in the yet-another-straw-man sense that I consider abortion a fabulous thing that should be promoted, nor do I know anyone who does. I am pro-abortion in the sense I want to keep the option to have one legal for all women, at least for the first weeks when: a) that issue of personhood, in the ethical, philosophical and scientific sense, can be reasonably and objectively declared closed *at that time* (not the potential life that would become if…, but right there), as there is still no sufficient brain development hence no real human “personhood” – consciousness, experience, memory; b) the woman already knows she’s pregnant and so can already take a decision, in case she hadn’t already taken it by actively trying to get pregnant.
What some would glibly call “genocide” I’d call a reasonable compromise to allow resolution of a difficult situation which ideally shouldn’t even arise, and that’s what family planning is about.
But here’s the thing. Call it “ensoulment” or “personhood”, the entire focus of attention from fanatical anti-abortionists seems to be about the not-yet-person that is the embryo or foetus. Why aren’t they as interested in discussing the notion of personhood in relation to the *woman*? They do not even question that her personhood is *less than zero*. They do not even bother.
There you go, trey, that’s my calm, collected, non-flame-hijacked response on the main point. Which wasn’t raised by Demi because all she cared for was to declare termination of pregnancies even in the very first stages the worst kind of murder. Which kind of closes off any further discussion. But many of us tried anyway, didn’t we?
Well you can say as much as you want that if your mother had an abortion you’re one of the never born… You can say it as much as I can say if it weren’t for Polsky’s parking lot I’d never have been born. But I’m not going to go around banning add-on parking.
For some people this religious talk is all quite irrelevant, but for others, they feel a need to place their thinking about abortion in a religious context. I don’t think we are going to win any arguments based on our ability to convince people that there is no God, no “soul”, because by the nature of faith, people take these concepts…on faith. So, I think it worthwhile to know that there are religious and ethical arguments on the validity of abortion in various circumstances, and that there are religious people, including ministers and rabbis, who affirm the need for legalized abortion. An organization exists, Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice ( http://www.rcrc.org ). Will they always take the extreme libertarian position? No. But we already do not have that extreme libertarian position, in that third trimester abortion is done only for grave fetal defect (usually anencephaly) or for grave threat to the mother’s health. I think that we need to acknowledge that many many women who may need an abortion are also religious, and that they may need to hear some religiously based arguments on why a particular abortion is OK with their religious tradition (and perhaps get told that a particular abortion is not OK with their religious tradition).
So when the religious talk about ensoulment, maybe they can reflect on the nature of being incarnate, of God being incarnate in Jesus (ie, incarnate = subject to the laws of nature), about “soul” being equivalent to some minimal level of consciousness, and that this requires a certain level of neurological connectivity acquired at gestational age x. The ancients actually had this understanding, in that they did not consider a fetus truly “alive” until “quickening”, fetal movement perceived by the mother. The theory that a soul is deposited as soon as egg and sperm fuse is a relatively recent one theologically, and the current commonly proposed theory makes the unique genetic material of the conceptus the “soul-bearer”. This is in part a bastardization of the current overemphasis on genetics and genetic determinism in the popular culture (in part promoted by scientists who are enamored of the power of genetics). However, genetics is not the summit of biology. It is now becoming clear that we are very complex biological systems in which interactions between hundreds of proteins (gene products) may govern a single general process, and that environmental interactions and chance play a large part in modifying a general process. Using a complex-systems understanding of biology, I would think that the religious person might opt for a threshold of neurological complexity as the “ensoulment”.
I trust I make myself perfectly opaque. ;)