On Abortion

The Right Stuff
May 4, 2014

Fun fact: until recently, I had never engaged people on the topic of abortion.  Living in a red state, I have had little contact with the baby killers.  I also tended to avoid the topic; perhaps I subconsciously knew I would hate the results.

Honestly, I was inclined to believe that things are the way they are because of inertia and Wendy Davis.

I was wrong.

In this post I will present some of the more choice arguments, along with some commentary.

Guess that mass of tissue has to escape the woman before it deserves personhood and rights.  Pretty sure abortion has done a lot to encourage profligate behavior, as well.

(Side note: what started this discussion was someone posting an anti-abortion meme)

Comparing a fetus to cancer, lice and ticks was a low I hadn’t anticipated.

Granted, I’m not exactly a gentle soul, to which my writings will attest.  I’ve seen, heard and even done a lot of monstrous things.  I do not exaggerate when I state that this equivocation horrified me on a level I have only felt one other time in my life.

The icing on the cake were the likes, primarily coming from a female poster.

Here’s a major slippery slope: what qualifies as a “complete being?” What of mental damage, amputation, retardation?

If it looks and argues like a duck…

I did not realize women went into clinics and signed paperwork prior to having periods and miscarriages.  We have all learned something, today.

Manslaughter infers culpability, agency and willfulness.  Unless one can establish that the woman was seeking behaviors that increased the risk of miscarriage on purpose I simply cannot buy that comparison, especially considering abortion is a more direct and guaranteed option.

You may notice that the person who wrote this was one of the fellows comparing fetuses to ticks and cancer, above.  I know I did.  Choosing evil is on them, indeed.

There was a libertarian and female in the comments that pulled this argument as well, that supporting choice is more important than supporting a choice, the choice.  Because freedom or something.

Choice isn’t inherently good or bad, it just is.  It’s really not that special.  Choice accompanies existence; you choose, therefore you are.  You’re setting the ideological bar pretty low when you support something on par with breathing.

Not to mention, there exist bad or evil choices.  With a hammer I can choose to pursue carpentry… or crush someone’s skull.  Saying you support choice and freedom without qualifications is a profoundly retarded stance to take.

Pointing out that some things should not be permissible, that freedom isn’t a priori good was responded with what I guess was considered snark…

…Except I don’t see how abortion compares to the cotton field.  Like, at all.

Shortly thereafter the same women posted this gem:

This was an interesting argument.  Apparently abortion will stop the production of serial killers? Apparently women have a sense for that?

Oh, and here is a comparison of abortion with eating your vegetables.

What followed was a diversion regarding how awful it is that I call myself a Christian yet say mean things to people who support the systematic butchering of unborn children.  Because modernity has informed us that a good Christian must smile placidly and moo whilst people justify something that is estimated to have ended over 50 million lives.

Also, it is supposedly incoherent for one to hate abortion yet support the death penalty and war.

I’m still trying to work through how someone can argue pacifism and humanism while also supporting abortion.

I then endured a scathing wall-text from an older woman with hyphenated last name arguing that I must support abortion because of very specific circumstances.

This is a stupid, disingenuous (and therefore popular) argument, that one must accept the way things are because it might directly be responsible for saving a life.  To which I point out that legalizing abortion did nothing to empower doctors who already utilized methods to save one life if saving both wasn’t possible.

Even were this not such a blatant distortion, a consistent Christian (or a non-believer who isn’t a narcissistic child) wouldn’t pick a procedure that has terminated the lives and potential of over 50 million humans because it saved a handful of women in some special  circumstance that uh, never existed to begin with.

The final argument was actually the most difficult for me.

This fellow had his ideological blinders on to what I imagine everyone is seeing, here.

Abortion is primarily done by certain minorities.  It is true that those aborted minorities would have been more likely to commit crime.

One could argue that abortion has possibly saved lives.  One could argue that abortion has reduced the economic impact of criminal justice and government aid.  One could argue that abortion has had a net eugenic effect on the nation.  One would have a very good argument here, one that I concede is compelling and rational, that doesn’t come with the inconsistent values shown above.

I would ultimately maintain my stance against abortion, however.

I maintain my stance because I cannot justify terminating a developing life and it’s potential for good.  Even knowing that the odds they would ever amount to anything were slim.

The modern world tends to see this unborn clump of tissue as something on par with trash; I see this developing life as something more special than myself and those walking this earth.  Here is the closest man can ever get, will ever be to a sinless, innocent existence.  That should be very special to us.

Here is potential.  That thing people compare to cancer might grow up to cure cancer.  Then again it might grow up to work a dead-end job.  It might live a happy or miserable life.  We don’t know what might happen, we don’t know what is possible.

We do know that abortion provides a definite answer: nothing.

Where is the progress in embracing something that removes life for convenience and justifies it with selfishness? How does this empower women? How does this advance civilization? What is moral about supporting it? How does it not become a slippery slope? Seeing the equivocations and arguments, how can one not see abortion as a slippery slope?

What does this vile practice say about our society, about us as a people?

It says we would rather live a pretty lie than endure anything resembling reality and consequences.