Weekend question I: Do pro-aborts make you paranoid?
I read an interesting post by KushielsMoon, who comments here sometimes, on the Abortion Gang blog. Her June 2 piece was entitled, “The things I can’t say”:
As a vocal prochoicer, I am not able to always speak my mind.
Every single time I tweet, blog, email or post a comment somewhere, I have to carefully look over each and every word, to ensure that I haven’t said something I “shouldn’t.”…
What are these things I “shouldn’t” say? Well, basically it’s anything an antichoicer could jump onto, take out of context, or otherwise use against me. Against us. Against Planned Parenthood. Against women.
I hate that I have to guard my speech. I hate that I have to turn conversations onto random tangents over word use. But if I don’t do these things, antichoicers will run away with my words and ignore anything I say after that.
Kushie wrote she gets grief from fellow pro-aborts, too. Problems, she said, arise on such points as terminology (“So what if a woman calls a fetus a baby? So what if I follow her lead and say the word baby too?”), empathy (“If after her abortion she feels that her baby died and became an angel, then why can’t I agree with her on that?”), and validation (“How are we ‘believing the lies from the anti-choicers’ by recognizing all reproductive experiences, and the emotions surrounding them, and believing that they are valid?”)
Weekend question: Do you, like KushielsMoon, write your posts or comments on the life issue against a backdrop of politically correct paranoia?
Sometimes. But most of that is easy to shake if you get out of bad rhetorical habits (like calling an unborn child “it,” for example).
I don’t think pro-lifers run into the same sort of rhetorical problems as pro-aborts, though. Pro-lifers can acknowledge that there are women who don’t regret their abortions without worry about what that’s going to do to our argument. Pro-aborts have built their case for abortion with one foot on the grounds that it helps women. Every woman who is hurt by abortion is materially dangerous to them and must be silenced, marginalized, or otherwise unacknowledged. Pro-lifers can acknowledge there are women who don’t connect with their unborn children as people without it hurting our case, too. Acknowledging there are women who do is something else pro-aborts can’t do without concern for how that’s going to hurt their case, because this is where their other foot is standing: “nobody sees a fetus as a person.”
Pro-lifers can acknowledge all this because our case is grounded on a bunch of “ises.” The unborn child is human. It is wrong to kill innocent human beings. Abortion is surgery which makes it dangerous and potentially harmful. Abortion is a procedure that kills a human being. All these ises, that you can phrase almost any way you like (so long as you remain true to the essentials) are where we ground our case, and it doesn’t really matter what words you pick when you’re saying “abortion kills children.” Or how anyone might feel about those words. You’re still talking about children who die because our society says it’s okay (see, I wrote that last sentence entirely off-the-cuff, and I wasn’t worried about what the pro-aborts would think of it).
So, from Kushiel’s post, I’m taking away two points. One, pro-aborts don’t view the unborn as such an alien thing as they pretend to. Two, and this is the important bit, she’s actually right. Because a bunch of pro-aborts running around talking about the unborn as human matters. Personhood is not a subjective concept, and if some of the unborn are persons, all of them are, regardless of what it does to her argument. If pro-aborts are going to start acknowledging some abortions as tragic, wrong, and bad, we should be ready to suggest that all of them are, whether anyone involved with them feels that way or not. To point out that things that are wrong continue to be wrong even when we don’t feel wrong about them.
Huh. I suppose pro-aborts do have to be more careful. I guess this is like I said on the post the other day. Rhetorical spin becomes very important when you don’t have a real or valid argument.
KushielsMoon is only feeling the pressure and dictates of her very own movement, and for good reason.
If you use clear and simple terminology, like calling the child a baby, then the direct and simple understanding is that abortion is killing the baby.
Even her blog post on this dances around the subject by avoiding simple and direct terms:
Who but the pro-aborts makes abortion highly mystified? Why focus on the procedure and not the intended outcome? I went in for a hernia surgery. The end result was the defective wall was repaired – the objective. Why can’t Planned Parenthood say they specialize in killing and removing dead babies from pregnant women?
Come now KushielsMoon, can’t you just simply say, “I know that they are innocent human beings, but I think it’s perfectly fine for a mother to hire assassins to violently kill and dismember her own children.”
After all, no one’s going for an abortion to have a “reproductive experience”, they are going to terminate the relationship and the child, and there’s plenty of evidence to indicate such terminations are violent and particularly gruesome.
Okay – my answer to Jill’s question. I don’t worry about having to couch my words in particular forums because the truth needs to be told. This has brought up emotional reminders which to some seems cold-hearted, but those who understand the enormity of emotional and consequential impact of abortion (it’s driving the US to insanity) also know truth cannot be shielded no matter how painful. Someone, perhaps many, will benefit from exposing the truth.
That said, I often must carefully consider how I express something, so it won’t be taken out of context and used against me. For instance, I will often compare the results of a suction aspiration abortion to running a normal sized human through a wood chipper, because the end result is similar. I think people have been desensitized to what that really means, however if they had to encounter it in reality – it would be sickening and revolting, an absolute horror.
Abortion is a worldwide nightmare. It is the ultimate weapon of choice for population control, and the control of human beings. Nothing more, nothing less. The devil holds the strings.
So when you – KushielsMoon feel the pressure, it’s naturally coming from your cause.
If you truly rip off the mask, and uncover the total reality of abortion, the entire world would gasp in horror, then simply go insane.
So we fight – some trying to pull back the covering to reveal the nightmare, while others desperately hold on to the madness.
what a great comment Keli!
Unfortunately, what has happened to our society is that we have a form of soft totalitarianism.
You can’t speak out about the unborn, gays, same-sex marriage or anything that goes against the secular humanist agenda.
It’s all about choice, personal autonomy at the expense of everything else including freedom to think and speak what we believe.
Interesting thing is that proaborts label anyone with opposing views as repressive.
In fact it is the secular humanists that will not allow public discourse.
All reproductive experiences are valid? What’s that supposed to mean?
And I am so annoyed by this dead babies becoming angels thing. We will be like angels; we won’t be angels. This is newage crap, not a Christian belief. Dead babies become saints in heaven, perhaps, but not angels. It’s as misled as believing that a dead baby will come back to you later, or be reincarnated in some other form. No, those children are and always have been human beings. There was nothing about them to set them below us or above us. They were always human–and they always will be.
If pro-aborts are going to start acknowledging some abortions as tragic, wrong, and bad, we should be ready to suggest that all of them are, whether anyone involved with them feels that way or not. To point out that things that are wrong continue to be wrong even when we don’t feel wrong about them.
Posted by: Keli Hu at June 5, 2010 7:04 AM
——
Keli- excellent comments.
To put the above clip in dry logical terms – pro-aborts must maintain abortion as a universal good. (A universal is one that always, and under every circumstance applies, or is true.)
To logically break a universal – show that it is not always true, kills any argument that relies upon that universal being true.
So pro-aborts have to defend against a universal being broken or exposed as being a non-universal.
That’s an accounting with reality.
To hold onto the belief that a non-universal is a universal is to be either intellectually dishonest (you do it on purpose) or to be disconnected from reality – you’re insane.
I suggest that doing the former eventually leads to the latter.
We certainly don’t try to “mystify” abortion. Pro-lifers will tell you exactly what happens in abortion. Partial birth abortion got pretty well demystified and… huh. Everyone thought it was repulsive, evil, and needed to be stopped.
KushieIsMoon, join us in demystifying abortion. Let’s demystify it until it’s perfectly clear what it is and what it does. Maybe then women won’t need so much support because they won’t be choosing it.
Keli and Chris, excellent, well-thought out comments, thanks.
As for me, the one area I have to be careful is using terms in my writing such as “shoot,” or “shot in the dark,” or “moving target,” etc., that pro-aborts will take out of context and claim I am condoning violence. This really aggravates me, because I don’t like the thought that I’m caving to political correctness.
I should probably clarify for you- part of the post got messed up and hasn’t been fixed yet. The following part is a quote, which in the abortiongang post looks like it is part of my own words:
“I got this email in the Spectrum Doula Collective inbox earlier this week:
I know you think you’re doing good, but you are not. You are doing a grave disservice to the pro-choice movement by believing the lies from the anti-choicers. Please email me back, we can talk more about this, but please consider what you are doing before you proceed any further.
Wow. What, exactly, are we doing wrong? What sort of disservice do we do by believing pregnant people need compassionate care while undergoing surgical procedures? Or, at the very least, that they might want a bit more emotional and informational support while they undergo a highly mystified and generally misunderstood surgery?
How are we “believing the lies from the anti-choicers” by recognizing all reproductive experiences (and the emotions surrounding them) and believing that they are valid?”
(see: Exhale is Pro-Voice)
I wouldn’t call my carefully-worded language as “paranoia” but, hey, to each their own.
Keli Hu makes a mistake that I wish both prochoiers and antichoicers would stop doing.
Which is to refer to the whole movement as if we have one conscious, which is the same among all peoples.
I know there are prochoicers who think a fetus isn’t alive. I know there are prochoicers who think a fetus is alive. To act as if we all believe and think and say the same things is dishonest.
The same applies for antichoicers. The post about protesting outside of an abortion provider’s home shows that you do not all think the same.
It can be difficult, but I try to make an effort to not generalize about the entire movement. Sometimes I fail, but I still try. I hope others will try to do the same. It’s easy- just say “most” or “some” instead of assuming “all.”
Chris Arsenault – I don’t believe we need to maintain abortion as a universal good. Heart surgery can go wrong, and people can die- we still think it’s good overall, even if it isn’t good for the people it failed to help. Cesarean sections are good for women who cannot naturally birth (about 15% of births), but are very very bad for women who *can* have a vaginal birth. Abortion is definitely wrong for a woman who does not want to have one, but is being coerced into it.
Thank you to everyone for being civil.
“I know there are prochoicers who think a fetus isn’t alive. I know there are prochoicers who think a fetus is alive. To act as if we all believe and think and say the same things is dishonest.”
Posted by: KushielsMoon at June 5, 2010 8:27 AM
No, that’s not what I said. And here’s where you’re making a mistake that pro-aborts–yes, as a collective–have all made. Because I’m talking about how the pro-abortion argument, as a whole, is grounded. What it rests on. And I’ve yet to see any pro-abort who didn’t, ultimately, rest his or her arguments in exactly this same place.
You have grounded your argument on spin-doctoring. It’s all about choice, and it’s all about helping people to feel good about their choices. But when dealing with facts, it is possible to make a wrong choice and feel good about it. And regardless of your feelings on the subject, good or otherwise, the wrong choice is still wrong.
It is irrelevant what you believe or think about a fact. A fact continues to be fact whether you believe it or not. It doesn’t matter whether you think the unborn are human or alive or valuable or people. They are all those things regardless of your opinion on them. It is immaterial whether you feel abortion is bad or wrong or good or right. It is wrong no matter how you feel about it.
These are the ises. And that some pro-aborts recognize that an unborn child is human in some cases, means that–if they’re consistent–they must be willing to face that this is true in all cases. People aren’t people contingent on whether we feel like they are or not. Reality isn’t wishy-washy, and your emotions matter not one bit to a fact.
Keli Hu–
I wasn’t talking about the “facts” as you put it. I was talking about the claims you made about prochoicers. For instance:
“Acknowledging there are women who do is something else pro-aborts can’t do without concern for how that’s going to hurt their case, because this is where their other foot is standing: “nobody sees a fetus as a person.””
There are prochoicers who claim that some people see a fetus as a person, and are willing to acknowledge that (that was kind of the point of my post, acknowledging things which antis might take out of context).
Also:
“One, pro-aborts don’t view the unborn as such an alien thing as they pretend to.”
I do believe there are some prochoicers who see the fetus as something alien. While others do not. To claim that all prochoicers feel the same about fetuses is, again, dishonest.
“It is irrelevant what you believe or think about a fact.”
In general, you might believe this. But when talking about prochoice beliefs, it is relevant.