Quote of the Day 12-8-10
… [I]t may be that calling yourself pro-choice has become one of the the ways of identifying yourself with the educated class, even if your views on other subjects have shifted, subtly or starkly, in a more traditionalist direction. And likewise, calling yourself pro-life has become one of the ways of identifying as a morally-upright conservative middle American, even if you don’t go to church and don’t really hew to conservative ethics on almost any other front.
One could argue, I suppose, that this latter reality reflects the success of the pro-life movement — it’s so potent, and its arguments are so powerful, that anti-abortion sentiment can survive the weakening of the deeper ethical and religious value systems that inspired the movement in the first place.
But ultimately, for opposition to abortion to make practical sense, the pro-life arguments can’t just stand on their own: They need to be bound up in precisely the kind of cultural matrix of sexual and marital responsibility that seems to be weakening or disappearing among what are nominally the more pro-life portions of the population.
~Ross Douthat, The New York Times, December 7
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
Writers like Douthat make me embarrassed of my college degree and make me question the work I do to help low-income students get a college education (I certainly don’t want to help create more writers like him). He demonstrates elitist snobbism at its very worst.
Douthat is clueless. I’m encouraged by his stupidity and his false conclusions and those he believes in. As long as the enemy doesn’t really know why he’s losing, good! Abortion advocates really don’t understand the pro-life position on any level and that will make them easier to defeat. They make assumptions and guesses, and the tangents they go off on get further and further from truth.
The truth is that the pro-abortion position is what’s getting harder to maintain. It blindly denies science and biology. Though people will probably struggle with their sexual ethics a while longer, the evidence of the humanity of the preborn is undeniable. Every single time one of my friends or relatives posts their baby’s ultrasound pictures on the internet, a blow is delivered to defeat abortion. My friends and relatives aren’t particularly political, and many don’t even identify as pro-life. But they are helping us in our work, by their own natural love and joyful enthusiasm for the life of their new children.
ninek – I think you’re making the same argument that Douthat is making. In order to convey a culture of life – you need to have a culture of life. Without the possibility of new children, there is little opportunity to have new adults that are life-oriented – or who can see the joys of children.
if a culture of life is undermined – making marriage less likely, and sexual promiscuity more likely, then abortion flourishes. In a sense Douthat is pointing out what seems to be obvious – but to most people isn’t.
Yes, I agree that sexual behavior will have to be rethought in order for a culture of life to flourish. But young people may not be so ingrained in their immorality as our generation. Seeing that their preborn children are recognizable and that the images can be shared with others is what will help dismantle the abortion industry. Yes, they will have to sleep around less casually than their parents and grandparents.
But I don’t say it in such a belittling way. If you read Douthat’s whole article, he comes of as the most offensive elitist ever. He supposes that people want to identify with pro-choice because it’s what smart and educated people do. I think smart people are pro-life. Unlike Douthat, I don’t see the values as continually weakening. I see that young people are waking up, wising up.
Natural law will triumph over genocide. Right now, elitists like Douthat think natural law is just some namby pamby thing that religious people believe in, if they didn’t go to college.
Mass was full this morning of young families with lots of kids. In other words, I’m not buying this man-from-a-bygone-era’s little argument about the pro-life’s “life blood” drying up. If anyone is drying up, it is 1970s folks like him who are probably spending the day beating their breasts over John Lennon instead of praying for his soul.
If anyone is drying up, it is 1970s folks like him
You’re probably right. The idea that one’s pro-choice stance symbolizes belonging to an “educated class” does not account for the growing popularity of the pro-life position among today’s college students.
I agree with Douhat. Census data agree as well. I don’t have to like the facts to recognize what they are. Basically, the walk and talk have to match.