[Industrialblog,
April 27, 2004]
Missing the March
No one told me that there were going to be a million moonbats activists marching in Washington, D.C., breathing threats and murder against the unborn discussing threats to abortion their rights. Too bad, I'd like to have gone, you know, as an observer.
Funny how the pro-choicers march in beautiful weather in the springtime, while the pro-lifers end up marching on Roe's anniversary in January. I'm not sure the pro-choicers don't have the better idea. What's so special about marching on an anniversary?
If it's anniversaries you want, how 'bout the Fourth of July — the day of the Declaration of Independence. [Going from memory here:] "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, and that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, among them life, liberty ..."
Either you believe the unborn have inalienable rights, and these rights come from our creator rather than our mothers, or you don't believe these things. Where I stand is pretty obvious: To think your rights come from your mother is childish, in both the psychological and moral sense.
MORE: I know I'm way late on this discussion, but Misha has a good take here.
Lost in the pro-"choice"* discussion, as Misha points out, is the human stupidity underlying the debate on the practical level. We can argue all day about the abstractions, but what's really happening in the real world is largely preventable. There's nothing stopping both sides of the debate from working together to dramatically reduce the number of abortions.
In this day and age, there are very few excuses for unwanted pregnancies. My own sense is if there were about 50,000 abortions a year nationwide — about the same as traffic fatalities — most of the debate would go away. It still wouldn't be right, but at least we'd be demonstrating as a people that we value human life and abortion is regrettable but medically necessary sometimes. But there are more than a million abortions — about one in four in total — and we as a people are showing contempt for human life. And not much brains. Or restraint.
* ain't much choice involved for the gestating human, is there? So calling one side of the debate "pro-choice" is a lie. A "woman's right to choose" is a little better, at least identifying the source of the choice. But we're really not talking about choice in the broad sense, anyway — we're at the wrong level of abstraction. We're talking about termination. The accurate description would be a "woman's right to terminate" a pregnancy prior to birth.
Funny how the pro-choicers march in beautiful weather in the springtime, while the pro-lifers end up marching on Roe's anniversary in January. I'm not sure the pro-choicers don't have the better idea. What's so special about marching on an anniversary?
If it's anniversaries you want, how 'bout the Fourth of July — the day of the Declaration of Independence. [Going from memory here:] "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, and that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, among them life, liberty ..."
Either you believe the unborn have inalienable rights, and these rights come from our creator rather than our mothers, or you don't believe these things. Where I stand is pretty obvious: To think your rights come from your mother is childish, in both the psychological and moral sense.
MORE: I know I'm way late on this discussion, but Misha has a good take here.
Lost in the pro-"choice"* discussion, as Misha points out, is the human stupidity underlying the debate on the practical level. We can argue all day about the abstractions, but what's really happening in the real world is largely preventable. There's nothing stopping both sides of the debate from working together to dramatically reduce the number of abortions.
In this day and age, there are very few excuses for unwanted pregnancies. My own sense is if there were about 50,000 abortions a year nationwide — about the same as traffic fatalities — most of the debate would go away. It still wouldn't be right, but at least we'd be demonstrating as a people that we value human life and abortion is regrettable but medically necessary sometimes. But there are more than a million abortions — about one in four in total — and we as a people are showing contempt for human life. And not much brains. Or restraint.
* ain't much choice involved for the gestating human, is there? So calling one side of the debate "pro-choice" is a lie. A "woman's right to choose" is a little better, at least identifying the source of the choice. But we're really not talking about choice in the broad sense, anyway — we're at the wrong level of abstraction. We're talking about termination. The accurate description would be a "woman's right to terminate" a pregnancy prior to birth.
They're both fairly consistent beliefs, and of the two I would certainly prefer the right-wing version, if we must have either. What I don't understand is how people manage to hold it axiomatically, as most people appear to. Of all the arbitrary axioms to pick, why something this high level and unrelated to experience? Yet, it is this axiomatic stance that prevents any real debate on the topic. As the saying goes, you can't reason a man out of what he was never reasoned into.
Coincidentally, I tried to answer your question in the next entry. People are manipulated because they haven't unpacked the categories.
It's even more difficult dealing with the analogic and categorical manipulations of the gay marriage crowd, especially Andrew Sullivan. It's like trying to defrag a disk except the disk likes to be fragged.