Exposing the Pro-Life Lie
The murder today of Dr. George Tiller in Kansas confirms what many of us have long known. Among those who call themselves pro-life, there are plenty who are anything but. They are terrorists, plain and simple, who seek to subordinate women to the religiously fanatical, patriarchal dystopia of their theocratic fantasies. At best, they are pro-fetal life. They love the pre-born but could care less for those children already here, whose poverty they will blame on their parents, whose illness and lack of health care they will shrug off as “not their problem,” and whose humanity they will altogether ignore or even cheer as it is destroyed, so long as those children be Iraqi, or Afghan, or just Muslim in general.
But now let me say something you might not expect, something you might even find shocking, but something which is also inarguable, at least from a position of intellectual honesty. Namely, in a bizarre way, those who would murder abortion providers like Dr. Tiller, are actually the only anti-abortion forces who are consistent, and whose actions coincide with their rhetoric. On the other hand, those who oppose abortion access and yet would condemn the killing of Tiller, or other abortion providers, or the bombing of clinics, are actually, by virtue of their squeamishness, demonstrating the fundamentally flawed logic of the anti-choice position.
Think about it: those who oppose abortion claim that a fetus is morally equal to an already-born person in every way. They are not only life, but life imbued with rights, both God-given (in their minds), natural, and (they would prefer) legal. But if one really believes that–if one truly believes that a fetus is morally equal to, let’s say, my 5 or 7-year old daughters–then that belief would literally require such a person to intervene against those who would end such fetal life, even to the point of killing them if need be. I have little doubt, after all, that if you were walking down the street and saw someone about to kill a small child, you would feel justified in intervening, even to the point of using lethal force, in order to protect that innocent child. And if you did, you would not only be acting within the confines of the law, but within the boundaries of virtually any moral or ethical system you can construct, or of which you might conceive.
While killing Tiller on his way to church might be hard to rationalize under this rendering (since he was not about to perform an abortion, and thus there was no immediate threat to which the shooter could claim to be responding), had Tiller been killed going into work, or had the clinic where he operated been blown up, killing the employees inside, under simple notions of the vicarious defense of others, such an act would be justified: at least it would be if one accepts the underlying premise of fetal personhood put forth by the anti-choice side.
To say otherwise–to say, for instance that lethally intervening to save a 7 year old from an attacker is morally justified, but doing the same to save a fetus is not–is to admit, however implicitly, that fetal life is not equal morally speaking to the lives of born persons. However we might agree that a fetus is not without value, and that the decision to terminate a pregnancy is a serious one (about which women often struggle, for that very reason), it should be obvious that such life is not equivalent to that of born persons. And the mere fact that most in the anti-abortion movement aren’t willing (thankfully) to commit murder, as in the Tiller case, suggests that at some level, despite their claims to the contrary, even they know it.
So am I to understand that your argument is that unless one violently opposes violence one is tacitly agreeing that the victims of violence are not truly human? So, for example, during the slave trade when often 80% of slaves died on the Middle Passage and the average slave died in his or her twenties, any abolitionist who didn’t head down to the docks and kill slave ship captains or to the fields to kill slave owners so as to prevent the murder of slaves was admitting that slaves weren’t human? Anyone who wasn’t John Brown or Nat Turner really believed blacks weren’t human like whites? William Lloyd Garrison’s pacifism exposed the abolitionist lie?
Let’s take this a step further. Environmental racism kills non-white people, concentrating toxic industries in their neighborhoods and killing them with cancer. Certainly the leaders of guilty businesses could be considered purveyors of corporate violence and even murderers – but does that mean that everyone who doesn’t take up arms against them is admitting that blacks and Latinos aren’t really human?
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admin Reply:
August 12th, 2010 at 6:01 pm
Interesting rebuttal, but ultimately it misses the mark. I am saying that if there is one scenario — the scenario where one is literally about to kill someone, imminently — in which moral people would intervene violently, even in a way that caused death to the aggressor, and yet another scenario, in which one is also about to “kill” the yet-to-be-born child, where they would not, this is a tacit admission that the two lives are not equal, morally. The abolitionist argument or enviro racism arguments are not analogous, unless you had framed it as a situation where a slave was about to be killed (not that they were merely in the act of being kidnapped), or where a corporate polluter was about to imminently kill a person of color. In those cases, it seems to me moral people would respond with violence. Not everyone, but many or most. And if they did, few would condemn it. Few would condemn an abolitionist who, for instance, intervened and killed a slave master who was about to kill his chattel. The fact that not everyone would do it doesn’t change the moral claim. But with the examples you offer, the harm, though real, is not immediate or imminent (as far as death goes) and so most people probably wouldn’t respond with “vicarious defense” of another in a lethal way in those situations. The hypothetical i was offering was merely to say that if anti abortion folks are not willing to do violence to doctors that they KNOW are going into work to end fetal life, and yet they would kill those (or at least seriously maim them) who were about to kill a child on the street, they are acknowledging a difference.
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There are tens of millions of pro-lifers – only a handful have committed violence – how this constitutes plenty of pro-lifers being terrorists is beyond me.
Not only is being pro-life not an expresion of patriarchy, suffragists articulated opposition to abortion from a feminist intersectional perspective – which is why for example Elizabeth Cady Stanton said, “When we consider that women are treated as property, it is degrading to women that we should treat our children as property to be disposed of as we see fit.”
Furthermore, many religious people are pro-choice, many atheists and agnostics are pro-life. I’m going to address two of your arguments with quotes from prolifeamerica.com
“This claim that pro-lifers only care about abortion is an outright lie. However, let’s assume that no pro-lifer anywhere in the world is involved in even one effort to help other people. What does that have to do with our efforts to keep the pro-choice mob from killing every baby they can get their hands on? Where is it written that when someone tries to prevent innocent human beings from being butchered, they are responsible for solving all the world’s social problems? If a man tries to stop a poor child from being murdered in a drive-by shooting, do we say it’s none of his business unless he has a plan to end poverty?
There is a legal group called the Innocence Project which represents prisoners who claim they were falsely convicted. They have been successful in numerous instances where they were able to prove that a man was on death row for a murder he didn’t commit.
When they are trying to save the life of a condemned prisoner who may be innocent, should they be told to butt out unless they are doing something about homelessness, child abuse, hunger, and all of the world’s other social problems? As ridiculous as that sounds, that is precisely what the pro-choice crowd says about abortion. They say that unless the pro-life movement can solve all the problems an unborn girl might face in her life, then we have no right to keep them from killing her.”
“It is simply a lie to imply that pro-lifers always support our government’s decision to go to war. There are tens of millions of pro-lifers in America and when war is contemplated they always express many opinions on both sides of the issue. In fact, in recent years some of the most powerful arguments against America’s involvement in war have come from people with unassailable pro-life credentials.”
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admin Reply:
August 12th, 2010 at 6:14 pm
well, there have been 200 or more bombings, arsons, or shootings at abortion clinics throughout North America: far more than the number of Muslim-inspired terror attacks on our soil (though admittedly with a much smaller body count–I’m talking incidents here, not fatalities), so I would say that is a pretty large number.
As for the connection to patriarchy, I acknowledge there are real feminists who are anti-abortion, although frankly most of the FFL folks are not feminists in anything but name (even Sarah Palin claims to be one, but she doesn’t support comparable worth legislation, etc). The fact is, outlawing abortion would indeed force women, and only women, to bear the cost of the state’s legal wrath. They would have to carry children to term, they would have to suffer the emotionally wrenching decision of either placing a born child up for adoption (a difficult thing to do, and a brave one when done, but wrenching nonetheless), or raising a child they are unprepared to raise. It would mean that women could be regulated from the time they became pregnant, because anything they did, from eating unhealthy foods, to too much or too little exercise, to smoking, etc could lead to asssault charges, or murder charges if fetal life were given personhood. Women who then need help with nicotine addiction, alcohol or drugs, would not seek it out, even when they planned to keep their children and deliver them, for fear that they might be reported to authorities. This would result in the total control of pregnant women’s lives by the state. How that is NOT sexist and patriarchal is beyond me. And you can say this wouldn’t happen, but there have already been attempts to regulate women this way in Utah. If a human life amendment were passed, or merely federal fetal life legislation, the result would be to intervene in every personal decision a woman made: it could ban certain types of birth control depending on how fetal life is defined, which are not actually abortifacients but are thought to be so by fundamentalist Christians with only a Bible to guide them, as opposed to a science book.
I never said anti-abortion folks have to do other types of work, though I do think that if your main goal would result in a large increase in the population of unwanted children, you might have a moral responsibility to be involved in solving that problem, since your own agenda made it worse.
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A clarification on the last reply post. Please note, in the first sentence, I said there are “plenty” of pro-life folks who fall into the patriarchal camp, and who don’t care about the already born, are pro-war, etc. I never said all. I didn’t even say most. I said plenty, and honestly, when you think about the far-right evangelical community that has been the motor of the anti-abortion fight, can you really disagree? I mean, they are not feminists by a long shot, they do have pretty lousy views on issues related to poor folks (and no, giving clothes and food to your church to give to the poor is not sufficient), and they are pretty solidly behind U.S. militarism and war.
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Also, fetal protection laws under an anti abortion regime would require that women who have abortions anyway (as many would) be prosecuted for murder. I know that most anti abortion folks say “oh no, we don’t mean that, we have compassion for the women, it’s the doctors we would prosecute,” but that is a dodge. If the fetus is life, equal to a born child, we should treat the mother who “kills” it no differently than we would a mom who, for whatever reason, killed her three week old. We wouldn’t have “compassion” for her, we would lock her away. To not do so with the mother who terminates a fetus is to admit the lives are not the same. If she goes looking for someone to perform the abortion, she is guilty of murder under an anti-abortion regime, just as she would be now, if she paid someone else to kill her infant. It’s a contract killing. So, are you prepared to build thousands of new prisons, because that’s what it would take?
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Thanks for taking the time to respond. I guess I find your definition of imminence both problematic and arbitrary. If you know people are certain to die as a direct result of an event, then I would say those deaths are imminent. Furthermore, the idea that it is not a moral imperative to kill a slave ship captain (who will be responsible for mass deaths) but it is a moral imperative to kill a slaveowner who, say, is about to shoot an individual slave seems unreasoned – if the goal is the protection of human life from certain death, why place conditions on whether the humans will die in a matter of weeks or minutes, if the defense is vicarious or not, or whether or not killing the killer would be condemened? How do those distinctions affect the morality of stopping unjust death?
But, let’s say that a given pro-lifer would stop a born child from being killed but isn’t out killing abortionists – that is still not an admission that the unborn are less human – rather it’s thinking about what will save the most unborn children in the long run. Do you think the killing of Tiller has made unborn children safer? I think it’s made them more vulnerable by allowing pro-choicers to demonize the pro-life movement. Pro-lifers recognize that if you want to save the most children possible, non-violence is most effective. Some of the most persuasive pro-lifers are former abortionists – their testimonies have probably saved more lives that Tiller’s death. A woman in a crisis pregnancy is more likely to carry her baby to term if she trusts pro-lifers enough to seek help from a pro-life crisis pregnancy center than if the pro-lifer movement has such a horrible reputation she would never turn to that quarter. People are more willing to hold pro-life views – and fight for pro-life legislation – if pro-lifers aren’t out killing abortionists. In other words, killing somebody about to kill a sever year old on the street makes moral sense because it won’t ultimately result in the deaths of more seven eyar olds, but if the goal is to save as many unborn children as possible, not killing abortionists is not an admission of the subhumanity of the unborn but a desire to behave in a way not antithetical to saving the most children possible.
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admin Reply:
August 13th, 2010 at 1:40 am
Though I disagree (obviously) with you on this issue, I appreciate this thoughtful reply. I can see your point. I do think that you are wrong however that non-violence saves more lives in the long run for the anti-abortion movement. In fact, violence has intimidated many doctors and limited access to abortions nationally. So violence actually does work. Abortion services have declined dramatically since the early 90s which is exactly the moment where the violent rhetoric in the far right got ramped up, and especially since the wackos in the God’s Army contingent and others like them started posting their nonsense…
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Frederic Christie Reply:
September 2nd, 2010 at 12:51 pm
A: I think you’re arguing as if Tim was espousing this morality specifically. But Tim is saying that that’s a pretty common consensus.
So I think most people agree that if you have a gun, and someone is about to shoot someone else, you shoot them to stop them. Aside from outright pacifists, and even the Dalai Lama has said that there are some justifications for self-defense, that’s a common consensus.
Now, what about someone who is starving to death in front of you? If you have a sandwich and don’t give it to them, is that murder? Is it wrong? Is it wrong to the same degree as not stopping a crime in front of your eyes?
What if you know that someone will die sometime within ten days? Do you have the same obligation?
These are all quibbles, but I think what everyone can agree on is that there IS an obligation to stop someone, with lethal force if necessary, if you see them specifically threatening imminent harm to someone. There may be other obligations. Personally, I think if you saw someone being enslaved, your obligation would be to free them with lethal force if necessary. But not everyone agrees.
So, since we’ve established that everyone admits (even you, from what I can see) that the MINIMUM standard is that you have to stop imminent death with lethal force, that to decry the tactics of anti-abortion terrorists is to prove that you don’t think that the doctors meet that minimum standard. Hell, you’ve just established that you don’t think they meet the standard of a slave ship driver!
And the only way you can think that is if you think the fetus is not equatable to a human being.
Me, I think that there are complex moral issues around abortion. There’s this bizarre and stupid idea that’s taken root in our statist society that, unless you want to immediately throw everyone into jail who does something wrong, you don’t really think it’s wrong. If people think abortion is wrong, fine. Spread that norm through good-natured communication. Convince other people. Don’t bomb them and don’t turn to the state.
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There have been 8,519 acts of violence committed by pro-choicers: http://abortionviolence.com/ – the violence is more prevalent on that side.
You are making a straw man argument – I didn’t say anything about FFL.
TW: The fact is, outlawing abortion would indeed force women, and only women, to bear the cost of the state’s legal wrath.
A: Really? Men wouldn’t have to deal with being birth fathers or raising unplanned children or paying child support? I guess where you and I differ is that I don’t think violence against children (which anguishes women in and of itself) is a legitimate way to avoid the pain of adoption or difficulties (and joys) of raising an unplanned child.
TW:It would mean that women could be regulated from the time they became pregnant, because anything they did, from eating unhealthy foods, to too much or too little exercise, to smoking, etc could lead to asssault charges, or murder charges if fetal life were given personhood. Women who then need help with nicotine addiction, alcohol or drugs, would not seek it out, even when they planned to keep their children and deliver them, for fear that they might be reported to authorities. This would result in the total control of pregnant women’s lives by the state.
A: This is fearmongering. You know this didn’t happen before Roe v. Wade, you know this doesn’t happen in any current industrialized country where abortion is forbidden, and you know that none of that is part of the mainstream pro-life movement. As for abortifacients – opposition to that is indeed based on science – see the work of embryologist Dr. Diane Irving.
You are reducing pro-lifers to “far right evangelicals” and making faulty arguments based on that.
Actually, the mainstream pro-life woman wants only abortionists – not women who have abortions – to be prosecuted, just like before Roe – and no, that is not an admission of unborn subhumanity. Again, it’s about saving the most lives possible – quoting again: Laws prohibiting abortion target the abortionist, not the woman. This is evidenced by the fact that, before Roe v. Wade, American women were never indicted for having illegal abortions. For several pragmatic reasons, that same approach should be adopted when abortion is again illegal.
First, except in the extremely unlikely event that a woman is actually caught in the act of having an illegal abortion, a conviction would be virtually impossible.
Second, the woman is the best source of information needed to bring charges against the abortionist. If she also faced prosecution, she would not cooperate with the authorities, thus keeping them from getting the evidence needed to convict the abortionist. That would leave him free to kill again.
This doesn’t excuse the woman for having participated in an illegal act which took the life of her child. It simply recognizes that the public interest is best served by removing the abortionist from society, and that legal sanctions against the woman would reduce the chances of that happening. It’s no different than the authorities giving immunity to a small-time drug user in exchange for information on a big-time drug dealer.
Remember, the goal of the pro-life movement is to stop abortion. Imprisoning a woman who had an illegal abortion would prevent nothing since her child is already dead. However, imprisoning the abortionist might save thousands of babies in the future.
The point is, jail is exactly where every abortionist deserves to be. If giving women a pass on prosecution is the best way to make that happen, that is a deal worth making. As for the pro-life movement, we just don’t know of a practical incentive for jailing women who submit to abortions. The really odd thing is, it always seems to be someone from the pro-choice crowd who argues that they should be. So I have a suggestion. If these people think it’s unfair for abortionists to go to jail but not their customers, they need to be the ones lobbying for legislation to put women in jail.
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admin Reply:
August 13th, 2010 at 1:37 am
>There have been 8,519 acts of violence committed by pro-choicers: http://abortionviolence.com/ – the violence is more prevalent on that side.
Seriously, where is this number from? I checked the link and there is no documentation provided at all. Do you just believe everything put out by pro-life websites? To begin with, many of those “crimes” are not violent crimes. Drug crimes? What is that about? The fact that pro-abortion folks occasionally commit crimes is no doubt true…and if we were to look at all categories of crime committed by pro-life folks, we’d find plenty as well: the question is, crimes related to the movement of which they are a part…you do not see pro choice folks blowing up churches or anti-abortion headquarters, or shooting pro life leaders. Only by including abortions themselves, and botched abortions as crimes of violence–which presumes you accept the view of the fetal police in the first place–can you make this kind of wild accusation.
>You are making a straw man argument – I didn’t say anything about FFL.
You said pro life was feminist. The FFL are the main folks saying that. I just pointed out it’s nonsense. They are not feminists. And if the best you can do presently is reference Stanton, well, you sorta make my point, actually about modern anti abortion folks, who are led by extremist Christians who believe Biblical bullshit about male domination. They are the leaders of the movement and no sane person can deny that.
TW: The fact is, outlawing abortion would indeed force women, and only women, to bear the cost of the state’s legal wrath.
>A: Really? Men wouldn’t have to deal with being birth fathers or raising unplanned children or paying child support? I guess where you and I differ is that I don’t think violence against children (which anguishes women in and of itself) is a legitimate way to avoid the pain of adoption or difficulties (and joys) of raising an unplanned child.
Men would not necessarily have to take more responsibility, no. What law would make them do so, which isn’t in place now, but routinely ignored anyway? No, women would be the ones to pay the cost. It would not change male behavior one bit
TW:It would mean that women could be regulated from the time they became pregnant, because anything they did, from eating unhealthy foods, to too much or too little exercise, to smoking, etc could lead to asssault charges, or murder charges if fetal life were given personhood. Women who then need help with nicotine addiction, alcohol or drugs, would not seek it out, even when they planned to keep their children and deliver them, for fear that they might be reported to authorities. This would result in the total control of pregnant women’s lives by the state.
>A: This is fearmongering. You know this didn’t happen before Roe v. Wade, you know this doesn’t happen in any current industrialized country where abortion is forbidden,
First off, there has never been a fetal protection law in place that rivaled what many call for now, and what a Human Life Amendment would mandate. So pre-Roe is not relevant. To define the fetus as a full person, with legal rights would indeed make these risks real. Even WITH Roe in place, there have been women prosecuted for drug use while pregnant, or alcoholism, because certain states have imposed laws that protect fetal life (albeit at a lower level than would happen if an HLA were passed, or fetal protection law at the federal level). So it already happens, and has been proposed a recently as last year in UT.
> and you know that none of that is part of the mainstream pro-life movement. As for abortifacients – opposition to that is indeed based on science – see the work of embryologist Dr. Diane Irving.
Mainstream? The HLA is not part of the mainstream movement? What birth control do you think should be outlawed? I am curious…People who think the pill is an abortifacient are quacks, but they are out there in the movement.
>You are reducing pro-lifers to “far right evangelicals†and making faulty arguments based on that.
I am referring to the leaders of the movement, and that is indeed what they are.
(SNIP)
Thank you for your argument re: why you wouldn’t want women to be prosecuted. Although I still think it suggests a recognition of the difference between fetal and born life (because we do NOT cut these kind of deals in murder cases very often, unlike drug dealer cases), I respect your argument and can see where you’re coming from on it…
>The point is, jail is exactly where every abortionist deserves to be.
And what if a woman, unable to find anyone to help her abort, tries to cause miscarriage herself, and succeeds? This happened often in the days before Roe. I personally know several people who did this, and there were doubtless thousands and thousands who did. Or even if she didn’t succeeed, should she be prosecuted for attempted murder? And if a woman miscarried, whether she had deliberately caused it or not, should there be an investigation to determine that? And how will that work? There are millions of miscarriages each year. Will we investigate them all? Or just the poor women in public hospitals? I think I know what would happen, and you do too…
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Where did your 200 violent crimes come from? You seem to have a loose definition of violence too – including crimes against property as violence. But you do indeed see pro-choice crimes against pro-lifers and that was documented on the website.
I agree the law should be tougher on deadbeat dads- however men do face state wrath for not caring for unplanned children.
FFL is far from the only group articulating pro-life feminism – another straw man. I never said Stanton was the best example of the movement either – she’s merely one example. Modern pro-lifers are led by Christian extremists – you’re backing that assumption up with what?
No one in the mainstream pro-life movement is calling for for “fetal protection laws” of the kind you describe. And I highly doubt any law in Utah dictates how much exercise a pregnant woman must get or how much food she should eat.
Again, if you disagree with the pro-life defintion of abortifacients you are welcome to ante up with your own embryologists – so far you have namecalling but cite no scientists. Your grandstanding about what every sane person knows, who you think the leaders of the movement are, and how people who disagree with you are quacks is simply bluster.
For miscarriages, I’ll quote again: The police do not investigate instances where no one could be charged with a crime. Since no one is calling for women to be prosecuted for having illegal abortions, there is no motive for the authorities to investigate miscarriages. For proof, check out how often miscarriages were investigated by the police and how many women were prosecuted prior to abortion being legalized in 1973.
For violence, quoting again:
In more than 30 years, three abortionists and four other abortion clinic employees have been killed. (This data came out before the Tiller shooting.) When the Department of Justice or the FBI publish studies on workplace violence, the rate of violence at abortion clinics is so statistically insignificant that it doesn’t even make it into the final reports. In fact, even if the statistics are limited to only include health care professionals, abortionists are still not on the radar screen.
Even if you just focus on the time period during which the most pro-life violence occurred, it is clear how overblown this issue has been. Of the seven total murders that have occurred at America’s abortion mills, five occurred in 1993 and 1994 alone. According to government statistics from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, during those two years there were 2,154 other people killed in work-related homicides in the United States including seven school teachers, four members of the clergy, 10 lawyers, nine newspaper vendors, seven writers, six realtors, 22 waiters or waitresses, four groundskeepers, five architects, 40 garage or service station attendants, 23 auto mechanics, 21 janitors, 10 hairdressers, four carpenters, and six farmers.
In other words, during the worst period of pro-life violence in American history, more farmers and twice as many hairdressers were murdered on the job than abortion clinic workers and abortionists combined.
And remember, the five abortion clinic killings during 1993 and 1994 account for all but two of the killings that have happened in the entire history of the pro-life movement. During the other 30-plus years, only two abortion workers were murdered.
End of my quoting – in other words, I think violence against abortionists is so statistically insignificant it can’t be the motivating factor behind the decline in abortion services.
Groups like God’s Army exist far on the margins of the prolife movement – most prolifers have never heard of them and would shudder at their beliefs.
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Frederic Christie Reply:
September 2nd, 2010 at 1:09 pm
“Where did your 200 violent crimes come from? You seem to have a loose definition of violence too – including crimes against property as violence. But you do indeed see pro-choice crimes against pro-lifers and that was documented on the website.”
No, his list is specific to bombings, arsons or shootings. Yes, some of those may not have killed or even harmed anyone. No, they’re not “crimes against property” because of that. If you smash my house with a hammer, that’s a violent crime. You were breaking something with a weapon. If you spray my house with graffiti, THAT’S a crime against property. No one is hurt, nothing is broken, but I will need to get my wall repainted.
Burning down a structure, shooting a place up, or bombing a place are all the definition of violent…
“I agree the law should be tougher on deadbeat dads- however men do face state wrath for not caring for unplanned children. ”
But that’s not his point.
You could be the most loving, caring Dad in the world. You could have a million dollar trust fund set up to provide for everything the kid needs, and be ready to quit your job and be a fulltime housedad while your wife goes to work. (This almost never happens, but let’s say it does).
Even if you do all that, you STILL don’t have to carry a living thing inside of you for nine months that messes with your hormones, alters your diet, can cause severe health problems, and has to be pushed out of you in one of the most agonizing experiences people face outside of torture.
Pregnancy just impacts women more than men. There is no way around this.
A fetal rights law or amendment not only requires that a woman deal with all of those things for nine months, their preferences and choices be damned, but also would further mean that even DURING those nine months they can’t make the CHOICE to drink, smoke, take drugs, etc. They could even be put on a state-restricted diet or be made to quit a job earlier than normally required.
This is just so obviously a disproportionate impact on women. I can’t see how you could possibly disagree with this.
As a benchmark for intellectual honesty: How many people in the abortion movement, knowing full well that they will require many people who currently do not have children to do so, raising the population, risking their health, also advocate things like
a) Universal pre-natal health care
b) Expanding education funds to deal with already overcrowded schools
c) Extending maternity leave benefits and paternity leave
d) Raising wages so people can get by on two part time jobs and raise their children appropriately
e) Expanding day care programs
Etc. etc.? I can’t think of ANYONE.
To these religious conservatives (the people who the above list indicates exist) telling me that my sister or girlfriend has to have a child she doesn’t want to, and you are perfectly fine with having the government put the doctor who’d offer relief in jail, but you’re not going to help her out…
Go to hell.
I’m sorry I can’t mince words, but it is the height of hypocrisy and callousness to protect the fetus and then not do a damn thing after it’s born to make sure it’s clothed, fed and happy.
The majority of the abortion movement is like this. I think the dishonesty is pretty transparent.
“In more than 30 years, three abortionists and four other abortion clinic employees have been killed. (This data came out before the Tiller shooting.) When the Department of Justice or the FBI publish studies on workplace violence, the rate of violence at abortion clinics is so statistically insignificant that it doesn’t even make it into the final reports. In fact, even if the statistics are limited to only include health care professionals, abortionists are still not on the radar screen.
Even if you just focus on the time period during which the most pro-life violence occurred, it is clear how overblown this issue has been. Of the seven total murders that have occurred at America’s abortion mills, five occurred in 1993 and 1994 alone. According to government statistics from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, during those two years there were 2,154 other people killed in work-related homicides in the United States including seven school teachers, four members of the clergy, 10 lawyers, nine newspaper vendors, seven writers, six realtors, 22 waiters or waitresses, four groundskeepers, five architects, 40 garage or service station attendants, 23 auto mechanics, 21 janitors, 10 hairdressers, four carpenters, and six farmers.”
This is all a good point. You can expand it even further by including lethal accidents at the workplace, which make it more dangerous to be black or a worker in this country than a cop.
But I know you know why this is misleading and irrelevant.
After all, 9/11 isn’t really that scary. More people die every day on the road.
But most people aren’t scared to drive and they were scared to fly.
Terrorism’s POINT is that it induces irrational responses in people. Abortion doctors get constant threats. They fear their place being blown up, or their house graffitied, or their children threatened. The fact that this is a low probability is moot. They don’t know when they read those hundreds of angry letters which one may be the guy who shoots them.
There is a real climate of fear among abortion doctors.
More importantly, you have to understand how fear impacts choices we make.
I might be terrified to go to work as a lawyer, but some degree of violence is part and parcel of the job. There’s not much of a way around that.
But if I’m a doctor who decides to do abortions, I COULD choose a practice that isn’t going to put me at even a slight risk of getting killed. I could become a podiatrist. No one hates podiatrists. Very few wackos send them death threats.
Your example of teachers on the list is highly illustrative. Those few homicides a year have still contributed to a wide perception that teachers are under siege in the inner city. A whole apparatus of metal detectors and security has been put into place despite vanishingly small amounts of school violence in the first place, overwhelmingly in the inner cities despite the big school shootings being in suburban high schools. So plenty of people are perfectly willing to spend a LOT of money and get really riled up over those seven deaths. And you think that a few deaths can’t make abortion doctors scared? Please.
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