Friday, June 28, 2013

Deeply held feelings: A mystery that the pro-choicers are curiously uncurious to solve and a question they squirmingly refuse to answer

Disagreements about abortion nearly always end at the same impasse
writes Benjamin Duffy at Patriot Update
—an endless debate about when life begins.

The pro-life position is usually that it begins at conception. The pro-choice position—and I hate calling them that—is more nuanced, which is a nice way of saying convoluted. They’re sure that a human being exists at the moment of birth and that none exists at the moment of conception, but everything in between is a mystery that they are curiously uncurious to solve. While the pro-lifers’ preferred point comes with some of its own problems, it’s at least precise and non-arbitrary. The same cannot be said of pro-choicers’ squirming refusal to answer the question.

 … For the rabidly pro-abortion, the question of when life begins is not a scientific one but a matter of deeply held feelings. If a woman thinks the two-celled organism in her fallopian tube is a child, then she’s right. But if she thinks that a child just minutes before birth is merely a problem, then she’s right too. And it doesn’t stop there! Even when the nurse places the bouncing baby boy in his mother’s arms, his humanity is still an unsettled question.

What’s the verdict, mom? Baby or problem?

If mommy gives the thumbs down, the clump of cells in swaddling clothes can be whisked away to the incinerator. Notice I didn’t say “killed” because killing implies that a life existed in the first place. In the sick mind of [an abortionist like] LeRoy Carhart, the child never existed if his mother never accepted him.

It isn’t possible to understand Carhart’s analysis without considering how the pro-choice crowd perceives the issue. They believe that a child is a burden that no one should have to bear without full consent, ergo he must do a disappearing act if his mother finds him inconvenient.

Yet everyone knows that the question of when life begins has an answer, and it isn’t “when mama says so.” Mama could decide that her four year old is a problem, or her rebellious teenager, but we all agree that she can’t kill them. (Don’t we? Paging Dr. Carhart…) At some point life is an unambiguous fact, not subject to interpretation. Pro-choicers are very, very squeamish about drawing that line because someone will always cross it and then they will be in the position of having to condemn it.

The emergence of quick and legal abortion has warped our thinking in regard to pregnancy. “Baby bumps” are developing children only in the wombs of mothers who want them, as if nature cares at all what mama thinks. Our ability to convince ourselves that unwanted children never really existed in the first place borders on schizophrenic delusion.

 … The reason we’re still having this debate forty years after Roe v. Wade is because ordinary pro-choicers honestly believe that lives are not at stake. People on the inside of the abortion industry know better, but they don’t admit it when they know the cameras are rolling. If they ever spilled the beans the debate would be over because it’s the premise—that a growing fetus is a life—that’s disputed. The conclusion—that lives shouldn’t be tossed into a medical waste container—is not.