Sunday, April 15, 2007

How Not To Defend Abortion Rights

Completely deranged article pointed to by the folks over at ATW. Abortion as jus’ good mothering ? There’s taking a new angle on the subject, and there’s completely unhinged – this is in group two.

On the plus side though, you have to respect her candour. Pro-abortion campaigners often claim to have come to their position only after years of agonising, but now here’s one telling the truth - she supports abortion because she thinks its a good thing. Hell, exaggeration for comic effect is pretty much half this blog, but even I couldn’t come up with line about the kitchen worktops (seriously, if you haven’t clicked through to the Times, it’s worth it just for that).

No matter where you stand on abortion, something surely gets killed. It’s just a matter of whether it’s an actual human being, or just some kind of mindless, soulless living cadaver, sort of like a lawyer. And that’s all without taking into account the dangers to the mother, both general to any type of surgery, and the specific risks of this procedure in terms of increased risk of cancer, infertility and the like. Executive summary: the whole abortion-as-female-empowerment ideal is moronic.

Then there’s the extra-yukky factor, the weird subtext behind it all, best summed up in the line about a ‘child that, through no fault of it’s own, would be the destructor of a marriage, a family, a parent.’ Yowser! No issues there then.

It’s that thing again: moral seriousness, or lack thereof. Never mind the specifics of abortion, there’s the wider issue of what this sort of thing says about our culture ? Where a woman is writing about the empowering effect of killing her foetus, or the horrific effects of children on family life, that raises questions like whether or not the cult of abortion – based as it is on death, or at least, the prevention of life – has a coarsening effect on society ? Bottom line: surely I’m not the only one whose sympathies are naturally with the pro-killing side of the debate, but feels my stomach turn over a little when I see rhetoric like this from abortion defenders.

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