Has there ever been more productive ground for Leftist linguistic manipulation than the abortion issue?
It’s always a red flag when accurate vocabulary becomes verboten. “Pro-Choice” is just one of many Orwellian phrases adopted by TPA (Team Pro-Abortion—M). There’s also “products of conception” for the physical remains of the dead fetus. National Public Radio, Wikipedia, and the New York Times say “abortion care” rather than “abortion,” trying to transform an ugly word into a pretty one by appending the suffix “care.” Kind of like “siphoning-the-brain-out-of-the skull care” or “dismemberment care.”
On NPR, Congressman Hakeem Jeffries ranted about wicked Republicans denying women “health care.” I don’t think Jeffries ever used the word “abortion.” Abortion: you must love it, but can’t see it, and you can’t say it. TPA even gets worked up about the word “abortionist,” insisting that “abortion provider” be used. The word “abortionist” is comparable to the phrase “final solution,” one doctor writes, apparently unaware of how revealing his comment is.
A human fetus is “a clump of cells.” And that is not the worst thing they call a human fetus. The Facebook page “Occupy Democrats” posted a meme that encourages viewers to conflate a human fetus with an animal fetus, as per the falsehoods circulated by influential Darwinist and eugenicist Ernst Haeckel. Under this meme, a poster remarked that a human fetus is comparable to his “boogers,” that is, snot. Another post remarked, “Birthing babies is the emotional distraction to creating a Fascist country.” A Facebook friend holds a PhD in the hard sciences. On his page, one of his leftist friends compared a human fetus to “cancer.” I did not see my scientist friend object. Rather, he said, “Instead of referring to the embryo as a ‘clump of cells,’ given the demographics, it might be more accurate to say ‘future cartel enforcer,’ or ‘future STD-infected crack ho.'” He said this because low income black and Hispanic women are much more likely to get abortions.
In any case, if TPA’s chosen God – perhaps Oprah or Obama – came down from Heaven and announced to them in unambiguous language that a fetus is a human life, they would still be Pro-Abortion. They celebrate selfish power of the strong over the weak as the highest virtue, and vulnerability and dependence as crimes justifying capital punishment. A popular Facebook page makes just this argument. “It doesn’t matter whether a fetus is a human being or not…it doesn’t matter if we are talking about a fertilized egg, a baby, or a five year old.” We are stronger so we have the right to kill.
Another Facebook friend, someone who spends hours devoted to animal rescue, said that she believes in abortion up to and including infanticide of a born child. Killing is morally acceptable, she argued, if a child – a dependent human being – is unwanted by anyone who will meet the child’s needs.
Atheist and Princeton University ethicist Peter Singer concurs. Infants, “because they are not ‘persons,’ have no interest in staying alive, and it is only superstition that makes us think that killing them is intrinsically wrong…Infants with known disabilities … do not bring the same amount of happiness into the lives of their parents … the very fact that someone is disabled means that he or she will have an unhappier life … Singer argues that it should be legal for parents to decide to have their disabled infants killed up to 28 days after birth.”
The left, I was sure, was all about being kind. About championing the oppressed. About condemning selfishness, greed, exploitation. We were on the side of prisoners on death row, of striking workers, of the handicapped who needed government services. We were anti-fur and pro-vegan.
Why were we betraying the most vulnerable humans of all? Why were we championing a morality that privileged the selfish convenience of the powerful ignoring the very lives of the powerless?
My comrades’ dedication to the oppressed was nothing more than a theatrical production in service to a narrative. It was all sets, costumes, scripts. Yes, yes, the left will tell you that they champion the powerless. When they tell you that, they are exiting objective reality and entering the gauzy realm of fairytale storytelling. The left simply takes the costume, “The Victim,” and the other costume, “The Oppressor,” and assigns those costumes to serve political ends.
Thus, the woman choosing to abort the life inside her is draped in “The Victim” costume. She chose to have consensual sex, knowing full well that intercourse creates life. Who victimized her? Amerikkka, of course; who else? You had to ask??? An astounding meme now circulates. It insists that America forces women to get pregnant and have children. This meme from “Susan of Texas” has been shared thousands of times.
With the deft touch of a pickpocket, the left has transposed The Victim role from the life form that ends up dismembered in a petri dish – the fetus – to the woman choosing to terminate that life. The antagonist is not the fetus; the fetus is erased through euphemism. It’s a “clump of cells.” Rather, the antagonist is “misogyny,” “patriarchy,” or “The Catholic Church.” In objective reality, none of these made the choice for sexual intercourse that the woman made; in the leftist theatrical production they are all the mustache-twirling villains who control the poor, poor woman’s agency. They got her pregnant, not her own choices.
Follows, a detailed, step-by-step description of the abortion process that is so gruesome, so macabre, the horror of it would have to leave any decent, compassionate human being physically ill. A former Planned Parenthood director, Annette Lancaster, speaks of her experience of it in the bleakest terms:
She’d seen and dealt with sick and injured people, and witnessed surgeries. But nothing prepared her…’to actually see…the workers piecing the baby back together in a petri dish…I’ve seen many women break down and cry.'”
This is done to make sure no pieces of the slaughtered infant are left behind inside the woman to rot and cause a potentially life-threatening infection.
Lancaster said in an interview that she and her co-workers could not bring themselves to talk to outsiders about their grim tasks. Rather, they gathered with other abortionists and abused drugs and alcohol to cope “with the things that we did and the things that we saw.” After an “abortion day…we would say that we were having a staff meeting…we would get pretty intoxicated.” Even her children noted a change in Lancaster. She would refer to the women who came for abortions as “cows” and “cattle.” “We called the trashcan where we would put the aborted babies the ‘nursery.'” She underwent a “hardening of the heart”
Well my God in Heaven, I should think so, yeah. Unless one is a soulless, sadistic psychopath, how could it possibly be otherwise?
This lengthy, impassioned screed makes for some damned unpleasant reading. Nonetheless, it is an essential piece, maybe as important a one as I can remember seeing right offhand, and it covers a lot of ground. Of course and as usual, the very people who need to read it most…won’t.
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Abortion isn’t the actual fight here, the actual fight is whether the Federal government should be able to dictate policy on all matters of real importance to the states, or whether the states should be able to exercise this policy making power on their own without Federal interference. It’s over an Anti-Federalist doctrine known as Constitutional Federalism, which was adopted so that predominantly rural, Anti-Federalist states would participate in a confederation with largely urban Federalist states – the compromise was that states would decide matters of internal importance on their own, with only matters which applied to all of the states in the confederation, such as commerce between the states, foreign trade and policy, and defense against foreign enemies being under the control of the consolidated federal government. And, in fact, failure of this doctrine of Constitutional federalism was contemplated and discussed in 1787:
“We have frequently endeavored to effect in our respective states, the happy discrimination which pervades this system; but finding we could not bring the states into it individually, we have determined … and have taken pains to leave the legislature of each free and independent state, as they now call themselves, in such a situation that they will eventually be absorbed by our grand continental vortex, or dwindle into petty corporations, and have power over little else than yoking hogs or determining the width of cart wheels. But (aware that an intention to annihilate state legislatures, would be objected to our favorite scheme) we have made their existence (as a board of electors) necessary to ours. This furnishes us and our advocates with a fine answer to any clamors that may be raised on this subject. We have so interwoven continental and state legislatures that they cannot exist separately; whereas we in truth only leave them the power of electing us, for what can a provincial legislature do when we possess the exclusive regulation of external and internal commerce, excise, duties, imposts, post-offices and roads; when we and we alone, have the power to wage war, make peace, coin money (if we can get bullion) if not, borrow money, organize the militia and call them forth to execute our decrees, and crush insurrections assisted by a noble body of veterans subject to our nod, which we have the power of raising and keeping even in the time of peace. What have we to fear from state legislatures or even from states, when we are armed with such powers, with a president at our head? (A name we thought proper to adopt in conformity to the prejudices of a silly people who are so foolishly fond of a Republican government, that we were obliged to accommodate in names and forms to them, in order more effectually to secure the substance of our proposed plan; but we all know that Cromwell was a King, with the title of Protector). I repeat it, what have we to fear armed with such powers, with a president at our head who is captain — general of the army, navy and militia of the United States, who can make and unmake treaties, appoint and commission ambassadors and other ministers, who can grant or refuse reprieves or pardons, who can make judges of the supreme and other continental courts — in short, who will be the source, the fountain of honor, profit and power, whose influence like the rays of the sun, will diffuse itself far and wide, will exhale all democratical vapors and break the clouds of popular insurrection? But again gentlemen, our judicial power is a strong work, a masked battery, few people see the guns we can and will ere long play off from it. For the judicial power embraces every question which can arise in law or equity, under this constitution and under the laws of “the United States” (which laws will be, you know, the supreme laws of the land)” “Antifederalist No. 9 – A Consolidated Government Is a Tyranny” at
http://resources.utulsa.edu/law/classes/rice/Constitutional/AntiFederalist/09.htm
The same urban/rural split continues today, you can see it graphically in red/blue county electoral maps, the same division that has persisted through the entire history of the United States. The Federalists of today are the Democratic and Republican Party Establishments, the Anti-Federalists, those who actively oppose them. And the Federalists, now as then, seek unlimited centralized power, the Anti-Federalists seek devolution of power to the states (and subdivisions which make up the states, for the same red/blue split is seen in most of the states.) The Federalists have nearly all of the representation, the Anti-Federalists have nearly none – but without the Anti-Federalists, the Federalists would be nothing – you can’t eat culture…
I disagree with your first statement.
States do not have the right to determine whether innocent human lives can be taken by murder for any, or no, reason at all.
This is about where human life begins as that is the point where every human has the God Given Right to Life, Liberty and Property.
The Federal Government has an obligation to make sure Institutionalized Murder doesn’t become the law of any part of America.
Agreed. I oppose capital punishment on several grounds, including but not limited to morality and omnipresent official corruption.
I oppose capital punishment for much the same reason. The government is incompetent even when trying to do the “right thing”, and “omnipresent official corruption“.
When I lived in the boonies outside of Murphy. We had local trash containers,. there were a number maulings by black bears when the cubs would get in the containers. People dumped stuff and mom waxed their asses. These same bears would run from a beagle.
It was quite an communist achievement to turn off human/animal instincts
http://www.wristrockets.com
Calling the women cattle is telling, it is necessary to dehumanize people before you do something awful to them. It isn’t a coincidence that anyone slightly to the Right of John McCain is called every slur under the sun, they think it will make it easier to exterminate us.
There’s another side to this – not all abortions are for convenience or for mothers who decide that raising a child is too much trouble or something like that. Back in high school, the summer of 1972, I worked at the Kansas Neurological Institute, which was home to several thousand moderate to severely retarded kids. The best of them appeared normal, could even talk, but never learn to read or write or tell time or anything like that. Some were 18 years old but still hadn’t gotten toilet training down – so I saw one of them sitting down, waiting to go out on an outing, then a strange look crossed over his face, a puddle appeared below the chair, and staff appeared to carry him back to the ward, crying like a baby. And that was the best of them. I’ve seen kids who spent their lives in a Stryker frame, in restraints, with catheters to collect urine – at 20 years old. If you’ve seen that, you’ll never un-see it – whole wards of people like that. They’d get horrible bed sores even with the frame. The smell was indescribable. People like that were brought in when they were five or six years old, and simply abandoned, they were never visited by any parents or relatives – they were forgotten. There was a state-paid Foster Grandparents program which the best could take part in, but their fate was life long custodial care. Very few made it past 30 years of age, the severely retarded were gone for the most part by age 20. After 1973, the place started clearing out, the people who would have wound up there ended up being aborted. Now, KNI is a single small building, I think there are less than 20 people there, most of them moderately retarded – IQ 65 or so. The rest of the buildings have been demolished, it’s just a large field, and that’s it.
So if abortion hadn’t been made pretty much legal, with the increase in population – especially of low-IQ populations in general – I don’t know what they would have done, it would be a real disaster, because giving these kinds of kids even the minimal amount of care needed is just beyond what most people can do – those wards had three shifts of people running them. There are some problems which have nothing but difficult solutions, and this is one of them.
There are some problems which have nothing but difficult solutions, and this is one of them.
That’s the way I’ve always looked at this issue myself. I personally know two women, good friends of mine, who ended up having abortions because they had extreme problems during the pregnancy and had very high odds of dying during childbirth. Both these women were thrilled about soon being mothers, and were devastated by losing their babies.
Another good friend of mine went into labor prematurely, began bleeding profusely–like, bleeding-out bleeding–and the doctors confronted her husband with an awful choice: We can either save Jessi, or the baby. Which will it be? He thought for a few seconds, then told them to save Jess, reasoning that they could try again to have a child, but his wife was irreplaceable.
It worked out better than expected, because by some miracle the baby survived too, despite having been lodged partway out of the birth canal for hours and being literally blue when she finally emerged. Frankie is in her mid-20s now, a lovely young lady who helps her mom run the small but successful business they started together.
It isn’t this way with most abortions, of course, but there are enough of such life-of-the-mother type cases that, although I am by no stretch a pro-abortion guy, I’m left feeling kind of queasy at the idea of inserting myself into such momentous personal decisions, much less a federal government in which I have absolutely no faith in its intentions, its judgment, or its competence.
Abortion as last-ditch contraception, because some dimwitted THOT has been brainwashed into thinking of pregnancy and mommyhood as an affliction instead of a priceless gift, and her selfish ass just doesn’t wish to be inconvenienced by the natural consequence of getting laid? Oh HELL no. BUT…outlaw it completely, thereby removing it as a horrible, desperate option to save the life of the mother? Uhhh, I’m kinda torn on that one, I must admit. As you say, HH, there’s no easy answer here.
When it is a choice of saving one life or another that is a different decision.
You can save one or the other.
Also, perhaps there was a way to take the baby without aborting it? Was it viable or too early in the pregnancy?
No moral decision is black and white. Taking a human life in self defense as adults is not considered murder either.
There will always be circumstances where good judgement is needed. Which is why we are better off being a moral society so that when those real choices come up we can recognize them for what they are.
My Body, My Choice as Screw it, I don’t want to use birth control and I’ll use abortion as my birth control is muddying the waters of the real moral choices we should be talking about. It is not the sign of a moral society who can distinguish between right and wrong.
“BUT…outlaw it completely, thereby removing it as a horrible, desperate option to save the life of the mother?”
You have both made good points. For true mother survival/health reasons abortion should be on the table. That of course is actually fairly rare. Abortion as birth control / profit center is the norm.
While I can only find a starting point for life at conception, I can also understand why someone else would argue it’s not a true life just yet, something that happens between conception and birth. It’s the nuts that insist it’s still not a human life 5 minutes before birth that make all this difficult. I would compromise, given the uncertainty, with a 1-3 month window, but no more. Even knowing full well that I may have the time wrong. But there is no compromise with the nuts or those that insist they know life begins at conception.
Miscarriage is pretty common. We have no idea just how common it has been in the past when birth control was not an option. Apparently there is natural abortion on the table.