Overheard at work: every single bad pro-abortion argument ever. Seriously, it was awful. "People have to be able to make choices" (not choices that kill other people, though), "It's none of my business" (so if your neighbor is abusing their child but not hurting you to do it, is that also none of your business?), "Religion shouldn't dictate public policy" (people said that about the abolitionists, but thank goodness those people lost that fight). It was that bad.

However, the speaker was a guy, and he also believes the bad pro-abortion logic that men shouldn't get seriously involved in the abortion debate. And you should never interrupt your opponent when he is making a mistake. So I have every intention of letting him wallow in ignorance.

Good grief, though, how is it that these arguments still have legs?!? Every single one of them is terrible.

I read an article on Twitchy about Charmaine Yoest's appearance on MSNBC. I have not watched the video, but apparently abortion apologists are Not Pleased with how the interview went down. Particularly @tommyxtopher who wrote his own article about labels. Or @lizzwinstead who is still ranting on Twitter tonight about an interview that aired this morning. Because apparently she just stews about stuff all day instead of, say, going to work or buying groceries or doing the things that normal human beings do to...you know...live.

Whatever.

Anyway, as Twitchy notes, Lizz Winstead is horrified that MSNBC did not instantly require Charmaine Yoest to call herself "anti-choice." Because, Tommy Christopher protests, "Like *we're* not also pro-life?"

First off, I suspect MSNBC put the kibosh on "anti-choice" because that does not put pro-lifers on the defensive. Instead it would have given Yoest a wide open door to say something like, "You mean you don't oppose choices that kill children?" Hardly a rhetorical advantage for the abortion apologist.

Second, no Tommy, abortion defenders are not pro-life. They are defending the legal protection for the killing of defenseless human beings, and justifying these deaths as legally, ethically, and morally acceptable. No one who claims it is okay to kill innocent human beings is in any way "pro-life." I will agree with that the converse of pro-life is "anti-life," but Mr. Christoper's disliking that fact does not mean...anything at all really. He just dislikes it.

So, here's the thing, most pro-life people will cheerfully say that we are anti-choice-to-kill-children. Because every sane person in the world is. But, the more that slur gets tossed around, the more likely the pro-life movement is to stop being so kind about not saying "anti-life" or "pro-abortion" in general, instead of just to each other. And if "anti-choice" is rhetorically unpleasant, "anti-life" and "pro-abort" are ten times worse. Once again, the labeling advantage is against those supporting abortion. For all the squawking of Tommy and Lizz, if they were given what they wanted, the response of the pro-life movement would put them in an even worse position, label-wise, then they're in right now.

Poor them. Maybe once I'm done trying to end my country's legal protection for the greatest human rights injustice in history I will be able to spare some sympathy for them.

But probably not.

With the Kermit Gosnell case justifiably back in the news, there are a lot of people trying to claim that this is somehow an example of what happens when there is not enough abortion access. I covered this in my previous posts on Gosnell, but now that I'm not hanging out with people who make me breathlessly angry, I'm going to take another run at it. Because apparently this needs saying again.

( More Access Will Not Help And Would Most Likely Lead To More Gosnells )

I discovered a thread of abortion center escorts on jobstr.com (apparently they were invited, so that's a new website to add to your avoid-list) and while most of the questions and responses are typical pro-abortion boilerplate, there was one that made me laugh.

Q: Do protesters taunt you guys too, or just the women going to get abortions?
Asked by Luiz on 01/30/2013

A: Yes, definitely. When they are not focused on the clients, the protesters will turn their attentions to the escorts. They try to convince of the errors in our thinking every day. We have been called evil, devils and have had prayers directed towards us.

So calling someone evil or devil is just as mean as praying for them! 'Scuse me whilst I die of laughter. Could this chick pour on any more hyperbole? Geez. I don't have much sympathy for her being called nasty names. She's directly involved in an industry that kills one million people a year in the US alone. I could care less about her precious little feelings. However, that's a genuinely mean-spirited action, regardless of whether I feel sorry for her experience of it or not. It is objectively negative.

Equating that to being prayed for? Perspective, woman. Get you some.

Pro-life feminism is my wonk issue, so when I post to this blog, I'm probably going to circle back to that a lot. Especially when some group of idiots make appallingly anti-woman comments while pretending to be the most pro-woman people in the room.

Like this.

Context time. The NaNoWriMo forums, in the thread entitled "Proudly Liberal, Proudly Pro-Choice." They're kind of alienating all the pro-life liberals there (and all the pro-choice conservatives, if we were going to get into deets), but I see no need to interrupt them while they are busily isolating themselves in an echo chamber. I can hang with pro-life libs. They're cool.

Anyway.

So, in the midst of busily dissecting how horrible "anti-choicers" are, we get this little gem (same link as above). Read it. It won't take long.

So, the woman under discussion is one Janis Lane from the Central Mississippi Tea Party who said the following in this interview.

Probably the biggest turn we ever made was when the women got the right to vote.

...Our country might have been better off if it was still just men voting. There is nothing worse than a bunch of mean, hateful women. They are diabolical in how than can skewer a person. I do not see that in men. The whole time I worked, I'd much rather have a male boss than a female boss. Double-minded, you never can trust them.

So, clearly she's taken a turn for the cray-cray. On that, I think any self-respecting woman, whether she calls herself a feminist or not, could agree. So much for Janis Lane.

Let's look at how the supposed pro-woman abortion apologists respond, though. Rather than saying, "Yeah, she's clearly a moron." and moving on (like any ordinary person does when confronted with Insane Troll Logic), they have to "unwoman" Lane. And more than that, they instantly go for gendered slurs to attack her. First it's "bitch," but she's worse than a bitch. Then it's "cow," but even that's not bad enough. Last "pig" is rejected on the grounds that pigs are pro-equality creatures (because apparently cannibalistic child-murder is not anti-equality or anything). Finally, the consensus is this woman isn't even human. Though she may be a "Republican house slave."

The trouble here, aside from the gendered slurs and the general disgusting attitudes, is the initial push. If you aren't sufficiently in line with our way of thinking, you aren't a real woman and should be punished. Because real women all agree with them, at least most of the time. Real women never say anything dumb. Real women don't stray from the ideological lines we give them.

Maybe these folks would be more comfortable in Stepford, Connecticut?

But even moving beyond the ridiculous group-think, the idea here is that to be a good woman, you can never make a mistake. You can't be wrong, or even an idiot. Women aren't all valuable beings with rights (whether any given woman thinks of herself or other women that way or not). Only the women this select group approves of are really human people with all the rights and responsibilities thereunto pertaining. Which is, once again, the definition of mysogyny.

I have said it before, but I'm starting to think we may need to graffitti this on every building in the world: If you don't respect the life of every human being, you don't really respect the life of any human being.

This is the final part to my series, and though perhaps it was a bit of an ambitious first try, I feel pretty happy with having finished it. Certainly I'm quite glad to be able to put a definition on a lot of the ruts abortion debates get stuck in.

So, onward to the finish line.

( More... )

I see these six things happening in nearly every abortion debate I encounter. Frustrating, no? But, I stack them up against the momentum of the pro-life movement legislatively, culturally, and globally, and I am certain it is a matter of time until they, and legal abortion, finally fade. Abortion will be abolished. I am confident it is fully possible for us to see it in our lifetimes. So I encourage all of you, when facing these roadbumps, don't give up. Science, logic, and human rights are on the side of life.

And, speaking on science, I plan on joining in on a new project starting next week called Life After 40. And here is the video on it.

I debated with myself a long time about what order these last two should go in because I can move from a specific to a general or a general to a specific. And I have at last decided on the former.

And this is actually something I've looked forward to writing, because it deals with the intersections of a lot of prejudiced attitudes that crop up in abortion apologetics. So, without further ado...

( More... )

The 40 Days For Life campaign is currently ongoing in multiple nations around the world. On Day 28, the 19th, their blog reported on a new tactic being employed by various abortion locations to try and drive away protesters: spreading organic fertlizer (manure) over their lawns.

Yes, the abortion centers are voluntarily covering themselves in poo. It's bold, it's stinky, and it's ineffective. So take a moment to join me on the bench in the icon over there and share a nice, long laugh. Because I'm pretty sure that this is the funniest thing I've heard this week.

I know it's been a while. I have been doing productive things with the time, though. Like graduating college (finally!) and now (slowly) embarking on a career. But now I have a few moments and I can come back to this blog, and my long-interrupted series.

My next point was...not going to be this one. To be honest, this one was going to go at the end, and be all conciliatory about things the pro-life movement could improve on, in terms of how we communicate and such-like. But the truth is, I've seen enough evidence lately to realize that the problem is, unfortunately, much more severe than just us needing to be better at explaining ourselves. Not because we don't need to do that, but because the other side not only isn't listening, they're literally making stuff up. So I'm bumping this point up and coming at it from a new angle, 'cause this really does merit pointing out.

( More... )

No, I haven't forgotten about this blog. However, real life intervened for a while and when I was able to come back, I felt like going back to a thread that was so old and likely dead would be a bit counterproductive, so I wanted to wait for something more current.

And thankfully, something did just happen on the same community (which is still really image-heavy) as the previous posts came from last night which touches exactly the next point that I want to make next in this little series.

( More... )