Monday, May 21, 2007

On the Forced Childbirth movement...

I am a BLOGLINES junkie, and to those who are on my mailing list, they are deeply aware of it, but until they complain that I am overloading them, I will keep sending them.

However, my blogging brother Autoegocrat keeps telling me that I need to post about some of these things instead of sending them out, so here we go!

Digby, as usual, has a spectacular post on the Forced Childbirth movement, which refers to itself as "pro-life", usually inaccurately. He quotes from Dean Barnett's op-ed piece in the Boston Globe (Barnett blogs with Hugh Hewitt, why is the Globe printing this drek?) as follows:

Because we don't know where life begins, the only logical thing to do is to err on the side of caution -- the side of life. In other words, because an abortion might take an innocent life, it should be avoided. It should also be illegal in most cases.

Digby takes that argument and knocks it out of the park:

This is not the first time I've heard this argument and it's always quite compelling to hear a man make such a stark and simple logical argument about something which others seem to find so complicated. I suspect that is because there is one person involved in this great moral question who is rarely mentioned in such pieces. In fact, if you read the whole thing you will find that this man has managed to write an entire article about fetuses, pregnancy and abortion without even noting in passing the fully formed sentient human being involved so intimately in this that the whole argument takes place inside her body.

Tell me again how this is about the baby....

This is about nothing more than the attempt to control women and their bodies, period. This is about a worldview where females can be NOTHING other than birth vessels, not really even fully human, and this is why I am pro-choice. If a woman is not allow to fully control her body at all times, then she is chattel and property.

Period.

Damn, that felt good; Auto, you were right as usual!

7 comments:

callmeishmael said...

In terms of using caution, I think siding with the woman is the best use of discretion rather than valor. Your response: well put.

J said...

LWC,

I often agree with you, but I have to take issue with you here as I think that you are using a highly polarized argument.

Just because one is pro-life does not mean that that person believes that women are broodmares or chattel. There is a little something in this equation called responsibility. The man and woman should both be ready to take responsibility for their actions (in this case bearing a child). Rape not withstanding, no one forces anyone to get pregnant, so that is why I take issue with the meme "forced childbirth" as if women are being articficially inseminated against their will

There must be some value for life (both before and after birth)

I am not arguing for or against abortion here (although I do happen to be "pro-life") but just against the mischaracterization of those that are pro-life.

Debate nowadays on the left and the right are full of thought terminating cliches and highly polarized. The other side are soul-less devil worshippers

polar donkey said...

I bet it would be surprising to many conservatives if they knew the abortion rate in France is less than half that of the US. Strange how abortion and STD rates have increased during Bush's administration.
As for forced childbirth, how much you wanna bet one of the Bush twins have gotten pregnant and had an abortion. When we start seeing some of these conservative ministers' and politicians' daughters start carrying their pregancies to term maybe I'll listen to them.

midtowner said...

"When we start seeing some of these conservative ministers' and politicians' daughters start carrying their pregancies to term maybe I'll listen to them."
Mary Cheney did.

Steve Steffens said...

Yeah, too bad her father is opposed to her marrying her partner....

Abraxas said...

As Dennis Miller once said (before his opprtunistic conversion to the Right): "One penis, no vote."

WGPS said...

I am not for abortion, but the more pressing issue in this country is our loss of sovereignty. None of this matters if we are no longer a sovereign nation. NAFTA, CAFTA and the SPP are going to destroy us well before abortion does. Sovereignty is something both sides need to work together on. I would hate to not be able to argue with lefties any longer.

It has been quite a while and I have not had my ass kicked by the Freedonian. When is he going to hurry up and kick my ass so I can quit being so scared?