I Don’t See What the Fuss Is All About.

by Little Miss Attila on June 29, 2010

If one is going to be pro-life, it’s more intellectually consistent to be pro-life all the way. After all, if a fetus is a person, a fetus is a person: there’s no way around that.

{ 21 comments… read them below or add one }

Foxfier June 29, 2010 at 9:48 pm: Yep. I’ve got enough friends that were born of rape or incest that I am quite solidly against killing someone because their father is a criminal.

Although they forgot about IVF.

Reply
ponce June 29, 2010 at 10:24 pm: Viewing women as cattle is one of the wingnut’s more endearing positions.

Reply
Foxfier June 29, 2010 at 10:29 pm: And dehumanizing anyone who gets in the way of their desires is the standard tactic of the moonbats, ponce.

Reply
Azmat Hussain June 29, 2010 at 10:39 pm: I too am pro-responsible choice, there is a choice to abstain from rape and incest. Just like Foxfire I do have friends who are dealing with the consequences and repercussions of the choices they made.

Reply
Foxfier June 29, 2010 at 10:46 pm: I think you mean “their fathers made,” Azmat. (I guess I should say “parents”– I’ve been told women can rape men, and I know that women can rape young boys.)

The folks who face death didn’t do anything.

Reply
John June 30, 2010 at 3:57 am: Aborting the children who are conceived in rape does nothing more than increase the number of victims.

Reply
Texan99 June 30, 2010 at 7:20 am: I’m with you; I never understood the rape/incest exception. It seemed to make sense only for people who thought the main problem with abortion was that it permitted too much sexual freedom in women — so the idea was, if I could understand it, that abortion should be permitted when the woman’s sexual activity was clearly nonconsensual? Very weird. What’s any of that got to do with whether it’s a good idea to kill the baby?

In the case of incest, the idea may have been something more like euthanasia, as if every product of incest were guaranteed to be so damaged genetically that it would simply be a mercy-killing. Or maybe the idea is that it’s OK to kill the baby if the birth would be unusually hard on the mother, because of the awful associations with the circumstances of conception. Again, makes sense in re the mom, but how does that address the problem of the baby?

And if abortion is OK because fetuses are not babies, then what’s rape or incest got to do with it?

Reply
ponce June 30, 2010 at 7:41 am: “And dehumanizing anyone who gets in the way of their desires is the standard tactic of the moonbats, ponce.”

Think of it as collateral damage Fox

Reply
Foxfier June 30, 2010 at 7:49 am: Just like those farmers that starved were collateral damage for The Party, Komrahd.

Texa99-
I believe it’s usually not brought up because it’s a big emotional hammer. The pro-life “practical” folks are trying to save any babies– same way some pro-abort activists will support partial birth abortion, or refuse to consider kids accidentally born alive during an abortion attempt as a live birth. Not because they (generally) actually feel strongly that it should be so, but because they’re tugging on the blanket.
Same way that gun control folks wouldn’t run that story about the poor lady in Texas who saw both of her parents killed in front of her, but couldn’t shoot back because she’d taken her gun out of her purse a few weeks before out of fear of gun control laws.

Reply
Roxeanne de Luca June 30, 2010 at 7:50 am: Oh, heavens.

First, the rape/incest exception is NOT about restricting women’s sexuality or punishing them or whatever; if it were, it would be “virgins who are raped” or something similar. In fact, it’s an issue of choice: a lot of people believe in an anti-abortion and pro-choice agenda, but think that the choice to bear children is not made sometime around viability, but sometime around the time you have sex.

Second, if you’re talking about legality and not about one’s personal beliefs and how society should treat people, there is a gigantic, massive, insurmountable pragmatic issue: abortion bans without rape exceptions do not get passed, and, when passed, are used in successful court challenges to undermine the entire abortion law. (Off the top of my head, that’s how we got Roe and the “Canadian Roe”, and rape is also the basis of a challenge to Ireland’s strict pro-life laws before the ECHR.) No, this isn’t “principled”, but it’s also not very principled to say that intentions matter, actual results be damned.

No, I don’t think that abortion in the case of rape is morally acceptable, but I would be hard-pressed to make it illegal, and frankly think that anyone who gets suckered into answering this question – as if the bigger issue is not the million women every year who screw like bunnies and then kill their babies – is being a moron. What’s wrong with, “Look, my own views aside, abortion in the case of rape is a huge, emotional sticking point with a lot of people, even though it accounts for less than 1% of abortions performed annually in the US. Let’s stick to the unemotional issues that we all agree on and oppose the vast, vast majority of abortions.”

Then let them fight the “Girls who have sex without condoms should still be able to kill their babies via partial-birth abortion around the 25th week because they don’t quite feel like being pregnant” battle.

Reply
Little Miss Attila June 30, 2010 at 8:49 am: Ponce, this is not a choice you’ll ever have to contend with. Please get off this thread, and stop telling me how I view women.

Reply
Texan99 June 30, 2010 at 8:54 am: Roxanne, I believe you got my point backwards. Of course I don’t think the rape/incest exception is about controlling women’s sexuality. I think it’s an exception that originally catered to people who were so confused about the rights and wrongs of abortion that they thought we had to outlaw abortion principally to keep licentious sexual practices under control, just as many people used to feel that way about birth control. The exception has lingered on in large part because most people’s thinking about abortion is riddled with denial and confusion.

As for the rest of your point, it seems that you agree the exception is obviously unprincipled — so no disagreement there. You also believe it’s a reasonable trade-off in order to get at least some partially effective laws passed. That’s certainly a pragmatic approach that can be defended in that way. Actually, it can be defended without becoming insulting. LMA’s original post, and my comment, were about the principles.

Reply
Roxeanne de Luca June 30, 2010 at 10:04 am: I didn’t insult you, Texan99, and it certainly wasn’t my intention to do so.

You also believe it’s a reasonable trade-off in order to get at least some partially effective laws passed.

Okay, this irks me. You say “some partially effective laws” as if they are laws that might outlaw, oh, 30% of abortions. Statistically, 93% of abortions are purely, 100% for convenience (as are 80% of those performed in the second trimester). About 1% are to a risk to the mother’s life; 5%, to her health (defined in what way is the issue); and less than 1% to rape.

So if we ban abortions for convenience and those that are not really health issues, but allow abortion in the case of rape or a genuine threat to the mother’s life, then we’re looking at about 97%, 98% of abortions being totally, 100% illegal – and it’s a relatively non-contentious position and one that leaves little to no room for anti-lifers to scream about 10-year-olds who were raped by their stepdaddies.

While I certainly do not mind the philosophical, moral, and pragmatic discussions about this with pro-lifers and some moderate pro-choicers, I do think that we need to wise up and understand that, when we’re asked these questions by left-wingers, it’s really not about women who are being raped, but about a “Gotcha!” moment. The sad reality is that this issue has been destroying the pro-life cause for almost 40 years and is indirectly responsible for 50 million dead babies in America alone. It is infuriating that pro-lifers have yet to, as a group, realise that this issue is out there and just deal with it.

Forty years, and we’re still falling on our swords to either treat all unborn children equally (result: 50 million equally dead babies) or to “give up our principles”. It’s not you, Texan99, that pisses me off; it’s the pro-life movement that cannot get its act together.

Reply
Texan99 June 30, 2010 at 10:17 am: Sorry to have irked; I was actually trying to lower the emotional level.

If I understand you correctly, you object to referring to the success of rape/incest-exception laws with the lukewarm term “partial,” when they might more accurately be called “highly successful” or “nearly completely successful” in preventing at least some abortions that otherwise would proceed without any obstacle. Fine, no problem.

I can’t agree that the best explanation for the continued available of legal abortions on demand in this country is excessive devotion to principle on the part of anyone. I do, however, understand your point that rigidity of approach is sometimes politically unfeasible.

Reply
Little Miss Attila June 30, 2010 at 11:11 am: I get your point, Roxeanne, and I’m sorry if I hit a button. I also don’t think that politicians are necessarily the right people to argue that life begins at conception, and that all innocent human lives are equal.

But on the other side of things, I cannot understand people (like my spouse) who seriously argue that providing the exception for rape/incest victims is the morally correct thing to do, and that philosophical stance leads me to feel that there is a whiff of “punishing a woman with a baby.”

At the same time I see that both of those narratives are being pushed on the left, and that they have a sort of intellectual “pincer effect.” On the one hand, we who want to reduce abortions are monsters if we don’t push for a rape/incest exception. On the other hand, allowing for that exception means we secretly (or not so secretly) regard pregnancy as a punishment for bad girls.

Reply
Texan99 June 30, 2010 at 11:22 am: LMA: Exactly.

Reply
Roxeanne de Luca June 30, 2010 at 12:34 pm: Oh, neither of YOU hit a button, and I’m terribly sorry for coming off that way. It’s a general rant – a WTF, we’re still getting creamed with this instead of being effective advocates for life? rant.

Texan99 is correct: the success of the pro-choice movement is not due entirely to, or even mostly to, ideological rigidity. In situations like this, though, it’s what LMA describes as a pincher, and I really wish that people who speak on this issue (like Sharron Angle) would have some way to coherently handle the issue.

Reply
Texan99 June 30, 2010 at 1:33 pm: Roxanne: You’re exactly right when it comes to politicians speaking on the subject, especially in brief messages. I believe I was snippy, and I apologize.

Reply
Roxeanne de Luca June 30, 2010 at 8:56 pm: No, you weren’t snippy at all!

I was ranting; I’m sorry for turning an otherwise good thread into a nightmare.

Reply
John July 1, 2010 at 4:04 am: Big hug!

Reply
Little Miss Attila July 1, 2010 at 6:17 am: Roxeanne, I really needed to hear what you had to say on this, because I haven’t really been in the trenches like you have. (Also, my area of concentration is not changing the legality, but changing the cultural norm so that women aren’t pressured into aborting their babies.)

You were fine.

Reply