Pro-Choicers confuse me sometimes ...

I've had many great discussions with compassionate (if awfully mislead) pro-choicers, and I always try to listen carefully to what they say and understand their reasons for being pro-choice. In fact, I am friends with more pro-choicers than pro-lifers, and I love all of them to bits!

But sometimes I come across a pro-choicer who just doesn't make sense to me. Case in point:

Anastasia Blackwell is, according to her twitter profile, a "Proud Pro-Choice Advocate". Now, I don't know what "destroyed" means in abortion-land, but here in life-city it means:

1. Put an end to the existence of (something) by damaging or attacking it. (Google Definitions)

or

2. Completely ruin or spoil (something). (Google Definitions)

Considering my name is "ProLife Girl" and pro-choice rhetoric often involves the intentionally vague phrase of "freedom of choice", can it really be so hard to understand exactly what I meant? Have I converted a pro-choice advocate, or has she twisted my words to somehow mean that a baby destroys his or her mother's life? If so, can this truly be considered a strong, rational argument for the freedom to choose abortion? After all, if that child is already born, an acceptable solution to the mother's hardship would not be to pull of the child's arms and legs and then crush his or her skull now would it?

I hope most of us would answer no. In that case, why should it be a solution of the child is still in the womb?

(Of course, Anastasia could be mistaken in her view of what an unborn child actually is, which is not such an unusual belief. Most pro-choicers I know would never support abortion if they thought a baby in the womb was a human being. Of course, if you are a pro-choicer, arguing about the hypothetical "destruction" of the mother's future life is not an effective way to convert a pro-lifer who believes that unborn children are persons deserving of rights. Pick a better talking point. They exist, I promise). 

Five things I think the pro-life movement needs to change

#5. Let go of the gay marriage debate.

I know this won't be a popular thing to say among Christian pro-lifers, but I really believe that this is one of the biggest things holding back the pro-life message from youth today. I can't tell you how many times I have heard a pro-choicer conflate the two debates, and I believe that is largely our fault. And it is tragic. One issue involves the killing of unique human beings, the other involves two consenting adults having sex.

When you go to many of the big name websites in the pro-life movement, you will find them divided between advancing the sanctity of life, and pushing extreme anti-gay stories. How many people have been turned off of our message because our movement (as a whole) has focused on issues that have little bearing on the abortion debate?

If you are against gay marriage and are pro-life - fine. But please keep these two sides of your advocacy separate. And if I have to explain to you why abortion is a much more serious issue than gay marriage, learn a bit more about what you are advocating against. Gay rights do not even come close to approaching the scale of harm that abortion rights inflicts on our society (and of course, the question of gay rights causing harm at all is debatable) - especially when we consider the young lives that are ended through abortion.


#4. Focus on real arguments.

I cannot even count the number of times I have read a pro-life comment or blog post that does not address at all what the author had hoped to address. Instead, all I read are intensely emotional appeals to the evilness of abortion, the presence of the devil, and the judgement of God. While these things may be true, no one will be convinced by such appeals. What will convince people, however, is sticking to the salient points of the debate. What are pre-born humans? Do they have a right to life? Do mothers really have unequivocal control over their pre-born children, even to the point of causing harm and death?

See this blog entry from Pro-Life Humanists for a non-Christian perspective. I think they have a point. Are we in this movement to save babies, or are we in this movement to convince people to believe in God?


#3. Understand science and statistics.

One other issue with the pro-life movement is that as soon as we find a study that hints at support for the pro-life side of the debate, we run with it. Pro-life blogs and spokespeople reference the study to the point of absurdity, and make statements which assume that there is no room to doubt the study's conclusions.

That is not how science works. And that is definitely not how statistics work. Read the studies you quote, read studies which draw conflicting results, and read the scientific commentary on these issues. And never, ever state anything for certain.

In any case, our thesis does not rest on whether or not abortions cause breast cancer, increase suicidal thoughts, or that most women choose abortion for economical reasons. Putting too much weight on these conclusions, especially when they may be incorrect, weakens our message. Abortion is always wrong. Period. Even if it were healthier for women to abort than give birth. Even if most women reported increased levels of happiness after abortions. Even if women choose to have abortions for other reasons besides the monetary cost of raising a child. Abortion always kills someone (both scientifically and philosophically) - and that is why it is wrong.


#2. Increase your reach.

Become better at reaching people. Spread the message. This is easier said than done, especially since the MSM prefers to ignore our message rather than report dispassionately on the issue of abortion. But even so, there is definitely room for improvement for every pro-life organization.

For instance, I will give an example relevant to my life as a student. If I didn't actively seek out the date of Canada's 2013 March For Life, I wouldn't know it was happening on May 9th. The university pro-life groups I am a part of haven't even bothered posting a link to the event page on their own Facebook pages. The church I attend included March for Life in their April bulletins, but didn't bother saying anything about the pro-life message or the March during the beginning of May. Pro-life friends who are actively involved in the movement haven't been searching for others to come with them to the March - in fact, I had to reach out to my campus pro-life group in order to get any information at all.

All of these pages are from prominent Ontario Universities - ones that are nice and close to Ottawa. Yet, no information whatsoever on the March. How many people are we losing because we haven't been connecting with them? If I wasn't absolutely determined to attend the March this year, I can say that I would have definitely given up.


#1. Engage the culture.

Many pro-life leaders, in Canada and in the States, are young. Which is great. But many of them are also very devout religious people and it is hard for the average person to relate to them. We need to promote organizations and advocates who come from a different background and who advocate for a different, more secular kind of approach. I would love for a Secular Pro-Life chapter to begin in Canada. I think something like this could make great strides in the academic / university world towards converting students and professors to the pro-life cause.

 How many pro-life songs (not written by Christian artists) do you know? How many pro-life pieces of art have you seen? How many pro-life movies are out there? Are they popular, or do they only succeed in the Christian niche market?

Spreading the message does nothing if it only reaches the Christian pro-life echo chamber. This is the most important point, in my opinion, because if the average person never comes across a thoughtful, well reasoned depiction of the pro-life cause, they will remain pro-choice simply because it is the status quo.

Chimeras and their impact on the pro-life movement

Hi Everyone!

This is my first post in awhile. First off, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! I hope everyone had as an amazing holiday as I did.

Sadly, it is now time to head back to school.

This blog post will be short, and it is mostly to ask my fellow pro-lifers what they think of an interesting biology experiment I read about recently (scroll down to #14 to read about it. Also, read the rest of the article, a lot of it is really cool!).

Baby monkeys!!!!

Here's the quote:

"While all the donor cells were from rhesus monkeys [the cells were used to create baby chimera monkeys], the researchers combined up to six distinct embryos into three baby monkeys. According to D. Mtalipov, 'The cells never fuse, but they stay together and work together to form tissues and organs.' Chimera species are used in order to understand the role specific genes play in embryonic development and may lead to a better understanding of genetic mutation in humans."

From my understanding of this blurb, what happened is sort of like the reverse of twinning? Do you think this has any impact on a complete pro-life philosophy, where we maintain that we are individuals at the moment of conception when we are (however briefly) still single-cell embryos? For that matter, do you think identical twins have any impact on this same pro-life philosophy?

I would LOVE to hear your thoughts!

I haven't thought too deeply about this yet, but my first impulse is to maintain that distinct (from the mother) human life begins at conception, regardless of whether it develops from a single embryo into multiple embryos or vice versa, and so the mother still does not have any right to end what nature has started.

Another (possibly really stupid) question for hard-core biologists - is it possible that what happened with the chimera monkeys could happen frequently in nature (i.e.: two eggs are both fertilized at once and instead of having fraternal twins, the embryos work together to form a single developing baby?)

Aside: If you have the background to understand more about chimeras, please enlighten us in the comments!

Cheers!

Expanding a Pro-Life Philosophy To The Rest of My Life: Foodie Tips :)

Hi Everyone!!! I know I have been gone for a really long time, and I am SO sorry for abandoning you! However, I am happy to say that I am back! *Woot!* Though I probably won't be blogging that often this year - its been a very busy time in terms of school. Lots of exciting things are happening with my sciencey stuff, and they require a lot of concentration, time, and effort. I will do my best to blog at least once a week though, and keep up with my ____ of the Week series! :)

One thing that I have been meaning to discuss for awhile is living out a pro-life philosophy. In my view, this doesn't just involve advocating against abortion and euthanasia (though obviously those are big ticket items!). It also involves taking care of ourselves, each other, and our environment. That can include being welcoming and kind to whoever you meet, encouraging young mothers, and advocating for the oppressed both in our society and throughout the world. However, I also believe that a pro-life philosophy can also permeate the more personal aspects of our lives. And I'm not just talking about NFP (the only natural way to family plan!!! WOOT).  I'm talking about making changes in your life that support the oppressed, that foster healthy environments, and that avoid as much as possible pumping out toxins into our precious planet. One way that I've tried to accomplish this is by slowly switching myself over towards a veggie-based, local, organic diet and I thought I'd share some stuff which has worked well for me :)

 (1) Find a natural foods store and shop there!

Seriously, shopping at natural foods grocery store has been the single most important catalyst for change (the other is my health-obsessed boyfriend). Most foods at these places are labelled, and they also tend to carry seasonal, local products. Its easy to tell what is organic and what isn't, and if you're lucky, the grocery store will also sell some awesome organic, all-natural soaps and beauty products!


(2) Cook every night. Find a good cookbook and some cooking blogs to inspire you!

Good food is satisfying and makes use of a wide variety of ingredients. Find a cookbook (with lots of pictures, and lots of instructions!) that includes a variety of recipes, and you will never get sick of the food you make!

My current favourite cookbook is called "ReFresh", and it is based off of the menu of an amazing Toronto-based vegetarian and vegan restaurant called "Fresh". Seriously, this cookbook has been a life-saver. I am not a vegetarian, so I do add some meat to the dishes occasionally, but it really isn't necessary in order to feel satisfied. I also have to mention their delicious shakes (especially their espresso ones!) and desserts. If you want a cookbook to help you start on your journey towards eating more natural foods, this is definitely a great place to start.

Of course, why turn to cookbooks when there are so many people on the internet willing to share their secrets for free? Some of my favourite foodie blogs include:

a) 101 Cookbooks: A Recipe Journal by Heidi
I think the main reason why I love this blog is the pictures. Heidi is an amazing photographer and everything always looks so delicious. She organizes her recipes not only by the traditional "Appetizer", "Main Course", (etc..) headings, but also divides them by vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, high-protein and whole grain recipes for those with dietary restrictions or health needs. She also has some great articles with awesome tips for anyone trying to get away from highly-processed foods. You should definitely look at "Build a Natural Foods Pantry" before exploring any of her recipes.  

Green Olive Gnocchi

b) Fettle Vegan by Amber
The main thing I love about this site is the desserts. I never knew junk food could be so healthy but so AMAZING at the same time. I've tried a few of her recipes and I can't recommend them enough. Especially her Almond Butter Cups. Yummn. I'm sure the other food is great too, but her desserts look so mouth-watering that I haven't yet had a chance to make something that didn't include honey or chocolate.

Almond Butter Cups

c) The Kitchn
A daughter site to the popular Apartment Therapy blog, the Kitchn is a great place to browse for new recipes. They provide their own, but also include  posts from all over the internet, and a lot of my favourite foodie blogs have been found through them. If you want to waste a lot of time, get a tonne of amazing kitchen tips, and make yourself really hungry, go there!

Egg Noodles with Rich Curry Chicken Sauce

(3) Grow your own food!!

If you're like me, and are a young adult, you likely do not have access to a lawn. However, growing food indoors is not that difficult, and can be a tonne of fun! I am lucky in that my grandparents immegrated here, and in the "Old Country" they were farmers. So eating food "from the garden" has always been a part of my lifestyle. But if you are nervous about starting your own, there is a wealth of instructions all over the internet, including some great video tutorials on youtube. Pick a plant you want to grow, and search for it on Google! You'll become an expert in no time :)

Happiness is an Indoor Herb Garden, by Centsational Girl

The best part? Depending on what you grow, your apartment can smell absolutely delicious all the time. I attempted this last year, and so far have only succeeded in growing a few herbs. But herbs are extremely useful to grow, and a great way to start out if you don't have much experience with plants (like me). A lot of herbs, like basil and oregano, are hardy and just need water and sun. The best part is, buying herbs from the grocery store can be really expensive, and if you buy fresh you end up having to dry most of them out anyway. If you grow them yourself, you have constant, year-round access to (essentially) free, fresh herbs!

Honor ALL Lives - except zygotes' lives

Awkward.

Aside: I know some people (*cough* Americans) spell honour without a "u" but I can't get over how weird it looks. So British-colony of me!

Pro-choice Fail

Pro-choicers have been noticing the CCBR's New Abortion Caravan protest, which today was at Parliament Hill. Apparently CCBR was proving to be quite an inconvenience (many f-bombs were dropped). The best response I have seen so far?

So lets get this straight. Apparently, it doesn't matter that these children were brutally killed. But it does matter that images of their deaths are being used to protest and expose people to the reality of their fate - because, you know, that's exploitation and stuff. Ugh.

I love this picture ... :)

Early Pregnancy Paternity Blood Test

From the NY Times:

One of these babies has the wrong father ...

Can you tell which one?

"Besides relieving anxiety, the test results might allow women to terminate a pregnancy if the preferred man is not the father — or to continue it if he is." 

What a horrifying statement. Just goes to show how the exact same baby can be seen as either valuable or disposable based on some external factor that has no influence at all on what the baby actually is: a human person.

Pro-choice vs. pro-life on pushing religious views

 

Pro-choice

 

 Pro-life

 

The Final Frontier of the Civil Rights Movement

This video really hits home what abortion is truly about.

Pro-choice vs. pro-life on illegal abortions

 

Pro-choice:

Pro-life:

Abortion deaths in America were falling long before legalization.
From Management of Unintended and Abnormal Pregnancy (an abortion textbook):
"Induced abortion is an impressively safe procedure, particularly but not exclusively where it is legal. (224)"
Also see this study.

UPDATE: 2012/05/26

Got this from the RealChoice blog. It is an estimate, but its interesting how many pre-legalization abortions seemed to have been performed by trained doctors. I wonder if anyone has some more solid numbers on this?

You can see the original page this infographic was posted on, which includes references (the second source looks particularly interesting, going to try to find a copy!)

Pro-lifers turn historical abortion campaign on its head

In case anyone missed it ...

The teaser trailer:

And the big reveal:

This is awesome. I was planning on writing about how our pro-life protests aren't inconvenient enough to get the public's attention - looks like I don't have to do that anymore! Seriously hope this gets people angry enough to start talking. You can read more about the New Abortion Caravan at CCBR's website!

The pro-choice vs. pro-life war on women

Pro-choice:

Pro-life:

You mean this war on women? Oh wait ...

Solidarity in the pro-choice vs. pro-life communities

Pro-choice:

 

Pro-life:

Conviction

Secular Pro-life and Bad Catholic have both recently blogged about something that has been bothering me for awhile. How can we, as pro-lifers, go about our daily lives knowing that millions of our fellow human beings are being brutally killed every single day? Not only that, but in Canada, my tax dollars are paying for these atrocities. And yet I still pay taxes, and I happily take advantage of everything else my tax dollars pay for.

How can we pick just one day to protest and, after a few hours, go home feeling satisfied since more people came than last year?

Why aren't there more people who are willing to passionately
witness against abortion? Why am I not more like her?

Sometimes I just feel that we are remarkably useless. Even though I know that every voice who rises up, every person who peacefully protests, every individual who speaks up online or in person, makes a difference, I still feel as if we (or at least, I) have no real conviction. All I know is that I really do understand how atrocities in the past were allowed to happen. I understand how people could have supported chattel slavery, or the holocaust, or infanticide. I understand how slave owners could have brought themselves to brutally abuse "their" slaves, I understand how "Dr." Mengele could have experimented on children, and I understand how the Greeks and Romans could have left their newborn babies to die in the wilderness. I understand because I see it happening today with abortion, forced abortion and gendercide, human trafficking, poverty, and the millions of other tragedies that happen every single day. People justify them, or ignore them, or dehumanize the victims, or convince themselves that it can never happen to them, and then get on with their lives. I am guilty of this too, and I don't see how I could function normally if I wasn't. How can one live day-to-day constantly thinking about everything that is wrong with the world?

Just some food for thought.

From Secular Pro-Life: Is it really so hypothetical?

[in response to a hypothetical situation where an organization chucks two-year-old's into a furnace, and pro-lifers do nothing but say how awful it is]

"People have to live with these kinds of contradictions every day, actually. It's not like people three hundred years ago had no idea how bad the slave trade was. It's not like Americans in the nineteenth century didn't know how awful the Trail of Tears was. It's not like Germans under the Nazi regime really thought it was okay to lock up millions of Jews in concentration camps. These things really happened, not because people were so different from you or me. They happened because normal people like you and me aren't so wonderful as we think we are. It's remarkably easy to justify evil."


From Bad Catholic: Why I Don't Care

"If the March for Life was a march of human beings who saw other human beings as normalizing and legalizing the murder of infants, there would be cars burning in the street. As it turns out, there is no protest in the present age. There is only representation. There is no foolish human action. There is only the support of abstractions. Infants are being killed - we follow the lines the police allow us to follow."

Back to the Question: Why Aren't More Pro-Lifers Violent?

A long while ago I wrote a response to a post by Ben From Canada, who claimed that if we pro-lifers really think the unborn are human, then we would do more to protect them. Essentially, his point was that we would resort to violence to save lives - by killing abortion clinic workers / bombing abortion clinics / (fill in whatever violent act you can think of).

Violence is totally the way, yo! Oh wait ...

I made the very obvious point that we are pro-LIFE - as in pro-[all human life]. Apparently he didn't quite understand that, because he wrote a response to the Anti-Abortion Gang's answer to his claims. I've been meaning to answer his blog post for ages now, just because I really do believe that a lot of people have opinions that are similar to his, but then I got really busy with school and forgot about it. Lo and behold, I'm procrastinating studying for an exam, and I find a link to his post as I am sorting through old bookmarks. So I suppose I will procrastinate even longer by finally responding to his claims. Hopefully others who share his point of view can get something out of my response.

So, before I get into the nitty gritty, let me just state once and for all: the pro-life community at large condemns violence and seeks to change our culture of death into a culture of life through peaceful protest, and practical aid to pregnant women and young parents.

Now lets deal with Ben From Canada:

"I’m not a “clump of cells” and neither are you. I’m a complex organism. This is not."

This is also not what is killed in an abortion. Ignoring the fact that even humans at their earliest stages of life are still humans, women typically find out that they are pregnant about two weeks after implantation (so ~four weeks into the pregnancy from my understanding) - at which point, the baby is already an embryo and looks like this. Its actually quite a complex organism at this point - it is already developing the neural tube, lungs, intestines, urinary system, placenta and umbilical cord. Not quite a "clump of cells", even according to Ben From Canada's point of view. Most abortions occur at less than 9 weeks. Hardly a clump of cells at that point either.

"pro-life doesn’t care about life. You a very large percentage of you guys support war and the death penalty. I would have linked a source to both of these, but one only needs to look at the Roman Catholic Church and every prominent conservative politician anywhere (especially in the USA) to see this."

First off, pro-lifers do care about life. I don't know anyone who thinks that war is a good thing, but I do know plenty of people who believe that there are things worth fighting for - in the proper context (a classic example would be fighting in WWII against Nazi Germany). Secondly, pro-life opinions on the death penalty are varied. I am against the death penalty, but many pro-lifers make the case that there is a huge difference between executing a rapist and murderer like, for example, Paul Bernardo, vs. killing an unborn baby who is literally innocent of any crime. Furthermore, support for the death penalty doesn't automatically mean you're against abortion.  Nor is it the case that conservatives are always against abortion. As for what the Catholic Church teaches, I will simply refer the readers to the Catechism (emphasis my own):

2267 Assuming that the guilty party's identity and responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.

So that means, in developed countries where we have a system that is able to imprison criminals for life, the death penalty is morally wrong.

Moving on.

"[T]he Trolley Problem. There are many variations, but all are essentially the same: You’re presented with a choice to doom one person or 5 (it’s always 1 and 5, it seems) [...] Yes, you’d be killing a person, but you’d be saving many lives, although it wouldn’t be even close to 1/5…it would be 1/several hundred [...] But doing something that won’t do anything is the exact same as not acting, and as I said before, abortion won’t be illegalized in anywhere that it is currently legal, at least not in our lifetimes. Peaceful protests will not make a difference."

Well, this argument assumes that killing abortionists and bombing clinics will make a difference, while peaceful protests will not. The author conveniently ignores the fact that pro-lifers have made a lot of strides in the past year, all through peaceful means. I claim that violence will not further our cause, in fact, it will hinder it. You can read my previous response as to why this is. Or you can just trot over to any pro-abortion blog and look for posts about violent pro-lifers, and see for yourself how little good violence does. Furthermore, in a simple Google search, Poland popped up as a country that had legalized abortion, and then made illegal again except in cases of rape, serious fetal abnormality, or to save the life of the mother. Additionally, Poland is becoming increasingly pro-life, with 75% of young people in favor of a total ban. So there is definitely a chance that abortion will be made illegal "somewhere that it is currently legal" in our lifetimes - all without a violent uprising.

"So, the only real way to save “babies” that will work is, essentially, terrorism."

Or pro-lifers could provide help to pregnant women. Or pro-lifers could pray at abortion clinics. Or pro-lifers could lobby governments for stronger abortion restrictions. Or pro-lifers could lobby for better treatment of pregnant women in the workplace and at school. Finding statistics on how well these things reduce abortions is hard to do because of the rhetoric on each side of the debate, but here's one estimate that ultrasound laws on their own reduce the abortion rate by ~10%. Never mind that giving women other options besides abortion is simply good practice, and is a great way to give women who don't want abortions a way out when they feel trapped. Planned Parenthood is notably lacking in this regard, so there is a lot of room for pro-lifers to improve and balance out crisis pregnancy care.

"Perhaps individual pro-lifers are OK with recreational sex and legitimately think they’re not opposing women’s rights by supporting the pro-life lobby. However, the vast majority are sexually repressive and at least somewhat misogynistic (note that the most outspoken pro-life organization, worldwide, is the Catholic church, which as an organization is more misogynistic and prudish than anyone outside of al-Qaeda) ..."

Nice anti-Catholic rant. How about learning about what Catholic women think about their faith before claiming we are just a shade less misogynistic and prudish than anyone outside of al-Qaeda? Also, "vast majority" is a really strong word. Its interesting how this blog post started with the thesis that pro-lifers should do more to save babies lives, and turned into a rant against what he feels are our beliefs.

"And even worse than this are the various personhood laws that have been proposed that outlaw birth control pills and miscarriage."

I'm curious, how exactly does one outlaw miscarriage? Miscarriages are people dying naturally. One might as well try to outlaw death from old age or disease. The "personhood amendments outlaw birth control pills" position is a somewhat more understandable position considering pro-life leaders just can't agree on that one.

And in the end, we finally get back to the point:

"Note that I’m not trying to advocate terrorism. I’m glad you guys don’t really think that embryos and zygotes and whatnot are people. I just wish you’d be more honest about what you really think."


So I guess what readers are supposed to get out of this blog post is that, unless we're willing to protect unborn babies by any means possible, we don't truly believe that they are people. So, according to Ben from Canada, the White Rose resistance to Nazism did not really believe that Jews were people, since their goal was to instigate a non-violent, intellectual movement against Hilter's regime. And Ben From Canada must also believe that other non-violent civil rights leaders, such as Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr., did not believe in the personhood of the people they were supporting since they also advocated for non-violent activism.

But instead of giving up and declaring the pro-life movement secretly pro-choice at heart, I'll simply let history speak for itself. So dear readers, do non-violent protests really constitute a denial of personhood?

A Misguided Sense of Empathy

I have only a few friends who are decisively pro-choice, and all of them are pro-choice because they are able to empathize more easily with the pregnant woman than with the fetus. When we talk about abortion, they always focus on the horror of finding your body change when you don't want it to, the injustice of having to cater your life to someone who you'd rather wasn't there, the difficulty of finding yourself pregnant with the child of a man you don't love, the options and opportunities that disappear once accidental parents are responsible for a new life, and the lives of women who have health risks which are compounded by a pregnancy. They never talk about the lives that are lost, or even the "potential lives" that are lost (if you're a pro-choicer who views an unborn baby as a potential) - in fact, the baby is rarely, if ever, mentioned by them.

My pro-choice friend, who I've mentioned before, also spends a lot of her time lamenting on the "poor young people" and "poor women" who have limited to no access to artificial birth control, and attacking the pro-life side for being largely against the pill, and to a lesser extent against all birth control methods except NFP. She goes into great detail about how difficult it is for her to afford birth control, and how it is a stress that she and her boyfriend should not have to go through. But when I asked her about failure rates, about how she could become pregnant even if she is using contraception, she acknowledged that she does worry about the possibility of becoming pregnant. And when I pointed out that this is a major reason that pro-lifers are against marketing contraception as a solution to abortion (though we are not necessarily against contraception itself) she side-stepped the issue and continued to act as if the pill would completely protect her against an unwanted pregnancy.

So then I brought up how it is horrible that pregnant mothers are not given more support, which often forces them into believing that abortion is their only option, and how this is not a very "pro-choice" state of affairs.  I brought up examples of programs (largely the work of pro-lifers) that help make life a possible choice for women facing unplanned pregnancies, and my friend went right back to the contraception issue - claiming that contraception would make my points completely moot because then there would be no unwanted pregnancies. She claimed all of this even though she had just admitted that contraception fails.

I have always found the focus of self-professing "rabid" pro-choicers to be quite odd. All of the focus is on the mother and on contraception ... the baby is ignored, the actual abortion procedure is ignored, and solutions which would enable women to keep their babies are dismissed as unnecessary "because we have abortion and the pill." The intrinsic morality of killing your child because you cannot deal with them is glossed over or dismissed, the psychological or health effects of the abortion procedure are unimportant when compared to the effects of childbirth.

So even though these friends of mine really do believe that they are being supportive of women, I do not see this worldview as compassionate towards surprise mothers in any way. Everything regarding pregnancy, childbirth, and motherhood is seen as evil, unless (of course) the pregnancy was explicitly planned.  As someone who knows and loves many "surprise" babies, I will never understand the misguided sense of empathy pro-choicers feel towards pregnant women. There is nothing compassionate about claiming that contraception will solve everything, and that providing pregnant mothers with help and support beyond the abortion clinic is a side issue not directly related to the abortion debate.

Question from Pro-Choicers

Yes, yes, and yes a thousand times. Everyone has a right to life. No discrimination based on sexual identity, gender, race, or some nebulous concept of "wantedness."

How Atrocities Happen

Anyone who has wondered how slavery, the Holocaust, human sacrifice, or the killing of newborns in ancient Greece and Rome could have happened, look no further than this article from The Journal of Medical Ethics. I honestly thought it was a joke when I first heard about this article, so I went through my University Library to check if this was an honest-to-goodness published article that academic institutions have associated themselves with. And it turns out, it is.
Written by Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva, the article argues that newborns, like fetuses, are only "potential persons" and so cannot be harmed by the "prevention of their potentiality". Therefore, in situations where families feel that it is in their best interests to end the life of their child, they should not be prevented from doing so, because the rights of self-determination of "actual persons" are more compelling than the rights of "potential persons" to develop into "actual persons". At the end, the authors do not make claims to any thresholds at which "after-birth abortion" should not be permissible - in effect, they say it should be left up to the discretion of families and doctors.

Seriously scary stuff. I really encourage you to read through the entire article, it is absolutely imperative that we understand how these people think, because they honestly believe that they are doing good. And it really does prove that we aren't crazy when we claim that abortion, besides being an atrocity all on its own, leads to the slippery slope of denying more and more humans their right to live (the central idea in the pro-choice movement). People who lived through past human rights abuses learned this the hard way, and yet how easily we forget such lessons.

"First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me."
-Martin Niemoller

I've included the paper in its entirety below, just in case you can't access the journal (hopefully this isn't a breach of copyright, if so just let me know and I'll take out the full article and leave in the particularly salient points, such as the fact that "after-birth abortion" can be a better solution than adoption ...):

2012/04/18 EDIT: So it turns out that this article is available for free to the public, and you can access it using the link above. If that doesn't work, the homepage of the journal provides the link for you, with responses from other academics (well worth the read imo, so do check it out). Apparently, even though the article is in the public domain, one still can't reprint the whole thing without permission, even though I'm not profiting from it and anyone can access the article through the link I provided. Anyway, just to be safe, I've taken out the entire article and replaced it with what I think are the most important quotes. All quotes are referenced directly from the paper, bold emphasis is my own.

Reference:
Giubilini, A. & Minerva, F. After-birth abortion: why should the baby live? J Med Ethics. Doi: 10.1136/medethics-2011-100411. Published online Feb 2012. 


Quotations:

"A serious philosophical problem arises when the same conditions that would have justified abortion become known after birth. [...] Such an issue arises, for example, when an abnormality has not been detected during pregnancy or occurs during delivery. [...] An examination of 18 European registries reveals that between 2005 and 2009 only the 64% of Down's syndrome cases were diagnosed through prenatal testing. This percentage indicates that, considering only the European areas under examination, about 1700 infants were born with Down's syndrome without parents being aware of it before birth. Once these children are born, there is no choice for the parents but to keep the child, which sometimes is exactly what they would not have done if the disease had been diagnosed before birth."
 

"In The Netherlands [...] the Groningen Protocol (2002) allows to actively terminate the life of ‘infants with a hopeless prognosis who experience what parents and medical experts deem to be unbearable suffering’. [...] But, in fact, people with Down's syndrome, as well as people affected by many other severe disabilities, are often reported to be happy. Nonetheless, to bring up such children might be an unbearable burden on the family and on society as a whole, when the state economically provides for their care. On these grounds, the fact that a fetus has the potential to become a person who will have an (at least) acceptable life is no reason for prohibiting abortion. Therefore, we argue that, when circumstances occur after birth such that they would have justified abortion, what we call after-birth abortion should be permissible."

"In spite of the oxymoron in the expression, we propose to call this practice ‘after-birth abortion’, rather than ‘infanticide’, to emphasise that the moral status of the individual killed is comparable with that of a fetus [...] Therefore, we claim that killing a newborn could be ethically permissible in all the circumstances where abortion would be."

"Failing to bring a new person into existence cannot be compared with the wrong caused by procuring the death of an existing person. [...] If the death of a newborn is not wrongful to her on the grounds that she cannot have formed any aim that she is prevented from accomplishing, then it should also be permissible to practise an after-birth abortion on a healthy newborn too, given that she has not formed any aim yet.

"The moral status of an infant is equivalent to that of a fetus, that is, neither can be considered a ‘person’ in a morally relevant sense."

"It is not possible to damage a newborn by preventing her from developing the potentiality to become a person in the morally relevant sense."

"The moral status of an infant is equivalent to that of a fetus in the sense that both lack those properties that justify the attribution of a right to life to an individual. [...] This means that many non-human animals and mentally retarded human individuals are persons, but that all the individuals who are not in the condition of attributing any value to their own existence are not persons. Merely being human is not in itself a reason for ascribing someone a right to life."

"It might be claimed that someone is harmed because she is prevented from becoming a person capable of appreciating her own being alive [but] in order for a harm to occur, it is necessary that someone is in the condition of experiencing that harm. / If a potential person, like a fetus and a newborn, does not become an actual person, like you and us, then there is neither an actual nor a future person who can be harmed, which means that there is no harm at all. / A consequence of this position is that the interests of actual people over-ride the interest of merely potential people to become actual ones."

"Actual people's well-being could be threatened by the new (even if healthy) child requiring energy, money and care which the family might happen to be in short supply of. Sometimes this situation can be prevented through an abortion, but in some other cases this is not possible. In these cases, since non-persons have no moral rights to life, there are no reasons for banning after-birth abortions."

"Why should we kill a healthy newborn when giving it up for adoption would not breach anyone's right but possibly increase the happiness of people involved (adopters and adoptee)? [...] however weak the interests of actual people can be, they will always trump the alleged interest of potential people to become actual ones, because this latter interest amounts to zero. On this perspective, [...] we also need to consider the interests of the mother who might suffer psychological distress from giving her child up for adoption. [...] What we are suggesting is that, if interests of actual people should prevail, then after-birth abortion should be considered a permissible option for women who would be damaged by giving up their newborns for adoption."

"If criteria such as the costs (social, psychological, economic) for the potential parents are good enough reasons for having an abortion even when the fetus is healthy, if the moral status of the newborn is the same as that of the infant and if neither has any moral value by virtue of being a potential person, then the same reasons which justify abortion should also justify the killing of the potential person when it is at the stage of a newborn."

"First, we do not put forward any claim about the moment at which after-birth abortion would no longer be permissible [...] In cases where the after-birth abortion were requested for non-medical reasons, we do not suggest any threshold ..."

"if [...] circumstances change such that taking care of the offspring becomes an unbearable burden on someone, then people should be given the chance of not being forced to do something they cannot afford."

Karen Handel Discusses Komen Controversy

Here is the segment on Fox News where Karen Handel, the pro-life ex-executive for Komen, is interviewed regarding what had happened. I think she is handling everything wonderfully, considered Planned Parenthood and Komen essentially threw here under the bus. She refused to say anything bad about Komen, stressed that they do great work in spite of everything that had happened, and refused to discuss the inner workings of Komen or trash talk Nancy Brinker - in fact, doing just the opposite! What a lot of class, in my opinion.

On the other hand, most of the comments on the video, evidently written by self-proclaimed "educated", "inclusive", "pro-choice" advocates, are anything but. Apparently, anyone who disagrees with them, anyone who sees that PP is a controversial organization (something that is very self-evident!) and therefore decides to not continue their involvement with them, is completely disrespected. Here are a few choice quotes:

"Right-wing nut job!" -rgftown
"what a dumb bitch" -CrackEMcGee
"Karen is an uneducated, narcissistic hillbilly. She's like Sarah Palin on donuts." -disneylandman66
"People don't get offered a 'severance package' when they resign! They're presented with this paycheck when they are FIRED!!! You pay off someone to let them go!
Karen Handel, don't let the door hit you in your fat ol'Santorum-slimed redneck ass as you leave the building, you sanctimonious backward bigoted bitch!!" - witchwild
"what a fucking cow. I wish I could do illegal things to this heffer." -The12GagePump

Classy. Because, you know, only uneducated, rightwing, narcissistic, hillbillies and dumb, bigoted bitches and cows would ever believe that Planned Parenthood is a black mark on Komen.

Oh wait.

I'm not a redneck, right-winger, hillbilly, uneducated, a cow, or a bitch ... actually, I grew up in the city, come from an immigrant family that only votes liberal, am working on my Masters degree, and I'm not fat or bitchy - and I happen to agree with Karen and think she's handled this wonderfully. I especially love her statement that she refused the severance package because Komen is a nonprofit, and because she wanted to leave on her own terms.

Anyway, if you have a youtube account, go give Karen some love! Don't stoop down to the pro-choicer's levels though, because there's already a few "Christians" and "pro-lifers" throwing out equally awful language to the other side, and that gets us nowhere.