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). 

Who cares whether the fetus is viable? Quote from Jessica Grose, former editor of Jezebel

"A lot of women have abortions and don't look back. A lot of women don't want a baby, and they don't care whether the fetus is viable or how much money is in their bank account." Jessica Grose, from "Enough With the Grueling, Wrenching, 'I Had an Abortion' Essays"

And this is why, like I keep saying, the abortion debate is not about bodily autonomy. If it was, viable fetuses would be "aborted" through early induced birth, not through actual abortion. After all, both procedures stop you from being pregnant, right? And the whole reason why abortion should be legal is because women should be able to decide if they want to be pregnant or not, right?

B-freaking-S.

Reading things like this make me SO angry. Thank goodness most of the people I know who are pro-choice are not actually pro-abortion like this former editor of Jezebel. No wonder that website is vomit-inducing.

Abortion as Birth Control

Someone needs to tell these people that they are doing no favours for the pro-choice movement.

I have no doubt that there are many, MANY women who face an agonizing decision when they choose to abort. I have no doubt that there are many women who are coerced or forced into killing their children by abusive partners, parents, or even friends.

But then there are women like this, who see abortion as no different from birth control. And I see this opinion expressed widely in my post-graduate peer group. There are many, otherwise smart and compassionate people, who see sex as so necessary to their happiness that they see tearing apart an unborn baby as no different from using a condom. Is is this precise reason that I believe that promoting birth control in no way helps pro-lifers promote a culture of life. Sure, maybe some abortions would be prevented, but no one would be convinced that a baby is a human being deserving of respect and life. Instead, we have people like Lisa, who would gladly turn to abortion if her birth control were to fail.

How do we go about changing opinions like these?

By the way, she tweeted this in response to my post, Discouragement.

Discouragement

For me, one of the most discouraging things about being pro-life is seeing what other people think of the abortion issue and how cavalier or celebratory they are with regards to issues surrounding the grossly misnamed "reproductive freedom" issue. I just can't understand how someone, even someone who supports abortion in most cases, can be happy about the fact that abortions occur at all. Whether you are pro-life or pro-choice, is it not a tragedy when someone decides that they aren't able or don't want to help their own family live? Mom's having abortions because they can't afford their children, or because they found themselves in a situation where they don't want to be attached to the father, or because their family or partner is not supportive of any choice other than abortion, or because they aren't given the resources necessary to raise a special needs child.

The fact that abortion happens is not a good thing. This is our culture refusing to help mothers and children in need, and pushing a "quick fix" solution towards moms who find themselves in less than ideal circumstances. The existence of abortion is a tragedy.

Which is why things like this make me so sad:

Free abortion for all women - yay!! This isn't about killing our children, no, this is about having freedom! This isn't about helping women and children escape their circumstances, no, this is about having rights! 

How do you convince people that they support something that has caused the deaths of billions of people? How have we gotten to the point where this is even something that has to be done?

Sometimes this world is just so discouraging.

At least things like this really highlight how necessary it is for those of us who are pro-life to speak up and engage our peers. It can be so difficult to do sometimes, but it is so, SO necessary!

A pro-choicer's views on life and suffering

A mini-abortion debate recently came to my attention, and I found the pro-choicer's thoughts to be particularly interesting:

  

Note: emphasis in the following quotations is my own. Comments or changes are enclosed in square brackets.

What I want to focus on first is this person's fixation with suffering: "if it [the baby]'s forced to be born [notice that the connotation here is that allowing a baby to be born is a bad thing because we are forcing life on him or her - as if a baby can express any other wish besides a wish for survival] to a mother that cannot or does not wish to take care of it, there is a fairly high chance of it being hurt (either through neglect or abuse) its entire childhood."

There are two things here that are problematic. First, the assumption that a reluctant mother only has two choices: to kill her baby or to keep her baby and abuse it horrifically (ever heard of adoption? Ever heard of empowering surprise mothers to be the absolute best mothers they can possibly be? Ever heard of helping mothers escape the negativity in their lives so that they can provide for their children?). This is far from an accurate representation of both what the mother's options actually are, and what surprise babies go through in their early childhood. There is absolutely no guarantee that a surprise baby will be abused, nor is there a guarantee that a wanted baby will not be abused.  I firmly believe that abuse does not happen because of "wantedness", but instead because parents view their children in some way as "sub-par" or under their own exclusive control (this ignores the fact that many people who have gone through horrific things in their own lives often act out these same patterns towards others - intervention, counseling, and love can go a long way in helping such parents or children break the cycle).

The second thing that is problematic here is this pro-choicer's view of suffering. According to him or her, future suffering is a legitimate reason to end a life. There is one thing that I want to make absolutely clear: it is not up to us to decide if someone else's life (or future life) as unlivable - to make such a judgement is the height of arrogance. But this ignores the very obvious fact that all of us suffer at some point in our lifetimes - and most people outside of the developed world suffer far more than we could ever imagine. However, even if one has the North American view of a picture-perfect life, one is still not protected from suffering. Horrible things happen all the time. Death does not solve these problems. And if it does, what is stopping us from euthanizing the very mentally ill and heavily addicted homeless drug abusers who drift through life hardly aware of what is happening to themselves and what is happening around them? What is stopping us from euthanizing the starving multitudes of families living in abject poverty who will likely die anyway? What is stopping us from euthanizing populations who are likely to be caught in the middle of a war zone, and who will either die instantly or suffer horrifically once the gunfire and bombing starts? What is stopping us from allowing car crash victims to pass "peacefully" into the night instead of attempting to save them?

The answer, I believe, to these question has two parts:

1. Hope that their lives can get better (the future, after all, is unknown).

2. The belief that their lives are still valuable because they have rights, and that their suffering is horrific precisely for this reason.

The unborn, as clearly evidenced by this pro-choicer's views, do not enjoy these two protections, in spite of the fact that many (I would argue the majority of) unplanned babies in the developed world have a much better chance at a cushy, relatively pain-free life than the majority of humans on this planet, and in spite of the fact that they have whole lives of possibility ahead of them in which they can make decisions for themselves as to the value of their own lives.

 The other point I want to emphasize is this person's opinion of what human life actually is and therefore what constitutes harm: "... a baby does not have a brain that is even remotely aware of anything until after 20 weeks [I think what she means to say is that it does not have detectable brainwaves before this - loosely defined - cutoff]. So while this baby looks human, it isn't capable of feeling and therefore cannot be hurt. [...] If someone is only a mechanism of reflexes, without the ability of any cognition, they are not yet human, in my opinion." 

First of all, expecting a baby to prove that it is "alive" and "human" by showing signs of cognition above its developmental ability is both ridiculous and extremely unfair. Never mind that this understanding of human life is patently inaccurate. This view is firmly placed in the realm of philosophy, not science, and to present it as otherwise is highly misleading. It also excludes an inordinate amount of our disabled and mentally ill populations from enjoying the so-called status of "human life" and has the overtones of eugenic thought woven into a seemingly "sophisticated" and "fair" worldview. Look into philosophies espoused by Peter Singer or the recently published "After-Birth Abortion: Why Should the Baby Live?" to see where such opinions will logically lead. The idea that we cannot be hurt if we are not aware of the harm is particularly pernicious, as such a view could be ascribed to anyone, not just an unborn baby before 20 weeks. If I am killed in my sleep, I will never know that my life has been ended and so I do not have a chance to either mourn or become aware of my loss. If I die instantly in a car crash, I will at the most feel only momentary pain and will never know what has been taken from me. If I torture and murder someone who has overdosed on drugs or alcohol they will never know or understand what has happened to them. If I steal a misplaced lottery ticket that happens to win me millions of dollars, the true owner will never know what they lost. If I am raped in my bed in a drug-induced sleep, but not hurt or stolen away, I could be totally unaware that anything horrible ever happened to me. If I slowly murder a severely mentally-challenged or ill patient, they cannot understand that they are about to lose their life. If a slaver (or a husband) takes advantage of his slaves (or his wife) who have been conditioned to believe that they are property, the slaves (wife) have no concept of harm being done. Now, the After-Birth Abortion paper does attempt to circumvent these types of objections (at least, when applied to healthy, cognitively-abled people), but I am not convinced that they succeed (perhaps this is because I do not understand their argument, but I truly believe that it is a weak one). And I would hope that most people can view an entire life being stolen away as harm - with the assumption that the unborn baby is a "human life" and not a "preparatory stage for life" (when exactly, then, does this "shell" of an unborn child accept the life that it has been preparing for? flipping weird way to view human development imo, especially because - other than conception - there is no hard and fast line between one stage and another). Never mind that many people no longer believe in the presence of a soul, and many Christians believe that the body and the soul are intricately intertwined, and very clearly the baby's body exists before 20 weeks - so I ask again, what is this change that suddenly turns a body into a human life?

I want to leave you with one last quote, which to me is very chilling in its sincerity:

"... if we already have the choice of whether to create life or not create life, I think we should have a choice to end the preparatory stage for a life that has not yet begun ... I understand why you don't agree."

One final thought - this person's views seem to indicate that he or she is against abortions after 20 weeks gestation. Such a view necessitates support for gestational age limits on abortion (which we do not have in Canada) and Motion-312, which would have addressed the question of when life actually begins (currently defined in Canada as the moment a baby completely exits the birth canal). How much are you willing to bet that this is actually the case? 

Note: you can find the paper I discuss above under the "Abortion Arguments" tab.

Also note: The last quote is also an example of the "Contraception Mentality" that so many pro-lifers have a problem with. I know that using contraception or supporting contraception does NOT necessitate use or support for abortion - but it is thought processes like this which demonstrate why I believe we as pro-lifers have to be very careful when discussing contraception.  

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!

Opposing View of the Week: "Abortion and the Law" from Antigone Awakens

This post was brought to my attention by pro-choice tweeter @heather_parker during a discussion on the rights of the zygote/embryo/fetus (ZEF) vs. the rights of the mother. The blog is called Antigone Awakens (not quite sure what the author is going for there, but the "i" is a little washroom women figure - kinda cute!), and the title of the blog post is "Abortion and the Law".

For your background, here is our twitter convo:

 

 @heather_parker's first tweet was in response to a retweet of one of Life Reports podcasts - you can listen to that particular podcast, "What makes human beings valuable?", here.

Now, let me preface my response to "abortion and the Law" by first saying that I do not believe that either the ZEF's or the mother's rights are more important than the others - their rights are, in my opinion, equal in value and consideration. They are both, after all, human, and so both have basic human rights (including the rights to life and liberty).

The million dollar question therefore is: does the baby encroach on the rights of the mother, or does the mother encroach (through abortion) on the rights of the baby?

From the author, Heather's friend "J":

"Here's where what you believe meets what actually is."

Ugh. Don't you just love it when people are condescending? That being said, what "actually is" is actually what is under debate (btw, if you're wondering, I had fun writing this sentence!). What I, and other prolifers, believe is that the unborn baby "actually is" a person, endowned with all the basic rights born people should enjoy - with the addition of a right that children enjoy. That is, the right to basic care (and children deserve this right because, self-evidently, they are not able to achieve their right to life without the aid of someone older than themselves).

"The real issue is whether [the fetus] is a person [in the legal sense]. If it is a person, then it has a right to life. If it is not a person, it has no constitutional rights at all."

We agree on this one. It is very rare to find a pro-choicer willing to admit that this is the major question in the abortion debate. Awesome!

"The woman is a person. There is no issue with that. It is not a matter of debate."

It was once. And it still is in many corners of the globe. And this is one thing I find very disturbing about pro-abortion/pro-choice feminists - they are having the very same debate about their children that was once applied to them - that is, whether certain individuals are property or people.

"[The woman] has certain liberty interests that are constitutionally protected. One of those is privacy: the right to be left alone."

The right to privacy is very much a conditional standard. If you are committing a crime, and the police have probable cause, then you no longer have the right to be left alone. You get arrested, your house is searched (providing there is reason for the issue of a warrant), and you go to jail. Or, a more apt example would be child abuse. Should child protection services have reason to believe you are neglecting or abusing your children in some way, you no longer have the right to be left alone. The government enters your life, makes your business its business, and can even go so far as to take away your wanted children - all in order to protect your children's rights. And so we come back to the central question: does the unborn baby have rights, and are these rights worth protecting?

"The issues of abortion, pregnancy, and family are private matter which the woman is entitled to control and safeguard against government interference. So what you have now is a situation where a non-person would have greater rights than a person."

This is the author's premise (which, in the case of family, we have already established to be untrue in cases of abuse). "J" has not, in any way, shape, or form, proven or supported this premise. So forgive me if I ignore the "non-person having greater rights than a person" argument, because the author has not proven that the baby is not a person. While it is true that the baby is currently not defined as a person in US (or Canadian) law, that does not mean that the current law is correct. Otherwise women, blacks, Jews, Native Americans, people with disabilities (etc. ...) were all once non-persons who only became people once governments decided to define them as such. And I sincerely hope that we don't look to the government alone to define for us who is or is not a person, because they have (evidently!) been very, very wrong in the past.

The second thing that the author needs to defend, and has yet to do so, is why providing babies with a right not-to-be-killed (i.e.: a right to life) somehow gives the baby greater rights than the mother. I contest that this is not so. But right now, the burden is on Heather and "J" to explain exactly why an unborn baby is not a person, and why its right to life gives it greater rights than the mother (after all, the unborn baby, in the vast, vast (it cannot be said enough) vast majority of cases does not threaten the mother's life, nor her liberty, nor her pursuit of happiness - unless one wants to argue that pregnant women are willing slaves to their unborn children - and I hope that sounds as ridiculous to you, dear readers, as it does to me).

"There are major major problems with defining a fetus as a person ... [including] the government suddenly having the ability to control everything about a pregnant woman's life from her diet to her workout schedule specifically because the fetus now has liberty and life rights. The slippery slope there is too great. Every study that came out saying that mothers who watched TV while pregnant had higher incidence of miscarriage would potentially result in government intervention in the TV-watching habits of pregnant women - you know, because they have to protect the person that is the fetus."

Bravo, excellent job of fear-mongering, and excellent use of the fallacy form of the "slippery slope" rhetorical device. This is a fallacy here for two reasons: (1) The author ignores any possibility of a middle ground and (2) the author does not demonstrate a process which could lead to this extreme state of government control. This slippery slope is very obviously, ridiculous. To demonstrate, let us compare pregnancy to a natural, common relationship that is as close to pregnancy as possible - that is, the relationship between parents and the born children who are under their care. There are countless studies which show that the things that parents allow their kids to do every day may not be in the best interests of their kids' health: watching TV, eating candy, eating fast food and heavily processed food, playing video games, watching R-rated movies, drinking alcohol, smoking around their kids, raising kids as a single parent, raising kids in a home where both parents are working ... the list goes on. Kids who eat lots of junk food and sit around watching TV and playing video games are more likely to be fat, and have all the toher health problems that come along with poor diet and exercise habits. Kids who watch violent and sexually explicit movies at a young age can be adversely affected emotionally. Kids who are raised by single mothers are more likely to grow into a life of drugs and crime. Kids who have a sip of beer or wine from a parent's cup (and teenagers whose parents allow them to drink at home) have underdeveloped brains which could be adversely affected by alcohol. Working parents do not have as much time as stay at home moms and dads do to spend time with and care exclusively for their children. But do you see the government jumping in and controlling every aspect of these parents' lives, even once these children exhibit negative health consequences unto natural death? Do you see the government mandating that one parent must stay at home, that single mothers must marry to give their children fathers, that parents must serve only certain foods at certain times to their children, and that children are only allowed to sit in front of a TV for a certain number of hours a week - all this, of course, to ensure that children are cared for in the very best way possible that research can demonstrate?

No, you don't see this happening. And you don't see this, in spite of the fact that kids are considered people under the law, and kids really are at the mercy of their parents' habits and customs.

What you do see is the government becoming involved in the severe cases - cases where children's lives are threatened to an unnatural degree: where they are neglected, starved, beaten, and not cared for in even the most basic of ways.

That is when the government becomes involved in the care of vulnerable people (or rather, vulnerable humans - humans just like unborn babies).

So please, spare me the whole "women's lives will be controlled in every imaginable way" sob story. It is not true. If it becomes true, we'll have a lot more to worry about than just pregnant women being controlled by the government, because the exact same thing will happen to anyone who has a vulnerable person under their care.

"This is why, regardless of whether you find abortion morally or religiously offensive, you cannot legislate on it."

The vast majority of countries on this earth, who actually do have laws regarding abortion (including western countries who are largely considered to be "free" nations), would beg to differ. This also contradicts an earlier statement by the author - specifically, if unborn children are people then they have a right to life. "J" completely ignores this question and claims that they cannot be considered people, not because of any intrinsic characteristics of the unborn babies themselves, but because of the supposed consequences of this view, which "J" has yet to demonstrate as plausible.

"you don't like abortion, don't have one."

This is a tired, worn-out, ridiculous statement that, quite frankly, pro-choicers should stop using. Replace "abortion" with anything else, and you can see how ridiculous it sounds when the person you are talking to believes abortion is a grave human rights violation. You aren't convincing any pro-lifers by using this statement, after all, we can just shoot back: "Don't like rape? Don't rape someone. Don't like slavery? Don't own a slave. Don't like mobs? Don't participate in one. See how ridiculous that sounds?" ... and on and on we go, constantly talking past one another. 

"[T]he personhood status of women who are already here, already independent human entities, has to be eroded. You cannot have both women and fetuses be considered persons. It is a legal impossibility."

Why? Please, try to explain this without using a fallacy. And while you're at it, explain why conjoined twins also cannot be considered persons under the law.

"So if the "right to life" movement wants to end abortion, they're going to have to focus on alternative ways"

Oh gee, its a good thing we are already doing that then! (hint hint: pregnancy care centers are just one example of this).

"[P]rohibitions on abortion are notoriously ineffective in reducing the incidence of terminated pregnancy"

Given the difficulty of obtaining statistics for abortions performed legally vs. illegally, and (in Canada at least), the utter failure of the government to compile any kind of reliable stats on abortion at all, this statement is absolutely impossible to prove or disprove and should not be presented as absolute fact. This, or course, ignores the inherent fallacious nature of such a "it will happen anyway" argument. Just because something will happen anyway, does not mean that it should be legal, nor does it necessarily mean that it should be illegal either. Criminal activity happens whether we legislate against it or not - does that mean murder, theft, slander, drugs, domestic violence, or child abuse should be legal? Nope. "It will happen anyway" is a statement which neither supports nor denies a particular thesis, and should not be present in any discussion of the legality or the ethics of any action, including abortion.

"That's it, that's the abortion issue in a nutshell."

Actually, the author ignored pretty much every opjection that pro-lifers have to abortion, and the ones he or she did mention were not refuted. So no, this is not the abortion issue in a nutshell. This is the author's opinion, presented as argument, and supported by fallacies, in a nutshell. 

"All this other crap about people accepting responsibility for their actions, taking advantage of the abortion "faucet", respecting life, or whatever your emotional argument is, that's all completely irrelevant."

Right, because claiming that illegal abortion will lead to the utter and complete control of women's lives by the government is not emotional at all.

And if one dismisses "respecting life" as an emotional argument, one has relegated to the corner a compelling reason against murder and abuse. After all, are we not called to respect the people around us? And I would be seriously surprised if the author did not believe in personal responsibility. Otherwise, I hope she spends just as much time protesting against the legal system which assumes personal responsibility in order to charge people for their possible crimes and the consequences of such crimes (for instance - drunk driving. People who drive intoxicaed to not mean to get into accidents, and yet, if they do they are considered responsible for the destruction that their intoxication caused).

"... your purpose is to blame women for pregnancy in an effort to imply they are not really entitled to personhood status."

Hyperbole, ridiculousness, and a blatant attempt to completely disregard and misunderstand the actual pro-life position. Also, it is true that the vast majority of abortions are performed on women who risked the possibility of pregnancy by engaging in consensual sex. This is not a "blame" game - this is a fact. Pregnancy can lead to babies. Shocking, I know. But true nonetheless. Accepting reality does not mean you are "blaming" someone for something. And pregnant women, simply by virtue of being pregnant, are not denied their personhood, nor any of their rights. Unless you bleieve that people have rights which allow them to kill someone who does not threaten their own lives in any way. And from the standpoint that we all have a right to life, this is utterly ridiculous.

As for the "Note on international human rights, rather than US Consitutional rights": this is simply a reminder of what pro-lifers are attempting to change. We know that the unborn are not considered persons. We know that they currently do not enjoy a codified right to life. Quoting articles which are formed based off this understanding does not present an argument - it presents a conclusion, and as such, it is not something that will convince anyone who has an opposing view. 

Now, I spent most of this article demonstrating how the author(s) did not do a good job of arguing the case for legal abortion, but I did not make a complete case in opposition. So please refer to my blog posts here and here, which discuss whether or not a woman has a responsibility towards her unborn child. Also, please see discussions from Life Report here and here on this topic. I also am in the process of compiling essays and arguments for/against bodily autonomy as I have come across them (along with other issues related to the abortion debate) - you can find them here.

In conclusion, I wish to summarize what I believe Heather and J's main points are:

(1) Unborn children are not considered persons and are not endowed with the right to life in either the US consitution or in international human rights documents.

(2) Giving the unborn a right to life or personhood status necessarily degrades the rights of the pregnant women by subjecting her to government control and violating her privacy.

(3) Abortions happen anyway, whether illegal or legal.

Here are my main points in response:

(1) This is not an argument, it is a conclusion, and it is the very thing that pro-lifers are trying to change.

(2) This conclusion ignores any possibility of reasonable middle ground and is demonstrably false when compared to any other relationship in which one of the persons involved is vulnerable.

(3) This is not an arugment in favour of either legality or illegality; it is simply a statement which can by applied to any legal or illegal action.

But again, for an in-depth discussion of the pro-life perspective on this topic please read through the links I provided above.

That's all for now! Let me know if you think I have misunderstood Heather's and J's arguments in any way! Ciao :)

Fetus vs. Baby

I really feel like this guy must be a parody. But either way, had to share.

I recently posted an article from Youth Defense on twitter, called "When the Washing Post decides a "fetus" is a baby", and in response, a tweeton known as @TheAbortionist tweeted:

Classy (not!!), but true.

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.

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.

Tips for Pro-choice Activists

Read Jane Cawthorne and Joyce Arthur's "Tips for Responding to the Abortion Crapavan" here. It is quite a rant against CCBR's newest project, called the New Abortion Caravan. 

In response, I have some tips for all you pro-choicers out there on how to properly respond when someone protests against your life's passion.

#1. Know thine enemy.

From Cawthorne & Arthur (emphasis my own):
 "[The New Abortion Caravan is] a project of the grossly misnamed Canadian Centre for Bioethical Research - CCBR"

This is just so hysterical because they actually provide a link to the CCBR website, yet they still get it wrong. Perhaps "Canadian Centre for Bioethical Research" seems so grossly misnamed to them because it is a misnomer - CCBR's actual name is "Canadian Centre for Bioethical Reform".  Get it right!

#2. If you want to be taken seriously, be serious.

From Cawthorne & Arthur on how to protest (emphasis my own):
"Include fun positive actions, satire, or costumes (dancing genitalia have been used in Calgary)."
"Give out cookies, condoms, balloons, or what have you. Ask a local sexual health centre for freebies."

Yes, because nothings says "I have a message about human rights, and I want you to listen because women's lives are at stake" like dancing genitalia, condoms, and sexual health freebies (is it too presumptuous to assume that women's lives are why Cawthorne and Arthur support abortion? Perhaps, considering their idea of a successful counter-protest centres around sex).

#3. Don't imply that you find images of bloody and dead pre-born children arousing.

From Cawthorne & Arthur  (emphasis my own):
"The so called 'new abortion caravan,' an anti-choice display of fetus pornography ..."

I think it is extremely disturbing when people, who presumably have no problem with imagery of the sexual act, equate violence and death with said imagery.

#4. Be professional and respectful, or people won't respect you.

From Cawthorne & Arthur (emphasis my own):
"... [The New Abortion Caravan is] dubbed the 'Crapavan' by pro-choicers ..."
"... pro-choice activists in Calgary have dubbed the 'Fetus-mobile' ..."
 "ARCC's intent is to protect the safety of pro-choice demonstrators and prepare you for the onslaught of crazy ..."
"The Calgary Pro-Choice Coalition produced a comic book about them, believing such a response was the only logical way to react to their ridiculous and offensive tactics."
Also see the "fetus pornography" comment from above ...

You'll notice that CCBR is professional and respectful in the language they use on their blog and in their press releases. I suggest the ARCC strive to do the same, lest they appear juvenile to the Canadian public.

#5. Don't make obviously false claims.

From Cawthorne & Arthur (emphasis my own):
"The real Abortion Caravan was part of second wave feminist efforts to decriminalize abortion. In 1970, a group of revolutionary women traveled from Vancouver to Ottawa ... to protest the new abortion law that was written to protect doctors, not help women access abortion. The new anti-choice version of this event bears no resemblance to it whatsoever."

Lets compare and contrast, shall we?

The New Abortion Caravan uses graphic imagery and shocking tactics.
The original Abortion Caravan used graphic imagery and shocking tactics.
For example, the original caravan included "a Volkswagen bus complete with a black coffin strapped on the roof". On Mother's Day,  a "convoy of Canadian women, over five hundred strong in support, arrived- coat hangers and a black coffin in tow" Additional aspects of the protest involved Prime Minister "Pierre Trudeau burned in effigy" and "[a] black coffin adorned with coat hangers left at the Prime Minister's front door" (From Wikipedia). Additionally, in an interview with the CBC, Margo Dunn, an original member of the Caravan, admitted that they also used shocking imagery in support of free access to abortion.
The New Abortion Caravan is travelling from Vancouver to Ottawa.
The original Abortion Caravan traveled from Vancouver to Ottawa.
The New Abortion Caravan concerns abortion.
The original Abortion Caravan concerns abortion.
I could go on.
Of course there is one main difference ... the New Abortion Caravan is protesting against the killing of unborn children, while the original caravan protested in favour of the practice. Also, I will be very surprised if the New Abortion Caravan manages to shut down parliament like the original did. But one can hope.

#6. Don't give your opponents free publicity.

From Cawthorne & Arthur (emphasis my own):
"Focus on raising awareness on anti-abortion Motion 312 ..."
"Consider setting up a warning at either end of the demonstration ..."

#8. Stop equating abortion to the Catholic Church. 

"Even Calgary's Bishop Henry has denounced this group's tactics ..."


You know, there are non-Catholics out there who are against abortion, and I'm sure most of them couldn't care less what a Calgary bishop has to say. I'm sure quite a few pro-choicers also don't care about the words of a Catholic bishop. Additionally, it would be good to realize that pro-life advocates turn to more than just the Bible and God in support of their cause, so I also suggest pro-choicers start brushing up on things like science and philosophy.

#7. (Hint: this is the most important one!) Address what your opponent is saying. 

In response to a protest exposing the realities of abortion and the humanity of its victims, Cawthorne and Arthur seem to only be able to discuss sex and women's bodies. The New Abortion Caravan has nothing to do with "dancing genitalia", "condoms", sex "freebies", or "fetus-porn", and has little to do specifically with what a woman does with her own body. However, it does have everything to do with the bodies of the unborn, and what is done to them. They have been ripped apart, starved, dismembered, disemboweled - in other words, they have been violently killed by Canadian doctors at the request of their mothers. Though I suppose, when the humanity of the child in the womb is so obvious, all a pro-choicer can do is ignore the real problem. 

To any pro-choice Catholics out there ...

I came across this little gem while perusing the comments section of BadCatholic's latest blogpost, "Catholics for Choice". It is pretty much perfect:

Originally from A Star of Hope

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

 

Pro-choice

 

 Pro-life

 

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:

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.

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.