If you view an abortion as the murder of an innocent child, as pro-lifers do, then it is only natural that one would be moved to be willing to take up arms in defense of that life. I don’t see this an intellectually inconsistent position.

That’s essentially my point. If this is the great injustice that the pro-life cause believes that it is, then why is there such restraint on the moral outrage and subsequent action on our part. It would seem that in times when consciences were less deadened by relativism, this would bring our country to the brink of war. Instead, it merely acts as an abstract catalyst for public debate.

I do not advocate the indiscriminate or personal violence of individuals against those involved in the abortion industry. I do, however, believe that there would be, at least in theory, sufficient moral impetus for a civil position to form, declaring the unwillingness to abide a government whose laws sanction such atrocities, even though that position may entail military reprisals from said government.

I’d rather not, when history comes to pass, be lumped in with those Germans who sat idly by while fellow human beings were exterminated in concentration camps, and did not speak out for fear of suffering the same fate. But for there to be any efficacy in such a statement, it must bear the weight of numbers. That is something I do not think will ever be supplied, so the point remains in the abstract.

Steve wrote: If you view an abortion as the murder of an innocent child, as pro-lifers do, then it is only natural that one would be moved to be willing to take up arms in defense of that life. I don’t see this an intellectually inconsistent position.

I don’t think it’s an intellectually inconsistant position, either. However, despite the frequent rhetoric, I’m not sure that most pro-lifers do view abortion as the same thing as the murder of a one-year-old child.

For instance, no seriously proposed pro-life law calls for either life in prison or the death penalty for abortionists. Nor do most of the proposals I’ve seen call for punishing the mother at all - only the doctor is punished.

This is not consistant with the claim that there’s no difference between an abortion and child murder. (Would anyone suggest that the murder of a one-year-old doesn’t deserve the same penalty as any other murder; or that if a child’s mother pays someone else to do the murder, she should therefore not be punished at all?)

As you say, IF one accepts that there is no moral difference between the Holocaust and legal abortion, then it becomes difficult to resist the conclusion that a call to arms is justified. However, the vast majority of pro-lifers not only resist that conclusion, they reject it entirely. To me, this suggests that at some level, they do recognize a difference between fetal life and an actual person.

i don’t mean i’d go to clinics and shoot anti-choice protesters, but if they wanted to start a war, they just might find some of us shooting back.

i also think it’s very telling that these bozos only believe abortion is evil when women make strides towards having equal rights. if we just sit down and shut up and take the abuse, on the other hand, they always look away from those of us who choose to end our pregnancies. why do you suppose that is?

This is not consistant with the claim that there’s no difference between an abortion and child murder. (Would anyone suggest that the murder of a one-year-old doesn’t deserve the same penalty as any other murder; or that if a child’s mother pays someone else to do the murder, she should therefore not be punished at all?)

You make an excellent point - the very thing I was trying to underscore in my original post at Amy’s blog.

Contrary to what logic would lead us to deduce, I think the majority of pro-lifers do in fact place the life of a 2-month-old child in the womb on a par with a 1-year-old child who is in the world, so to speak.

And that’s the fundamental problem. We believe this, but we don’t act like we do. Why? Because we’ve had our hands tied for so long, we’ve become forcibly desensitized. If we read in the paper tomorrow that across the country, thousands of infants were being murdered every day, and their parents were getting away with it - we’d be outraged to an extreme degree. But we know that every day in this country, thousands of abortions are performed, yet we don’t blink an eye.

You know what I think about in the morning when I wake up? I’ll give you a hint - it’s not how I can save some babies today. It’s usually along the lines of “Should I have oatmeal or eggs for breakfast?” or “I really wish I had gone to bed an hour earlier last night.” I hate that despite what I believe, I am capable of putting it out of my mind. And yet I seem to have no recourse.

This is because of two things:

1.) The weak position of our moral leadership.
2.) The consequences we will suffer in society for taking action - no matter how peaceful - against abortion.

The first cause is something I see as endemic, and it causes me no small amount of headaches in many issues not directly pertinent here. Suffice it to say that we are bound by our own moral leadership because it has confused charity with pacifism, where previous generations did not make that mistake. There are justifiable causes which necessitate violence, though they are never desirable. I feel as though current Christian leadership, particularly Catholic (which affects me directly), might as well be Quaker for how they view this. It’s a fundamental failure to understand that if you want peace and justice, sometimes you have to fight for it.

The second cause gives rise again to my analogy with Nazism. The pro-life position, far from being insubstantial, has simply lost the propaganda war. The pro-choice side employs every trick, semantic and otherwise, to keep veiled the subject of the hallowed “choice” they seek to promote. The very term pro-choice is a manipulation of language, because the term “choice” refers to something specific - something not as easy to stomach if reflected on.

The pro-abortion (for that is the choice in question) position views the fetus as something other than a human life. In ampersand’s post, this philosophy is echoed - “they do recognize a difference between fetal life and an actual person.”

This is the same language used by the Nazis to describe the Jews. Hitler, in a Nazi propaganda piece, phrased it this way:

“The Jews are undoubtedly a race, but they are not human.”

This rhetoric is compatible with the current variety on abortion: “The fetus is undoubtedly a life, but it is not human.”

In the rare case that pro-abortion rhetoric attempts intellectual honesty, it is largely ignored by the majority of abortion advocates. A perfect example of this is the article written by Naomi Wolfe - an icon in feminist circles - entitled, “Our Bodies, Our Souls”. In the article, Ms. Wolfe depicts her own experiences with abortion, and paints as disingenuous any attempt to deny the humanity of the fetus. She posits:

“Abortion should be legal; it is sometimes even necessary. Sometimes the mother must be able to decide that the fetus, in its full humanity, must die.”

Her attempt to be truthful about a difficult subject is laudable - but the horrific implications of such honesty don’t help the propaganda war. Because of this, her article didn’t get nearly as much attention as it otherwise might have.

As the pro-abortion position continues to marginalize even its own shining stars who attempt to view honestly the humanity of the preborn child, it is evident that they have effectively made the subject taboo - a foregone conclusion that does not make for socially acceptable discussion and debate. As long as the truth can be kept quiet, the industry can go on.

And in the end, that’s what abortion is about - money. Like slavery before it, it’s a federally guaranteed “right”, ratified by the supreme court and treated as the law of the land.

Because of this, there is a psychological disconnect for all of us on the reality of what abortion entails. I think that’s the reason why my side is so numb. I think that’s the reason why those on my side - even those who get it - propose legislation that penalizes those involved with procuring abortions on a far gentler scale than homicide. Because they realize that people don’t get it. To use the words of Christ, “Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do.”

If I could have it my way, I’d convert every last one of my opponents. The only real way to eliminate your enemy is to make them your friend. And on a personal level, that’s the approach I take. I’m not going to condemn anyone.

But on a broader, more abstract level, I really think a time will come when people finally put their foot down and say, “I’m not paying taxes to a government that sanctions murder.” And that’s when things will get dicey. That’s the kind of thing that starts a civil war. And the thing is, the pro-lifers probably wouldn’t stand a chance - modern military technology makes Jeffersonian revolutionary ideas sort of obsolete. But when it comes down to it, it’s a justifiable position, in my view.

And I think that’s what I’m getting at.

For now, though, a few brief notes.

1) I appreciate how polite you’re being; trust me when I say that not all my pro-life visitors here are so polite. However, since you say you want to “convert every last one of my opponents,” may I make a suggestion? You might have a better chance of winning some hearts and minds if you’d refrain from calling people you disagree with Nazis quite so often.

2) Even more importantly, I think you should consider refraining from criticizing the alleged bad motives of people you disagree with. Not only is doing so rude, it’s irrelevant. After all, if it turns out that the vast majority of pro-choicers have good motivations (however mistaken they may be), and are not motivated by money, would that make abortion more acceptable, in your view?

If your answer is “no, it wouldn’t,” then it seems to me that you should consider the motivations of pro-choicers irrelevant.

3) You wrote: The pro-abortion (for that is the choice in question) position views the fetus as something other than a human life. In ampersand’s post, this philosophy is echoed - “they do recognize a difference between fetal life and an actual person.”

In this and a couple of other places in your post, you seemed to assume that the words “human” and “person” are interchangable. They are not. I view the fetus as human life; I do not view a fetus as a person. (Certainly not before the 24th week or so, and probably not even after the 24th week).

More later.

And then they wonder why no one else is persuaded, either.

However, I will also need to see them selling their goods and chattels to eliminate children dying of hunger and disease anywhere in the world. It is galling to listen to pro-life adherents arguing against family planning and abortion in Third World countries when it is more than likely that the children conceived and carried to term will die before their fifth birthday. Personally, I think it is more humane to abort a 24-week old fetus than it is to watch a five year old starve to death.

Now, I know that it is not as likely that an unwanted child will starve to death in this country. However, if you oppose abortion here, to maintain your credibility, you have to oppose it everywhere.

I have much more to say about this, but I will wait for another time to continue this discussion.

Is my human life not fit for saving?

Can you explain how having your “hands tied” makes you “desensitized” to the difference between a two-week-old fetus and a two-year-old child? I see the assertion, but not the explanation, and I’m a little baffled. After all, if you were really desensitized, you wouldn’t even say a two-week-old fetus was a human life; you’d say something about “potential life” or “kind of like a baby.”

ampersand is correct in that the rhetoric of abortion-rights opponents doesn’t match the philosophy. You would never see a law permitting consanguinity between mother and father as a defense to a mother’s killing her infant, or allowing “The pregnancy was a result of rape” to excuse a mother’s paying someone to kill her five-year-old. Yet the majority of abortion-rights opponents cherish exemptions when the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest.

What’s really happening is not desensitization, but unpopularity. Simply defining a fetus as human from conception would be easier than a patchwork of laws against abortion; but the average person really doesn’t want that definition. It would mean no more Pill, no more IUD, no more morning-after pill for rape victims, criminal charges against pregnant women who have a drink during pregnancy, forced C-sections when a doctor believes it would be in the fetus’s best interest even if it would harm the mother.

Arbitraryaardvark put it best I think - it’s better to resort to violence to fight injustice than to do nothing, but there’s no reason to opt for violence if non-violence gets the job done. That’s pretty much how I feel.

Ampersand, I understand your point about not calling people Nazis, and I’m really not interested in epithets - I’m simply pointing out the congruities between the philosophy of the Nazis on human life and the philosophies of the minds that move the abortion movement. There were direct connections between developers of Nazi eugenics programs and the founders of Planned Parenthood. Lorthrop Stoddard, an original member of Planned Parenthood’s board, actually went to Nazi Germany to discuss with Hitler the methods the Nazis were using to purify the race of imperfections.

So I am not saying, to all those who profess a belief in the right to abortion, “YOU are a NAZI!” Rather, I’m saying, to all those who profess a belief in the right to abortion, “Are you aware of how closely aligned your beliefs are to those of the Nazis?” I think it bears consideration, and I’ll not flinch away from it, because I honestly think most people who are for abortion really think they are doing something good. They need to think about it.

This is why I think your point about criticizing alleged bad motives kind of misses the mark. I’m sure I didn’t make myself clear - I was in a hurry when I last posted - but I do not believe that most of those I disagree with on this subject believe what they do out of malice. I believe, as I mentioned before, that they do so out of ignorance. I’m sure that will provoke some ire, but either its malice or ignorance - if I think abortion is murder, I can’t really offer many other options for why it’s not as obvious to others as it is to me.

I do, however, believe that many of the elites who promote the abortion industry, and in particular those doctors and nurses who are most intimately aquainted with the haunting reality of the childrent hey dismember in the womb, are not ignorant. They know the stakes. And for them, it really is about money. It’s not just speculation - there are a number of doctors who have had a change of heart and switched to the pro-life side. They’re more than willing to share their stories on motivation.

So while the question of motivation doesn’t change how I feel about abortion - evil is evil, no matter why you do it - that doesn’t mean I don’t care about motivation. Because something is allowing millions of people every year to do something that, to me, is so obviously wrong. I want to get at the root of that tree. Why? Because I’m not actually going to start a war, and I give a damn about the people on the other side.

I don’t have time to get into the distinction between human life and person - and it’s a philosophical discussion that would likely only lead us off track. But I’ll get to some more comments after I get to work. I’ve got to go.

Such supporters are only too willing to be whipped up into a frenzy, because let’s face it, people love to feel righteous. Issues like this give them a sense of easy black-and-white purpose, a cause much less messy and complex than taking care of the poor for instance, and the vicarious sense that they are a faux rebel minority.

Such soundbyte morality is cheap and adictive. If these people and their catspaw ever succeed in enforcing a criminalization of abortion and homosexuality they will simply move on to a new “outrage”. Perhaps the fact that divorce is legal will become an “outrage” in such a world, or the practice of religions other than the state mandated one. The quest for scapegoats and a simple sense of purpose is neverending.

The truth, as I see it, is that a majority of people do see abortion as a moral dilemma, but they also see that the question of when “life” begins can actually and reasonably be subject to different conclusions by different people of good will — life being properly understood to mean when human cells should be accorded the same respect under the law as a human who has already been born. They are therefore willing, up to a point, to accord each individual the right to determine for themselves the outcome of that moral inquiry, until such time as a clear majority no longer disagree that what is at stake is the life of a person. I actually think this is a pretty fair compromise of the issue, especially since, in this moral calculus, it appears that very few would ever argue that the life of the fetus should be deemed to be as if not more important than the life of the mother at any point along this continuum.

What pro-life groups (most of them) don’t want to admit is that they too are engaged in an exercise of line drawing (as most would not make contraception or infertility services illegal, and even approve of abortion in the case of rape or incest) and they don’t like where the majority of people currently seem to want that line to be drawn — somewhere between 18 weeks on, with exceptions based on the health of the mother or grave defects in the fetus.

What is most obnoxious is to assume as Steve does above, that anyone who disagrees with this disjointed, not to say incoherent, set of “pro-life” principles is proceeding from bad faith, likely because of an economic stake in maximizing the number of abortions and just as evil as the Nazis. Steve, your views may indeed consistently track the “a life is a life is a life” view of natural law, but we are all thinking people and we can see that most of those who call themselves pro-life do not. In other words, they want to be able to assert the inviolability and gravitas of the natural law principles, just so long as they get to decide when it’s okay to chuck them overboard. Why do you think this may seem to be unacceptable to the rest of us?

Steve,are you aware that under the Nazi regime women had no reproductive rights at all? Our lives weren’t worth anything–unless we were white, then we were valued as breeding mares for the White race. And God help a woman who didn’t want to do that.

From the Holocaust Learning Center:

The state encouraged matrimony through marriage loans, dispensed family income supplements for each new child, publicly honored “child-rich” families, bestowed the Cross of Honor of the German Mother on women bearing four or more babies, and increased punishments for abortion [emphasis mine].

Do you realize that most neo-Nazis are against abortion? That most neo-Nazis are against access to contraception? That most neo-Nazis are against any kind of reproductive rights for women?

Do you realize that when you take away those rights from women, you are putting our lives in danger?

I’m saying, to all those who profess a belief in the morality of restricting reproductive rights, “Are you aware of how closely aligned your beliefs are to those of the Nazis?” I think it bears consideration, and I’ll not flinch away from it, because I honestly think most people who are against reproductive rights really think they are doing something good. They need to think about it.

So at the risk of abandoning certain points that should be responded to - because I simply can’t get to all of them - I’ll focus on the big ones.

My point since this whole discussion began is exactly what many of you are pointing out. The pro-life side is riddled with cognitive dissonance. There are exceptions for this and exceptions for that. There’s an unwillingness to have a comprehensive view.

In my honest opinion, the only tried-and-true pro-life position is that of the Catholic Church. That’s because it’s the only position willing to go the whole nine yards. No exceptions for rape, incest, or life of the mother. No artificial birth control or IVF. No mechanical tampering with the process of creating life, or letting it grow once it has been created.

If the pro-life side is unwilling to hold these positions, it is disingenuous at best, and none of you, to answer Barbara’s question, have any reason to accept it as legitimate. It’s almost more insidious for a “pro-lifer” to say that the fetus is a human person, then make exceptions for when it may be destroyed, than it is for someone to say, “I want abortion on demand, because it’s not a kid.” This is my problem. This is why I made my original post at Amy’s blog. Because so few people realize the implications of what we say we believe.

But I DO belive that the pro-life cause is more than a rallying-cry. There may be far fewer of us who really view it as the evil I’m saying it is, but we not only exist - many of us are capable of doing our own thinking as well.

Everyone keeps bringing up the legislation issue. The reason that the penal legislation proposed by the pro-life position is so lacking in teeth is because, quite honestly, of compassion. Pro-lifers understand that the majority of those who are involved with abortion on a personal level don’t think that what they are doing is wrong. Honestly, we tend to view the mother as a victim as well. Having known women who’ve been down that road and later had to deal with their consciences, I know their struggle. They were made to believe it was their only option. Truth is, it wasn’t. So, when it comes to putting a mom in jail on first-degree murder charges because she has an abortion, there are ethical difficulties. Doctors, on the other hand, have no excuse. In my view, every abortion doctor is a serial killer - and they have the medical knowledge to know that what they are doing is destroying a human life. They see the bodies. They know the toll.

I also think that drugs like RU486 should be outlawed. Any contraceptive that acts as an abortifacient should be.

The desensitization that has taken place in the pro-life movement has to do with knowing that abortion is an evil but having our laws and popular culture tell us there’s nothing we can do about it. It also has to do with the cognitive dissonance we’ve discussed, because there are many in the pro-life camp who undermine our efforts by being hypocritical when it’s convenient. So in the end, guys like me - married working stiffs with families - can’t do too much but talk about it with people. When you’re faced with something like murder, but you have no recourse, nothing you can act upon, you learn to suppress your emotional response. Eventually, you become kind of numb. Eventually, that’s why you lose.

Lastly, I’d like to address the idea that to be pro-life is to be anti-war and anti-capital punishment. That’s a non-sequiter. There is a fundamental distinction between the taking of innocent life, and the taking of the life of a combattant or guilty criminal. All killing is bad, but in war, or in execution, there can be justification for it. There can never be justification for the destruction of innocent life. In his article entitled Abortion vs. War, Fr. Frank Pavone delineates this distinction:

Many ask whether one can be a good Catholic or be pro-life and support the war. The answer is yes, which is to say that Catholic and pro-life teaching do allow for circumstances in which war is justified, because sometimes war has to be waged precisely for the defense of life.

Even when war is justified, life is always lost in the process. But innocent life is never targeted, and that makes all the difference in the world. How many innocent lives, and how many children, have been deliberately targeted for destruction in the current war?

By comparison, every abortion deliberately targets and destroys a child; otherwise, it isn’t even an abortion.

The purpose of war is not to kill the enemy, but rather to deprive the enemy of his ability to wage war and to destroy others’ rights. There’s a big difference between targeting military/communications equipment to disrupt the operations of the enemy, and just trying to kill as many people as you can.

Lastly, I must admit I find the question of women needing to destroy their children to save their lives to be a paper tiger. It is EXTREMELY rare that a procedure like this is medically necessary. But beyond this, what mother wouldn’t step in front of a bullet for her child? Isn’t that what motherhood is? To give life? To lay down your own life for your children?

We’ve lost our sense of heroism when we have to ask these questions. I can’t help but feel taht it’s symptomatic of a narcissistic culture when a mother cares more about herself than her child.

Wow. That’s very, very scary and I can’t begin to tell you how glad I am that this view is held by only the tiniest minority. No exceptions for the life of the mother? Close to 20 years ago a friend of mine wrote a comic SF serial in which cause of the young of the near-future day was fetal rights at the expense of the mother. That is to say that the fetus holds more value than the mother. I can tell you with no hesitation whatsoever that if my wife was pregnant & her life was in danger if she did not get an abortion that both of us would want the abortion. How grotesque and nightmarish that somebody outside of our family would make the choice that my wife should die so that a potential life MIGHT be born. Are you aware of the condition of most fetuses in cases where abortion is called for to protect the life of the mother? Would you not think that in the case of the danger to the life of the mother that abortion would be considered self-defense? Just like what happens if you kill somebody who was trying to kill you?

Scary, scary stuff. You have succeeded in scaring the pants off of me.

But allow me to express an oh so gentle sense of disgust at your patronizing view about women who undergo abortion, that, “Pro-lifers understand that the majority of those who are involved with abortion on a personal level don’t think that what they are doing is wrong. Honestly, we tend to view the mother as a victim as well.”

Steve, if they really and honestly don’t believe that what they’re doing is wrong, why do you think it is up to you to decide this issue for them? Well, it’s clear, in fact it is quite illuminating that you justify your position by denying that women are capable of understanding and exercising moral judgments, instead, they are victims incapable of truly exercising moral free agency. It’s all of a piece, isn’t it, the view that you need to make the moral, not simply the “physical” choice for this woman — because she is herself unable to.

It is true that there are some women who cannot come to terms with having had an abortion, but most women realize over time, if not immediately, that they made a difficult choice likely under trying circumstances, and they made the best choice they could given the information they had. It’s downright insulting, in this light, to be viewed as a victim because of one’s inferior reasoning capabilities. It doesn’t strengthen your case at all.

At least you admit that the “cognitive dissonance we’ve discussed” exists, “because there are many in the pro-life camp who undermine our efforts by being hypocritical when it’s convenient.” But I would suggest that it is much more than that. I would suggest that the visceral feel of right and wrong is just absent for many people when it comes to early term abortion, not because they are “hypocrites” but because they assert an underlying premise without understanding or believing it. And it would drive the debate way forward for people like you to be unsparing in your moral judgments, as you have, and for other pro-lifers to be equally honest in theirs — which they frequently will not do, for whatever reason. Instead, they, like you, rely on the idea that “It is EXTREMELY rare that a procedure like this is medically necessary.” Therefore, they hope that their views won’t really cause the kind of extreme hardship that extreme views usually do. Believe it or not, I know women who have faced this. It isn’t nearly as rare as you think it is.

Finally, to impose “heroism” on individual women is simply obscene. Heroism, to be truly so, must be chosen, otherwise, a woman in this situation is simply society’s sacrificial victim.

“Life begins at conception” was a concept developed purely to enable the anti-abortion types to argue that there is some other “person” besides the mother whose rights must be taken into account in any constitutional analysis.