Skip to main content

Hypocrisy

Abortion is not a pretty thing no matter how you look at it. Some people call it a tragedy, and it is. But in my view, it is also the symptom of a larger tragedy, a last resort that we would rather never come to, the unfortunate conclusion of a highly preventable train of events.

In a video I saw, a pastor was desperately trying to appeal to the emotions, to inspire a horror of abortion. And certainly there is much to dislike about it. But if we're really serious about about this issue, the conversation needs to change drastically.

Right now it is just a big tug of war that will never go anywhere. A woman's right to have an abortion is the law of the land. That right is the result of a hard-fought war and it is absolutely necessary for it to remain legal always because the alternative is far, far worse for individuals as well as society.

When it comes right down to it, human suffering and well-being are the ultimate arbiters of good and evil. This has always been the case and it always will be. (I'm talking about real, "capital letter" Good and Evil, here, not the fake religious variety, used by some people to control other people, that varies from church to church and from deity to deity.) And a society that impedes or prevents free access to abortion is Evil because of the unbelievable human suffering it creates. So let us totally and forever abandon this line of argument that says abortion should be outlawed, because that will only ever lead to Evil.

And let us also abandon this notion that "she chose to have sex and therefore she somehow 'deserves' what's coming to her." That leads to very many bad outcomes for all concerned.

If we're really, *seriously* committed to the idea that abortion is something to be minimized, then the conversation is going to have to change in the following ways:

(1) If you are personally committed to ensuring that a child you insist be born will never lack for food, clothing, shelter, health care, education, or any other necessity, then I will respect your opinion that the mother should not terminate her pregnancy. Otherwise, shut up.

(2) If you are personally committed to morally and financially supporting a multi-layered system where every child receives extensive education about the responsibility one incurs by bringing a new life into the world, frank instruction about sex and its consequences, birth control, and the importance of exchanging body fluids only in a relationship of love and trust, then I will respect your opinion that mothers should not terminate their pregnancies. Otherwise, shut up.

(3) If you are personally committed to the notion that no young person should ever end up having unprotected sex because of an inability to obtain birth control, then I will know you are serious about preventing abortions from occurring. Otherwise, your preaching about the evils of abortion is merely hypocrisy to me.

Unless you do all these things, you demonstrate that you care about fetuses, but not about the children and adults they will become, nor about the effects they will have on the society.

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Important lessons from the Russo-Ukrainian War

My attention for the last few months has been very much occupied by Vladimir Putin's war on the Ukraine. Like many, I have come to feel a deep admiration for the bravery, resource, intelligence and dogged persistence of the Ukrainian people and military in the defense of their country. It has also been extremely gratifying to see European nations put aside their internal differences and full-heartedly support the Ukraine in their hour of need. I have also been struck by the contrast between what we have traditionally thought of Russia's military power and what we are actually seeing unfold in front of our eyes today -- over a million casualties in a war that was intended to last at most a few weeks, but has dragged out over more than four years with no end in sight. We are seeing the hardware of war being destroyed in colossal numbers by drone warfare -- tanks and artillery vehicles in their thousands, entire air defense systems wiped out, even the flagship of the Russian navy,...
Post a Comment
Read more

To Boldly Split Infinitives

This is somewhat a manifesto. English is not Latin. We can put prepositions at the end of a sentence if we want to. And we can start sentences with a conjunction! If we want to boldly split infinitives, then we're perfectly welcome to do so. Why? Because these are all syntactically correct constructs in English; they parse. And even more, they convey meaning to other speakers of the language, which is the real test of whether something is permitted in a language. My seventh grade English teacher, Mrs. Doane, a throwback to the 19th century prescriptivist grammarians, would no doubt sniff disapprovingly and peer with narrowed eyes over her Far Side-style glasses at such goings on. However, now I have the M.A. in Linguistics and can scowl back with gravitas. And so I will echo those marvelous Churchillian words: " This is the type of arrant pedantry up with which I will not put. " But in the end, I must confess that it was Guy Deutscher who freed me from the pointless tyran...
2 comments
Read more

The North-going Zax and the South-going Zax

Yesterday, I was on my lunch time walk and had an interesting experience. It lasted perhaps less than 2 seconds and yet I've been thinking about it on and off ever since. I was trundling along at my usual brisk pace, on the right-hand side of the path. A few yards off, I spied a man walking toward me on my side of the sidewalk, two trains heading toward each other on the same track. As we grew closer, I instinctively hugged the right-hand margin a little closer and he did the same. When it became clear that we were on a collision course, the image of the old Dr. Seuss story about the North-going Zax and the South-going Zax popped into my head. In the story, the two Zaxes meet and stand there for years, each too stubborn to give way to the other, while a city grows up around them. For about a quarter of a second, I contemplated such a pissing contest and realized that such a course of action did not advance my goal of getting back to work in time for my 2:00 meeting. So I swerve...
2 comments
Read more