Pro-lifers, please stop doing that (scary pictures!)

MissPickwickian · Posted: Sun Sep 14, 2008 9:41 pm Post subject:

In this post, I make three polite suggestions for the pro-life movement. As for abortion, I have not decided yet, and I respect and are open to the opinions of people on both sides of the debate. However, some offensive rhetoric on the part of anti-abortion activists is so annoying as to make me want to go pro-choice just to Avoid Those Obnoxious People.

I am not talking about clinic bombings. Those are extreme acts that don't typify the movement as a whole. I'm talking about the everyday rhetoric in the pro-life movement, and how it can be dishonest, exaggerated, and otherwise obnoxious.

Three pleases-

Please learn what partial-birth abortion really is.
Every other day, my local newspaper runs an ad about the horrors of partial-birth abortion, which is indeed a very gruesome procedure. Conservatives use the shock value attached to partial-birth abortion to provoke outrage. However, they typically neglect to mention the circumstances under which PBAs are performed.

"Abortion-on-demand" abortions, also known as terminations of unwanted pregnancies, typically occur in the first trimester; women who don't want a child for whatever reason end pregnancies very early. Partial-birth abortion is used when a pregnancy needs to be terminated late, in the last few months. How could these women be so cruel as to change their minds about wanting a baby at the last minute? Answer: they don't. That bitch Nature makes it necessary.

Partial-birth abortion (which comprises less than 1% of abortions) is an operation which is undertaken in two basic situations: unexpected health problems arise in the second or third trimester which threaten the mother's life, or the child is revealed to have severe birth defects. Women with sudden-onset preeclampsia or placetal separation with associated hemorrhage stand a good chance of dying if a pregnancy isn't terminated. Oftentimes, the child doesn't have much of a chance either. OBGYNs refer to this as "bailing out" of a dangerous pregnancy. As for birth defects, there are some horrific ones, many of which are incompatible with life, that are only discovered at the five-month mark or later. Examples follow:
Cogenital icthyosis

A severe skin disorder which is almost always fatal and emotionally traumatic for all involved. Can only be seen in ultrasounds during the last months.
Anencepaly

A neural tube defect characterized by lack of a skull and most of the brain. Typically, only the brainstem remains, although even chunks of this may be missing. Inevitably, the infant will be unconscious, blind, and deaf, and will be fated to die within the first two hours of life no matter what is done.
Patau Syndrome (trisomy 13)

A chromosomal abnormality that causes severe birth defects of all kinds. The few of these infants that have lived past their fifth birthdays all have profound mental retardation.

Partial-birth abortion is not abortion as we even think of it. It is a stop-gap medical procedure similar to that of ending an ectopic pregnancy. A necessary evil.

Please stop calling abortion 'genocide.'
If life begins at conception, then abortion is mass murder. But is it genocide? All sources say no.

A mass murder does not become a genocide because of actions taken, but rather because of the motives of the perpetrators. Genocide is a coinage that means "race-murder," and it refers to mass murder which is motivated by the desire to exterminate a race, religion, or nationality. In the US, abortion is almost never motivated by race. More black women than white women have abortions, true, but this is a sociological accident. Even if abortion is murder, it's not "race-murder".

Please stop comparing abortion to the Holocaust.
This one really drives me up the wall and across the ceiling. It is not just an erroneous comparison, but an offensive one, and I am not a young woman who is easy to offend.

If one wants to compare something to a grand historical tragedy, one has to make sure that three things line up: number of people killed, the level of suffering endured by the victims, and the motivations of and political system used by the perpetrators. Assuming that life begins at conception, pro-lifers have a suitable body count. Unfortunately for pro-lifers, modern abortion docs are not motivated by race, as I have pointed out above (the Nazis were all about Race, with a capital 'R.' Race Race Race Race Race Race Race). It is in "level of suffering endured by the victims" that we reach the great sticking point and learn why this analogy is so offensive.

Let us make the wild conjecture that a fetus at any age can feel pain. Then let us compare the suffering our sensitive fetus would endure with the unpleasant sensations visited upon Henri, a hypothetical thirtysomething Jew who died in, let's say, Bergen-Belsen.

In the modern day, abortions are performed mostly with vacuum devices. The pressure causes death by crushing (we are operating under the assumption that this could be called death) almost immediately. For the sensitive fetus, this would mean an out-of-the-blue blast of pain followed by oblivion. Yet unconscious, he will be unaware of what will or has transpired.

Henri has spent nine years tirelessly trying to support his family of five in a country where he is barely allowed to do business. He is routinely humiliated in public, and people throw rocks at his children whenever they walk outside. One day, he and his family are arrested on no charge and driven onto a cattle car with forty (at least) other people, and are stuck there, in the dark, without water, for three days. When Henri arrives at Bergen-Belsen, his wife and children are taken somewhere else, probably to die (and Henri knows it). He goes through the terrifying and degrading two-day introduction to camp life, and is shaved, humiliated, numbered, and otherwise psychologically tortured. When this ends, the physical torture can begin. Our Henri sleeps with two other guys, none of whom speak his language, in a bed designed for one. He's starved, of course, and forced to work at pointless, exhausting menial tasks from dawn to dusk every single day. On average, he is beaten or whipped about sixteen times a week. He somehow ekes out an existence for six months, but then contracts dysentery. After coming under heavy ridicule from the guards, he is sent to the infirmary, where he tries to shake his painful and disgusting infection. After three days, the doctors realize that he's not going to be able to work anytime soon, so he is matter-of-factly sent to the gas chamber, where he drowns in his own hemorrhaging blood surrounded by 100 other wailing, thrashing people.

In short: if our Henri could hear you comparing abortion to the Holocaust, he would be MAJORLY PISSED.

Okay, I think I'm done. For now.
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