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This rather astonishing presentation is full of twisted logic, euphemisms, and false equivalencies, coupled with moral posturing and false premises.
The author wants to shift the way pro-choicers express their arguments buy suggesting they concede that something is actually dying. However, she will do her level best to de-humanize the unborn baby by refusing to call it a baby. In addition, she will frequently refer to pregnancy as gestation, and pregnant mothers as gestators. These terms are designed to separate out the emotional aspect of pregnancy and birth, which neutralizes any attachment to the baby.
One might think the author is talking about the movie Alien and not unborn babies.
Despite the author's "concession," nothing would really change in the rhetoric. Which mean the logical and moral inconsistencies of the pro-choice position remain.
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To be pro-choice is to be against forced life.
In 2019, I published a kind of manifesto—Full Surrogacy Now—whose opening line is “It is a wonder we let fetuses (Babies.)
Furthermore, if the labor of pregnancy is productive of life, then interrupting that labor is—logically speaking—productive of death. Rather than shy away from this, I believe we should embrace it as part of an effort to give gestating (Pregnancy.)
But what’s the point of acknowledging this now, at a time when abortion rights are so imperiled? For one thing, it would seem hard to deny that the euphemistic, apologetic, placatory “pro-choice” strategy hasn’t worked out thus far. (Indeed, it hasn't worked because it is intellectually and morally bankrupt. But we fail to see how admitting the truth that abortion kills a "something" advances the author's gruesome fetish.
This is a photo of a Seattle pro-life pregnancy center taken in the wake of the Dobbs decision. These things are not isolated, rare events. It is characteristic of the pro-choicers.)
To be pro-choice is to be against forced life.
In 2019, I published a kind of manifesto—Full Surrogacy Now—whose opening line is “It is a wonder we let fetuses (Babies.)
inside us.” The opening pages are entirely given over to my extended paean to the process of gestating (Pregnancy.)
in all its shockingly grisly biology, its everyday sublimity. Whereas, in other species, a female can often discard or expel a pregnancy at will, in our species, a hyper-invasive placenta puts the gestator (Woman.)
at risk of lethal hemorrhage. Locked down, our body becomes a daredevil participant in a wrestling match (or similar extreme sport) we cannot easily quit. From this starting point, I make a case for rethinking human gestation as real and, currently, often deadly dangerous labor, deserving of maximal support. ("Often?" According to the CDC, 700 women per year die due to pregnancies. In other words, it almost never happens.)
The controversial part is that a key correlate of viewing gestating (Pregnancy.)
as labor is that forcing someone to gestate against their will is forced labor. (One can only be forced to labor if that labor must be exerted on behalf of another party. That makes this a tacit admission that the unborn child is another party. An inanimate thing cannot force service.)
Furthermore, if the labor of pregnancy is productive of life, then interrupting that labor is—logically speaking—productive of death. Rather than shy away from this, I believe we should embrace it as part of an effort to give gestating (Pregnancy.)
the respect it deserves. (The author just finished characterizing pregnancy as gestation, which she claims is forced labor. How is this giving it the respect it deserves?)
In the intervening years since publishing my book, I have received dozens of reports of women who experienced the ideas in it as deeply salutary during pregnancy. Strangers have sent me photos of Full Surrogacy Now lying face-down in maternity wards. By the same token, I had drawn on heterodox pregnancy memoirs to bolster my claims.
“Never in my life have I felt more prochoice than when I was pregnant,” Maggie Nelson had written in The Argonauts in 2015, And never in my life have I understood more thoroughly, and been more excited about, a life that began at conception. Feminists may never make a bumper sticker that says IT’S A CHOICE AND A CHILD, but of course that’s what it is, and we know it. (If it's a child, then the abortion of that child is a choice to murder.)
“Never in my life have I felt more prochoice than when I was pregnant,” Maggie Nelson had written in The Argonauts in 2015, And never in my life have I understood more thoroughly, and been more excited about, a life that began at conception. Feminists may never make a bumper sticker that says IT’S A CHOICE AND A CHILD, but of course that’s what it is, and we know it. (If it's a child, then the abortion of that child is a choice to murder.)
We’re not idiots; we understand the stakes. (Who is "we?" Some people, including women, are certainly idiots and don't understand the stakes.)
Sometimes we choose death.… (No, the choice is murder.)
Harry and I sometimes joke that women should get way beyond twenty weeks—maybe even up to two days after birth—to decide if they want to keep the baby. (Joke, OK?) (The author is not joking, in actual fact. If the fetus is indeed a child, then the time at which the murder is committed is arbitrarily chosen. The logic being presented by the author applies to any state of existence of the child [or even an adult]. If it is permissible to end a human life before birth, there is no principle one can invoke that would make it impermissible to kill the person post-birth at any time for any reason.)
I agree with Nelson. There is something infantilizing about denying the fact that embryos die when we scrape them out of the bodies of which they are a part. (This has been the rhetoric of the pro-choice movement for decades, that the child is nothing but a clump of cells. But the author just told us that women are not idiots. By deduction it follows that the pro-choice movement is comprised of idiots, because this infantilizing denial is the position they currently take.)
I agree with Nelson. There is something infantilizing about denying the fact that embryos die when we scrape them out of the bodies of which they are a part. (This has been the rhetoric of the pro-choice movement for decades, that the child is nothing but a clump of cells. But the author just told us that women are not idiots. By deduction it follows that the pro-choice movement is comprised of idiots, because this infantilizing denial is the position they currently take.)
It sentimentalizes pregnant or potentially pregnant humans as fundamentally nonviolent creatures to imply that we can’t handle the truth about what we are up to when we opt out. (Well, this is certainly true. Pro-choicers can't handle the truth. We have witnessed pro-choice women go ballistic when challenged about their support of killing their unborn babies. They cannot handle the truth when they shout down opponents, bomb pro-life pregnancy centers, create protest setbacks around abortion clinics, and censor pro-life advertising during the Superbowl.)
And it patronizes abortion-getters to insist that we are only making a health care choice, rather than (also) extinguishing a future child. ("Future child?" Notice the way the author deals with the unborn baby. Despite her stated desire to admit that abortion involves killing, she seems to want to make sure we regard the death as a death of a thing, not a person.
Again, this has been the pro-choice rhetoric for decades. But more to the point, she is criticizing her own side. We can only conclude that the pro-choice message is purposefully preying on these women by lying to them.)
In my view, recognizing that gestating (Pregnancy.)
manufactures a proto-person (Baby.)
requires acknowledging that abortion kills a proto-person. (Baby.)
A baby is completely dependent on human care in order to stay alive, but its needs could be filled by any person—whereas a fetus, (Baby.)
a proto-person, (Baby.)
is ineluctably dependent on specific person. (...the child's mother. Which means the unborn baby is completely defenseless against a hostile mother intent on killing her baby.)
We humans do kill, when necessary: Victims of assault sometimes kill in self-defense, targets of persecution sometimes kill for justice—or just to reduce the number of their persecutors—and the colonized sometimes kill for liberation. (The Left typically rejects these kinds of killings. It is her ideological bedmates who protest the execution of murderers, who reject the idea of defending one's home against perpetrators of crimes, and who happily prosecute those who used a firearm to put down a criminal.)
We humans do kill, when necessary: Victims of assault sometimes kill in self-defense, targets of persecution sometimes kill for justice—or just to reduce the number of their persecutors—and the colonized sometimes kill for liberation. (The Left typically rejects these kinds of killings. It is her ideological bedmates who protest the execution of murderers, who reject the idea of defending one's home against perpetrators of crimes, and who happily prosecute those who used a firearm to put down a criminal.)
Mothers living in unspeakable conditions (including chattel slavery) have been documented to kill their children as an act of mercy. Of course, these examples are instances of necessary violence, generated by the conditions for which we struggle to render extinct. ("Necessary violence" is a moral judgment. The author needs to document why her morality is superior.)
When it comes to abortions, it seems possible that the conditions that necessitate them may never be wholly eliminated, even if vasectomies become generalized, (Vasectomies do not come to bear on the matter. It is the act of copulation that creates a pregnancy, not the fact that men are fertile.)
and perfected ectogenetic technologies become universally accessible. As long as people are performing pregnancy on this earth, they must be free to change their minds about seeing it through. (Why?)
The adoption industry could be revolutionized and child welfare lavishly subsidized; regardless of the available supports, no one should be pregnant involuntarily. (Why?
Also, we should note that the only women who become pregnant involuntarily are those who are impregnated due to rape. All consensual sexual intercourse includes the possibility of pregnancy. If the author doesn't want to conceive, she should not have sex.)
The science of medicine dictates that when foreign organisms inhabit the human body unwelcomely, we tend to eject them. (After admitting the unborn baby is indeed a child, the author does her best to dehumanize her.)
When a beloved nonhuman member of the family is sick and elderly, many pet owners decide not to pay for medical care, and opt for euthanasia instead. It is a mark of moral seriousness to acknowledge what it is that we’re doing when we butcher a cow, put a pet “to sleep” or, for that matter, euthanize a human relative. (Now the author devolves to moral equivalency.)
When a beloved nonhuman member of the family is sick and elderly, many pet owners decide not to pay for medical care, and opt for euthanasia instead. It is a mark of moral seriousness to acknowledge what it is that we’re doing when we butcher a cow, put a pet “to sleep” or, for that matter, euthanize a human relative. (Now the author devolves to moral equivalency.)
According to the philosopher of science Donna Haraway, we must “stay with the trouble” of the violence we inevitably mete out in our everyday traffic with forms of life, be it at the dinner table, the battlefield, or in the scientific laboratory. Rather than squaring our acts of killing away according to a moral calculus, or pretending that we aren’t really killing, multispecies feminists should subscribe, suggests Haraway, to the ethical imperative, “Thou shalt not make killable.” (Which in itself is a moral calculus. The author further devolves, this time into versions of morality.)
This might seem counterintuitive in the context of an argument in favor of abortion-as-killing, but the distinction between making fetuses (Babies.)
This might seem counterintuitive in the context of an argument in favor of abortion-as-killing, but the distinction between making fetuses (Babies.)
killable, and making it easy and stigma-free for people to take the decision to kill a fetus, (Baby.)
is significant. The former refers to casting something (a lab rat, for example) out of the sphere the grievable, thanks to a tidy and final verdict on the permissibility of systematically sacrificing its life to a greater cause. The latter, while expanding access to the means of feticide, does not necessarily require any such sanitization of violence. (The result is the same. "Greater cause" is a moral judgment that needs to be documented.)
For millennia, those of us who have helped a friend terminate a pregnancy—be it with herbal abortifacients, progesterone blockers and ulcer tablets, or vacuum extraction devices—are well situated to understand that something is killed during a uterine evacuation, much as a flower dies when it is plucked. (More moral equivalence. We could make our own illustration: "...something is killed during a uterine evacuation, much like a man is gunned down in the streets.")
For millennia, those of us who have helped a friend terminate a pregnancy—be it with herbal abortifacients, progesterone blockers and ulcer tablets, or vacuum extraction devices—are well situated to understand that something is killed during a uterine evacuation, much as a flower dies when it is plucked. (More moral equivalence. We could make our own illustration: "...something is killed during a uterine evacuation, much like a man is gunned down in the streets.")
But what’s the point of acknowledging this now, at a time when abortion rights are so imperiled? For one thing, it would seem hard to deny that the euphemistic, apologetic, placatory “pro-choice” strategy hasn’t worked out thus far. (Indeed, it hasn't worked because it is intellectually and morally bankrupt. But we fail to see how admitting the truth that abortion kills a "something" advances the author's gruesome fetish.
Further, the author has demonstrated her propensity to employ euphemisms at every turn. And we observe that there has been nothing placatory about the pro-choice movement.
Here's an example of the "placatory" behavior:
This is a photo of a Seattle pro-life pregnancy center taken in the wake of the Dobbs decision. These things are not isolated, rare events. It is characteristic of the pro-choicers.)
So, why not risk coming out for what we actually want, namely, abortion—a clearly documented public good? (Undocumented claim.)
The pending Supreme Court leak thrusts us into a situation in which we have little left to lose. Rather than cleave in desperation to the rearguard missions of defending the rights (to privacy, rather than abortion) enshrined in Roe v. Wade, we could consider this moment a chance to reset the terms on which abortion is fought. (In other words, they want to kill babies so badly that they will do or say anything to continue to kill them.)
What would it mean to acknowledge that a death is involved in an abortion? Above all, it would allow for a fairer fight against the proponents of forced gestating. (Pregnancy.)
What would it mean to acknowledge that a death is involved in an abortion? Above all, it would allow for a fairer fight against the proponents of forced gestating. (Pregnancy.)
When “pro-life” forces agitate against feticide on the basis that it is killing, pro-abortion feminists should be able to acknowledge, without shame, that yes, of course it is. When we withdraw from gestating, (Pregnancy.)
we stop the life of the product of our gestational labor. And it’s a good thing we do, too, (More moral posturing.)
for otherwise the world would sag under the weight of forced life. (Save the planet...
If that is the high moral reason to continue abortion [which we doubt], then we must consider that by the same reasoning any human death is justifiable, even desirable, because saving the planet is a higher moral good.
Again we must ask, why is the author's morality superior?
And, it seems that appealing to the environment is a non-starter. If a person rejects abortion because it is murder, that person will continue to reject abortion, even if the result is saving the planet.)
It is a hard pill to swallow for a misogynist society, (Society is not misogynist.)
sentimentally attached to its ideology of patriarchal motherhood, (There is no such thing as "patriarchal motherhood." Despite the noises the author has made about abandoning the euphemisms associated with the pro-choice position, she wishes to continue using them.
This confirms our theory about the author attempting to de-emotionalize pregnancy.)
but the truth is that gestators (Women.)
should get to decide which bodies to give form to. (Why?)
This choosing is our prerogative. (Why?)
A desire not to be pregnant is sufficient reason in and of itself to terminate a gestatee. (Why?)
When we force anti-abortionists to disagree explicitly with this, we bring their logic of female subordination into the open: (More pro-choice rhetoric.)
When we force anti-abortionists to disagree explicitly with this, we bring their logic of female subordination into the open: (More pro-choice rhetoric.)
Those with uteruses (Women.)
must serve patiently as the vessels through which life passes. (Biology is a unacceptably harsh taskmaster, apparently.)
We lay bare the calculus at the heart of their worldview, which they only sometimes spell out in so many words, as does the Mississippi pro-life leader Barbara Beaver: “Mothers should die for their babies, not the other way around.” (This is a moral pronouncement, against which the author makes no rebuttal.)
Women are human, and as such can never be as innocent as the unborn. But innocence (as we see every time a police victim is described as “no angel” by the press) is a fundamentally inhumane category in politics, deriving from the most punitive interpretations of Christianity. ("Innocence is a fundamentally inhumane category..." What does this mean? And what does Christianity have to do with this?)
Women are human, and as such can never be as innocent as the unborn. But innocence (as we see every time a police victim is described as “no angel” by the press) is a fundamentally inhumane category in politics, deriving from the most punitive interpretations of Christianity. ("Innocence is a fundamentally inhumane category..." What does this mean? And what does Christianity have to do with this?)
According to this imaginary, non-innocence is the core characteristic of everything “fallen,” which is to say, everything that has ever lived. That’s why the ghoulish natalism (Moral posturing.)
of those lobbying to give embryos (Babies.)
the rights of patients and persons in law is, in the end, an anti-life position. (Opposing the murder of unborn babies is anti-life.)
It cares solely for the quantitative rather than qualitative dimensions of life, chasing life in the abstract and missing everything that matters about life as it is actually lived: life in particular. (Translation: It is a better life when the unborn baby is murdered.)
Fetishizing newness and sentimentalizing helplessness, pro-lifers pit themselves ruthlessly against the overwhelming majority of human life-in-particular. In their minds, fetuses (Babies.)
Fetishizing newness and sentimentalizing helplessness, pro-lifers pit themselves ruthlessly against the overwhelming majority of human life-in-particular. In their minds, fetuses (Babies.)
deserve every protection, (No, unborn babies as human beings are entitled to their constitutional rights.)
while we actually existing human beings (Unborn babies exist.)
belong to a completely different species. We are on our own, self-responsible; fatally compromised, because enfleshed. (Adulthood is a harsh taskmaster.)
Anti-abortionists routinely sacrifice the health and happiness of actual persons in defense (Babies are actual persons. Remember when the author jokingly" advocated for the murder of post-born children? The definition of an "actual person" seems rather fluid.)
Anti-abortionists routinely sacrifice the health and happiness of actual persons in defense (Babies are actual persons. Remember when the author jokingly" advocated for the murder of post-born children? The definition of an "actual person" seems rather fluid.)
of the forced survival of potential ones. (The euphemisms continue to pour forth.)
It is high time we went on the offensive against their sickening, sacrificial version of vitalism. (Remember, she's talking about babies.)
Our is the mature pro-life politics. I don’t want to live in a world that valorizes life for its own sake. (Well, the author is free to commit herself to the fate of unborn babies, since it is self-evidently good to do so for the sake of the planet, right?)
I want to live in a world that prioritizes the life chosen and wanted. Peoples’ lives are worth more than fetuses’ (Baby's.)
lives. (The author ends with more moral posturing.
So, on what basis would we decide the worth of lives? What moral or legal reasoning would prohibit the ending of any life, if that life is based on calculated worth? Should we kill people who are deemed too old? Too low of IQ? Not possessing skills that are useful to society? In a coma? The wrong political ideology? The wrong religion?
If worth is the criteria, then any criteria is in play to determine worth.)
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