Abortion Rights Predicted to End
http://www.kansan.com/stories/2006/aug/25/letter/?opinion
Scott Stone writes an insightful article.
Recently, on these pages, a politically progressive author urged all KU students with similarly left-leaning worldviews to look inward and find new ways to advance their agenda.
The message was, “Stop blaming conservatives for doing a better job of getting their message across, and do the hard work necessary to convince the public that we’re right.”
In the spirit, then, of helping the Lawrence progressive community recognize a threat to its deeply-held convictions, I offer a prediction. More accurately, I’ll call it a warning:
In the very near future, with little notice, the “Right of Reproductive Choice” in America will cease to exist.
I’ve only recently come to believe this. In fact, as a KU student, my view on the topic looked very much like left-leaning America’s view — if you don’t like abortion, don’t have one. Keep your laws off my girlfriend’s body.
In the very near future, with little notice, the “Right of Reproductive Choice” in America will cease to exist.
Then I got married and had a son.
I saw his little heart beating on the MRI screen in the hospital, six months before he was born. It hit me then and there that abortion’s days were numbered. Why? New technology provides new insight. I could see how quickly that lump of cells was becoming my son, and it made me realize that every argument I’d ever made justifying the “right of choice” was some variation of the same little neat and tidy four words: It’s Not A Person.
Every single pro-choice argument rests on the cornerstone of denying an unborn child legal rights and protection. (Doubt me? Try to think of an argument that doesn’t.) If that lump is really a person, then aborting it for convenience is murder; thus, progressives must never let it be defined as a person.
Once they consider the absolute nature of this truism, progressives simply shut down intellectually. The champions of civil rights could never admit they’ve built a political institution on the same ground as misogynists, homophobes and slave owners.
Psychologists call it cognitive dissonance: the inability to deal with a severe intellectual conflict, particularly as it relates to a pre-existing self-image. I call it an enormous blind spot.
In 1854, how did the Supreme Court justify slavery in Dred Scott? It denied that a black man was fully a person under the law. In 1901, how did men justify the disenfranchisement of women at the ballot box? They denied that a woman was fully a person under the law.
And today, how do progressives justify the right to terminate a pregnancy at a woman’s discretion? You know the answer — just as you also know subconsciously that conservatives can’t be allowed to dwell on it in public debate.
Once people start asking the question, “Doesn’t that unborn baby have any rights?” the left loses. Progressives can’t answer that question, so they keep changing the subject — calling pro-lifers names like “Nazi” or “woman-hater,” or squealing that somehow they’re the ones who truly stand for civil rights, for women. Scream about women’s rights; ignore that embryo behind the curtain.
Last semester a progressive writer, on this very page, called the fight over abortion the civil rights struggle of our time. She didn’t know how right she was. It never dawned on her that she’s on the same side as Jim Crow. Conservatives have figured that out, and they’re not going to let you change the subject anymore.
“Choice” will end in America when conservatives consistently frame this debate as a matter of recognizing civil rights where rights have been wholly denied, an argument that is undefeated in American political debate.
Unless you think of something new, your only strategy to defend abortion rights is to somehow keep convincing a majority of Americans that a small defenseless living thing with human DNA, an active brain and a beating heart is not legally a person.
How much longer can that possibly work?
What a wonderful journey this man took when he became a father. My husband has always been pro-life but his passion for abortion, parenting issues, and matters of childrens' civil rights after birth grew tremendously. Becoming a parent fundamentally changes a person and they find new things out about themselves.
Every single pro-choice argument rests on the cornerstone of denying an unborn child legal rights and protection. (Doubt me? Try to think of an argument that doesn’t.) If that lump is really a person, then aborting it for convenience is murder; thus, progressives must never let it be defined as a person.
My gosh that last paragraph bears repeating. The entire pro-choice argument fundamentally requires a whole nation to believe that unborn children are sub-human expendables.
Scott Stone writes an insightful article.
Recently, on these pages, a politically progressive author urged all KU students with similarly left-leaning worldviews to look inward and find new ways to advance their agenda.
The message was, “Stop blaming conservatives for doing a better job of getting their message across, and do the hard work necessary to convince the public that we’re right.”
In the spirit, then, of helping the Lawrence progressive community recognize a threat to its deeply-held convictions, I offer a prediction. More accurately, I’ll call it a warning:
In the very near future, with little notice, the “Right of Reproductive Choice” in America will cease to exist.
I’ve only recently come to believe this. In fact, as a KU student, my view on the topic looked very much like left-leaning America’s view — if you don’t like abortion, don’t have one. Keep your laws off my girlfriend’s body.
In the very near future, with little notice, the “Right of Reproductive Choice” in America will cease to exist.
Then I got married and had a son.
I saw his little heart beating on the MRI screen in the hospital, six months before he was born. It hit me then and there that abortion’s days were numbered. Why? New technology provides new insight. I could see how quickly that lump of cells was becoming my son, and it made me realize that every argument I’d ever made justifying the “right of choice” was some variation of the same little neat and tidy four words: It’s Not A Person.
Every single pro-choice argument rests on the cornerstone of denying an unborn child legal rights and protection. (Doubt me? Try to think of an argument that doesn’t.) If that lump is really a person, then aborting it for convenience is murder; thus, progressives must never let it be defined as a person.
Once they consider the absolute nature of this truism, progressives simply shut down intellectually. The champions of civil rights could never admit they’ve built a political institution on the same ground as misogynists, homophobes and slave owners.
Psychologists call it cognitive dissonance: the inability to deal with a severe intellectual conflict, particularly as it relates to a pre-existing self-image. I call it an enormous blind spot.
In 1854, how did the Supreme Court justify slavery in Dred Scott? It denied that a black man was fully a person under the law. In 1901, how did men justify the disenfranchisement of women at the ballot box? They denied that a woman was fully a person under the law.
And today, how do progressives justify the right to terminate a pregnancy at a woman’s discretion? You know the answer — just as you also know subconsciously that conservatives can’t be allowed to dwell on it in public debate.
Once people start asking the question, “Doesn’t that unborn baby have any rights?” the left loses. Progressives can’t answer that question, so they keep changing the subject — calling pro-lifers names like “Nazi” or “woman-hater,” or squealing that somehow they’re the ones who truly stand for civil rights, for women. Scream about women’s rights; ignore that embryo behind the curtain.
Last semester a progressive writer, on this very page, called the fight over abortion the civil rights struggle of our time. She didn’t know how right she was. It never dawned on her that she’s on the same side as Jim Crow. Conservatives have figured that out, and they’re not going to let you change the subject anymore.
“Choice” will end in America when conservatives consistently frame this debate as a matter of recognizing civil rights where rights have been wholly denied, an argument that is undefeated in American political debate.
Unless you think of something new, your only strategy to defend abortion rights is to somehow keep convincing a majority of Americans that a small defenseless living thing with human DNA, an active brain and a beating heart is not legally a person.
How much longer can that possibly work?
What a wonderful journey this man took when he became a father. My husband has always been pro-life but his passion for abortion, parenting issues, and matters of childrens' civil rights after birth grew tremendously. Becoming a parent fundamentally changes a person and they find new things out about themselves.
Every single pro-choice argument rests on the cornerstone of denying an unborn child legal rights and protection. (Doubt me? Try to think of an argument that doesn’t.) If that lump is really a person, then aborting it for convenience is murder; thus, progressives must never let it be defined as a person.
My gosh that last paragraph bears repeating. The entire pro-choice argument fundamentally requires a whole nation to believe that unborn children are sub-human expendables.
posted by MissHailey at 5:49 PM
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