Get out of the public square
On a blog owned by the New York Times recently, they hosted a discussion about a woman contemplating an abortion. Many have felt the need to offer advice to the woman. Many have felt the need to comment upon it. Rather than abortion being a regrettable expedient that is tolerated so we don’t as a community have to address the consequences of the sexual revolution, abortion is treated as if it were the evaluation of competing moral claims. Once more we as a society have moved from tolerance to embracing.
People are prone to laugh at it now, but a couple of years ago a couple television syndicates wouldn’t run a condom ad, because the condom ad implied or stated that its use should be for situations outside marriage. The most common argument was that condom ads should be run for AIDS and STD prevention. Of course, the fact that we as a society had been openly advocating condom use through the schools for disease prevention for two decades (roughly coinciding with the AIDS epidemic) didn’t help the argument that TV needed to avoid advocating the use of condoms except within marriage so as not to offend the sensibilities of viewers. The message attached was that if we didn’t offer general education people wouldn’t know. Of course, STDs and AIDS were never a general threat. Chlamydia is the most widespread STD in this county, adding 1 to 3 million people annually to its roles. (Those annoying commercials showing mothers saying they want to save their daughters from getting cervical cancer is actually advertising a vaccine to this virus.) The thing is that STDs are not a generalized risk. The easiest factor for predicting STD incidence is number of lifetime partners. Not even regularity of condom use is as predictive. And the truth is that people most at risk AIDS and other lethal STDs weren’t all that ignorant of it. Prostitutes for example have campaigns targeted to them. Gay clubs had information targeted to them. Youth establishments had campaigns targeted to them.
This sensibility of what is normal is so fleeting. If a guy wrote a blog post wondering whether he should give his mistress an extra $5000 so she would go through with an abortion, keeping the knowledge of his infidelity from his wife, people wouldn’t searching for empathy. They would be attempting to quell their outrage. A woman however debates ending her baby’s life so she can pursue a degree and a career, and we are supposed to extend our comfort. We are now expected to entertain this as reasonable public debate. Yesterday, I didn’t really care what this woman did. I didn’t know her, and I didn’t know what she was contemplating. I was blissful in my ignorance. Now she has the gall to ask society and by extension me to enter into her mellow drama because she knocked herself up with a guy she had no intention of ever marrying. When you commit stupid behaviors, there is little wonder that future alternatives aren’t always which bouquet of flowers do I choose? Welcome to adulthood. Don’t act like some ignorant child that doesn’t know the consequences of his/her actions. Sure, it is likely you are going to abort the child, continuuing your pattern of narcissistic, self-indulgent behavior. Rather than holding your hand wringing up as an example of virtuous contemplation, people should really re-evaluate what childishness they are willing to tolerate from someone they don’t know, haven’t known, and have no interest in knowing.
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I agree. But whilst we are complaining about this narcissistic woman and her stupidity, she is making plans to have her innocent, unborn child chopped to bits inside of her womb. Though she would like the world to focus on her *plight* and feel justfied for a decision she had already made before she first started typing her *me* story, it is not her life that will be *interrupted*. She will receive plenty of endorsements for scheduling and permitting the murder of her baby boy or girl. Very sad.
Well, I often try to point out what I consider to be problems with anti-abortion rhetoric (like “unborn child chopped to bits inside her womb”) and “radical” pro-lifers. But she says:
What does she think is going to happen to Ziggy — to whom she is so attached — when she has the abortion?
I would be curious to know about the graduate program she describes. I am not convinced her description is accurate and objective, and if it is, maybe someone should do an exposé of a program that discriminates against pregnant women. If employers can accommodate the needs of pregnant women, graduate programs should be able to also. In fact, they should be able to be more flexible than employers.
There are plenty of holes in her story and a number of red flags.
David N – you are correct that people should be focusing colleges for their discrimination against pregnant women.
84% of all abortion are performed on women 24 year old or younger. A 2005 study showed of 3,000 college women, 600 had pregnancy tests; 300 of these tests were positive; and 6 women had babies. Pregnant women cannot find the practical or emotional support they need to be both parents and students, so they must leave school. Most colleges do not have childcare on campus for students. Most college health plans cover abortions but not maternity or prenatal care.
That is why the Pregnant Women Support Act (S1032 in the Senate and HR 2035 in the House) is SO important. One of the key provisions is to help pregnant high-school and college students stay in school, offering them counseling as well as assistance with continuing their education, parenting support and classes, and child care assistance.
It provides an authentic common ground, an approach that people can embrace regardless of their position.
I hope everyone is supporting and promoting it.
David would you accept the following rhetoric: abortion is the veritable “slaughter of the innocents”? Or would that make me a radical as well?
Joseph,
I would not be thrilled with the rhetoric. Also, I put the word radical in scare quotes, which alters the meaning.
But here’s you chance to find a bit of common ground with me, if you like, since I am not on her side. Someone who has formed a sentimental attachment — as she claims she has — to little Ziggy, the baby growing inside her can’t turn around and say, “Once I came to the decision to terminate the pregnancy, so much of the guilt and sadness I’d been feeling melted away. I felt happy for the first time since finding out and I feel like my family is supportive of my decision.” You can’t have it both ways. You can’t be so attached to little Ziggy that you couldn’t bear to bring him to term and give him away, and then claim you are guilt free and happy to have an abortion.
And as MZ says, “There are plenty of holes in her story and a number of red flags.” This doesn’t sound real to me. I would not be surprised to find out it is a hoax. Or maybe it really is all true, and she’s not in touch with reality. I have to say, it sounds like a short story written by an adolescent.
I’ve only known one woman who had an abortion (decades ago), so I am not an expert. But this woman didn’t sound at all like the woman I knew.
David,
OK, the description above (veritable “slaughter of the innocents”) came from “On Combatting Abortion and Euthanasia”, the letter to the bishops written by Pope John Paul II. I’d offer more descriptions give to us by the popes in regards to abortion, but I think you understand where I’m coming from. If they’re writings are considered anti-abortion rhetoric, thus, they are considered “radicals”, then I think I’m in good company.
Leaving that aside… Unfortunately, most college English programs have become no better than those in high schools. It may be that the person who wrote this story is not an adolescent but only writes (and behaves) like one. Or perhaps you have discovered who the *real* target audience for the story is! I do believe that for one to get attached to “Ziggy” (a most condescending nickname if there ever was one, especially since “Ziggy” would no longer be a zygote by the time he was destroyed) and then feel totally relieved that destroying “Ziggy” is the correct choice seems a bit far-fetched for me as well. I have visions of some “radical” at Planned Parenthood giggling away as she typed this story.
“they’re” should be “their”… I make that mistake constantly in comboxes.
Joseph,
I see two problems (at least) with the “slaughter of the innocents” remark. First, presumably it is an allusion to the Biblical story in Matthew 2 in which Herod orders the murder of all boys 2 years old or less in Bethlehem and surrounding areas. It is doubtful that any such thing happened, and if it did, Bethlehem was so tiny (300 people) that the high estimate that I have seen for the number of children that would have been killed is 20.
Aside from that, slaughter (or massacre) implies a large number of killings en mass, as in a battle, by a a single agent (ethnic group, government, army, gang, etc.) not a large number of individual killings.
From the ant-abortion point of view, one may still look with horror on the practice of abortion without seeing it as “slaughter.” To those who believe personhood begins at conception, abortion is morally indistinguishable from infanticide. I am not convinced of that. But suppose the two are equivalent. Suppose it were the case in the United States today that parents were legally able to kill their children (or take them to the local veterinarian to be “put so sleep”) up to, say, the age of 1 year. If over a million children a year were killed by their parents, I would find that horrifying and appalling. I might call it a lot of things, but I wouldn’t call it slaughter.
David,
Like I alluded to before, take your argument up with the supreme authority of the Church. Those were words out of the Pope’s mouth. I feel confident that I am on the right side of the argument. Thanks for your concern though!
Like I alluded to before, take your argument up with the supreme authority of the Church.
Joseph,
Unfortunately, the Pope doesn’t participate in any of the forums where I ague!
In any case, it is not so much an argument as a point of view about how best to express something. Even the most loyal of Catholics are under no obligation to believe that every phrase a pope uses is the best possible phrase that could be used. Here’s the paragraph containing the sentence you quote:
I would say the important point in the part I italicized. Arguing over the phrase “slaughter of the innocents” would be nit-picking.