Q&A: Part II
In a fit of compassion, I’m going to move talk about me away from Brett’s post and to this one. In particular, Darwin Catholic made a claim that we don’t often correct people’s comments here when they dissent. I’m also going to address comments regarding the pro-life movement more generally.
I’ve grown out of the habit of responding to comboxes. I generally respond only if the argument is so poor that it will provide me brief entertainment or if I have an intelligent rebuttal to an intelligent argument. Darwin will often fall in the latter category. If I don’t respond, I agree with the argument, find the argument non-responsive to my discussion, or find the argument so poor that I would be spending half a day making corrections so that each side could get to an intelligent point. I have transitioned to attempting to persuade others with my arguments and not my interlocutors.
In plain truth I’m not a supporter of the pro-life movement, and I think I’ve made that clear in various ways. That doesn’t make me some cryptic abortion supporter. Such a person wouldn’t have written this, something that many contributors didn’t agree with and still don’t agree with. All sorts of people in the pro-life movement were falling all over themselves to show their compassion. For the most part, it was a cheap and easy compassion to give. That pretty much typifies the movement today. A bunch of cheap and easy enemies are made up because the real problem of abortion is a difficult one politically and one not solved with cheap slogans and easy answers. So organizations prey on people’s insecurities managing to enrich themselves (or at least provide themselves a living, although it shouldn’t be discounted how much many of these people make off the unborn), give their supporters the security blanket of having cared, and do nothing toward actually ending abortion.
Unlike many of the people you see commenting, I don’t have a fiduciary interest in the movement. My self-importance isn’t wrapped up in what I have done for the movement. I have no loyalty to the movement. That bothers a lot of people. I’m sorry but you are going to have to look elsewhere to get your validation. The movement isn’t doing a whole lot of good. Having me say that doesn’t mean much. The movement is going to have to realize that itself. That will require setting aside some sacred cows like the belief we are in this mess and the way out it through the Supreme Court. Almost every first world country has legalized abortion. Our Supreme Court didn’t cause that. Abortion was already being legalized in the legislatures when the ruling came down. Politically, efforts to significantly restrict abortion in places where it is allegedly unpopular have failed. I didn’t make that reality. It isn’t a reflection of my preferences. If that makes you uncomfortable, your problem isn’t with me.
Comments are closed.
How dare you point out reality?
MZ, It seems that if you do not address or perceive the crisis of abortion as the right or the left want you to then you become the enemy. I hate abortion because it not only ends the life of a developing human being, but it also indicates that I(we) have not sacrificed enough to make the world a safe place to raise our children.
The truth is that the left, right and middle have created the environment that results in women aborting their babies.
The truth is all of us have a hand in killing babies no matter how much we may protest at abortion clinics.
Yes. That is the truth.
M.Z.,
I think I can understand your position in not being a supporter of the pro-life movement. Though I disagree with you because I think the pro-life movement is doing a lot of good work, I’ve been reading VN long enough to begin to understand where you and other VN bloggers are coming from when you criticize, or become disgusted with, apparently hypocritical or pointless pro-life posturing and politics (and sometimes I even recognize that your criticism has merit).
But with regard to this particular LiveAction story, I think your skeptical attitude towards the pro-life side unfortunately led you to unthinkingly jump to the wrong conclusion, where you sided with the PP employee against Live Action. I hope that my discussion with you has prompted you to reconsider your initial position. Regardless of our views on abortion strategies, I would hope that we could all agree that the actions of the PP employees displayed in the videos by ignoring reporting laws and by facilitating and/or ignoring the exploitation of underage women is entirely inappropriate.
Thales, I will say for myself I entirely agree with you. I think the LiveAction video was great. And I ‘m glad you appreciate that some us are against abortion yet see the Pro-Life Movement as hopeless corrupt and biased to a secular right-wing political agenda.
MZ, I admit you aren’t my favourite contributor on VN due to your last few posts criticizing the traditional movement (extremes do deserve that criticism though) with too broad a brushstroke. However, this opinion of yours on the Pro-life movement isn’t unique to you, albeit there may be different angles as to why people don’t support it. You may have some credence on this one.
Voris the Bieber-Head put out this video a couple weeks ago and criticizes the movement itself, especially the March for Life.
I just hope you don’t swing the Bieber-head’s way though on this issue. However reading your post and seeing his video does make me realize there pro-life movement is not 100% clear cut and there are some flawed elements to the movement.
I will be looking forward to the other Vox Novas coming on here on what you’ve written. Does MZ have credence with this one folks?
Oh help me Lord. Just like with every other instance where he opens his mouth Voris got his facts messed up in this video too.
As Morning’s Minion pointed out so very well in his most recent post |Incompletely Pro-life| a major driving force to this movement is sexuality, or to be more precise, repression of it. Neither they nor Voris enjoy sex and they do not want anyone else to either. Voris makes that quite plain in the lovely video you provided.
However Voris is attacking the pro-life movement not because they are a corrupt political movement, but because they do not view the world through his procreation only lens.
As with everything else that spews out of Voris, this does not mesh with either scripture or doctrine, it meshes only with his agenda. That gives him something very much in common with the pro-life movement. The only problem is Voris is not making us look very good. Call it guilt by association.
“Neither they nor Voris enjoy sex and they do not want anyone else to either.”
Wow that is sad, but it’s kinda funny at the same time too. I can only imagine Voris actually coming out and saying “I don’t enjoy sex and I don’t want you to enjoy sex either!” or some parody.
gisher, you have been posting a lot lately and your arguments seem coherent enough. Perhaps you should become a permanent contributor to VN? (only the other VNs can truly assess that though. I’m just more a participator because of Brett Salkeld’s great works.)
What slips by in the video is Voris is going after the Church leadership. Flat out condemns them on the issue of birth control and abortion. A direct challenge to Papal authority.
Very similar to the attacks Vox Nova is getting right now from other blogs. I have always liked those Mid-evil times festivals but I am not sure what this crowd wants is anywhere near as passive an experience.
It is generally best not to link videos. Could you give a Cliff’s Notes version of his argument?
I imagining I won’t be joining Voris because he doesn’t seem to like messiness. (My criticisms of traditionalism have been over the utopian elements which you have rightly detected.) He likes easy villains.
The temptation is to write a post of “What’s the one thing we can do to reduce abortion?” or “What’s the one thing we can do to prevent a massive hemorrhaging of the Church?” The answer is between nothing and I don’t know. If we are more sophisticated, we come up with 12-step programs and action plans. The truth is that our knowledge is limited. Choices made today will influence choices tomorrow in unforeseen ways. In the case of a large organizations, it isn’t a simple matter of flipping a switch if we figure out something isn’t working. Of course that is premised upon us recognizing something isn’t working and not deluding ourselves with the idea that things are going to change any day now.
What I don’t get is the apparently summary rejection of “the pro-life movement”. I can understand not wanting to join forces with this particular organization or individual, who you think is too beholden to certain political allegiances that you find repellent. But is there no pro-life organization you can join up with? Can’t you be part of the “pro-life movement” without aligning yourself with a particular person or group that you don’t like?
If you are distancing yourself from “the pro-life movement” in general, are you saying that nothing can or should be done to end abortion? We shouldn’t protest, or picket, or bear witness through public prayer, or show pictures so people grasp the true horror of abortion?
If that’s not what you’re saying, that’s fine. Honestly, I’m just asking.
I am saying that political options are basically closed. My support of a human life amendment for example is worth about as much as my support for you making a million dollars per year. I don’t have a problem with either one in principle, but I don’t see a path toward achieving them, and I especially don’t see a path where I play a substantive role in achieving either goal.
As for protests and whatnot, I think they do have their place. I get concerned when they become forms of self validation rather than efforts to persuade, but overall that concern isn’t too prevalent for me. Protesting President Obama speaking at Notre Dame fell into the category of being more about self validation in my opinion, to give an example. The everyday protest outside an abortion clinic is a good thing. Picketing doctors’ homes is good thing. Making people aware of abortion so that they feel uncomfortable, as they should, does not bother me. Alienating people over periphery issues bothers me. Treating people that agree 75% of the time on the need to end abortion worse than than the people that disagree all the time bothers me, particularly from a prudential perspective since the coalition to end abortion is not even close to being in place.
I try not to pretend that I’m a snowflake. There are people in the movement, and they aren’t me. There are many, many, many pro-life organizations because there is a lot of money to be made in the non-profit sector. Other than making money, there agenda is …. That is the problem isn’t it. None of them have an honest path toward ending abortion, because people don’t buy solutions, they buy hope. While I haven’t followed them, C-FAM does seem to serve a useful purpose at least, making people aware of things going on at the UN. But for the most part these organizations just compete to see who can be the most shrill to collect the most donations. I should note that my cynicism here is not reserved for the pro-life movement; I have an extremely low opinion of the nonprofit sector. If you ever want to be depressed, look up some Form 990s (they are publicly available) on various organizations. And it isn’t like what I’ve said isn’t even said among pro-lifers. A lot of these organizations were formed because a pro-lifer became disillusioned with the organization for which they were working.
So basically it seems like you’re saying, there’s nothing we can do about the law, all we can do is favor policies that might help limit the number of actual abortions that take place. Is that right?
That isn’t quite as simple of a question as it seems, at least if you aren’t answering yes. If I chose not to have children, I would be eliminating the chance my heirs would have an abortion because there would be no opportunity to do so. That would be a cause not to have children, but I of course wouldn’t make that a binding consideration. Creating an allowance of agency may be detrimental to the cause of reducing abortion (in the example, the allowance of agency is creation of children with their own agency), but we don’t ordinarily speak of it as a cooperation with evil. That said, there may be times where limiting agency is prudent, but that is a prudential nature and not intrinsic nature. Again, that isn’t speaking to the question of the criminalization of abortion.
But is there no pro-life organization you can join up with?
Agellius,
What organization would you recommend to those who see pro-life organizations to closely allied with the political right or the Republican party and have the same criticisms as Kurt (for example) have of the pro-life movement?