Abortion is dead! Long Live Abortion.. the only reason I and my siblings exist! · 8:18am Jul 18th, 2022
Yeah , this is going to be the most controversial thing I write here. ever. Just reread the title
I am going to regret posting this I guess. But I have to.
First of all, I hope never, for the rest of my life, to hear the hopefully by now obvious to all lie, that conservatives want a "small government that keeps out of peoples lives."
I, of course, have always known this is a lie. When I immigrated finally to the nation of my birth ( having been born in the USA but growing up in central america) my mother, needing a community since my father had to remain behind for the first two years, emmeshed us into the local immigrant serving church, which turned out to be the Hispanic ministry of the local Southern Baptist megachurch. These were the years of the Clinton Impeachment, and as I have chronicled elsewhere, I was the pet project of the youth minister ( not like that... he was an upstanding man... he just thought I would be a great preacher with my knack for memorizing bible passages in both English and Spanish, and speaking and arguing in public.)
I knew what they wanted. They told me. I was one of them. I was going to be one of the officers in their army.
My Political Awakening... well i was never politically asleep, what with my father running political campaigns ( among five other jobs) for a living in Latin America. But In High School when I was on the debate team, and along with my best friend, co-founded my High School's model UN Team, I studied the political situation in this country assiduously. And I saw what George W Bush offered his base. Theocracy. Constitutional Amendments banning non heterosexuals from marriage. The introduction of Creationism into science classrooms under the name of " intelligent design" etc.
There was never any intention from these people of ever pretending they had any interest in " letting people live their lives."
Ayn Rand was an utter psychopath. But one thing she understood extremely well was that theocratic social conservatism was completely incompatible with her Anarcho-Capitalist ( what in the United States is called " Libertarianism") world view. Rand understood full well that her worldview was the most anti-Christian worldview imaginable. For her this was a positive, she never disguised her extreme hostility to religion. Not only were her economics the opposite of the concept of " it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven" but her hyper Aristotelian/ Nietzchean Master-Slave morality was also deeply anti-christian. Christianity after all, is the ultimate in " slave" morality, and Rand was writing for the " Prime Movers", those who ran the world, and who had the moral right, in her view, to use and abuse other humans, for only "Master" morality, the nobility of the hero who lives hard, dies young and breaks thousands of eggs on the way there, mattered. In Rand's worldview, the ideal man is Alexander the Great. No Christian could ever agree with that.
Throughout all of history the government is the ONLY thing that has ever been able to stand up for the weak against the powerful. To dismantle the government therefore, is by definition to render the weak helpless( except of course to their own devises). Ayn Rand understood this with Crystal Clear clarity. Her mission was to argue that a world were the powerful openly preyed upon the weak was the only truly moral world. The fact that so many of her greatest admirers ( Paul Ryan, Ron Paul) call themselves " Christian" baffles me to no end. It would also have baffled Ayn Rand.
Religion, on the other hand, is a paternalistic enterprise. I don't mean this in a gendered way. But more in a " parental" way. Religion is in loco parentis for society at large. Western Abrahamic religion, which literally deifies an ideal super parent, most obviously so. Therefore while religion usually reifies the social hierarchy ( more on that later) , it views itself as the defender of the weak and the meek. Alms giving and soup kitchens can only do so much. Eventually religion turns to the government and urges it to stand up for the meek.
The other reason why Socially Conservative Religious people can never TRULY be in favor of " small government" especially not one " that leaves people alone" is the very nature of Social Conservatism.
The core belief of Social Conservatism is that the building blocks of society are a shared matrix of unchangeable "mores", that is values and practices and traditions. These values, practices, and traditions, are in this view, the very thing that makes a society a society, its LITERAL building blocks, its literal foundations. On a superficial level these are the very things that make a society different from another society. On a deeper level, they are again, the very foundation of society. If you change these mores at best you change into a different society... and this would be very bad. At worst.... the foundations are removed, society collapses, and "mere anarchy is loosed upon the land".
Understand what this means : it means that people who have DIFFERENT " mores" and act upon them CAN NOT BE TOLERATED...because they are -quite literally- termites undermining the very foundations of society itself. If you have too many termites eating away at your foundations.. you wont have a building " ( society") for much longer... too many wokeanista pansexual transgender secularists gnawing away at the foundations in the basement means the floor of your society will go crashing through the foundations and into the basement... and the roof will come crashing on top of you sooner rather than later.
Someone has to call the exterminator. Someone better get the Orkin man on the phone. And who is the Orkin man?
The Government. Only the Government has the authority and the resources necessary to smash , purge and expel those with mores incompatible with the " core" mores of the society, as defined by that Society. Every Social Conservative who claims to be " in favor of a Government that leaves people alone" is bluntly LYING, even if they are not aware they are lying, because, in the end, the Social Conservative must have a tool to expel those who are a threat to the moral values they view as foundational to the very existence of society itself. The Murderer and the transgender pansexual wokeanista are different in *degree* but they are the same in *kind*. That is both are threats to the social fabric, and both must be removed from society in order for society to remain strong and healthy. And in the end, only the government is strong enough to effectively remove them.
Therefore, always and forever, the Social Conservative is a threat to the Open Society, because from the point of view of Social Conservatism , an open society is a *suicidal* society. Civil liberty, true free speech, separation of church and state, the right to free expression, the right to self agency, the right to live life as you want to live it, without the government punishing you for it and telling you how to live... all of these things are fundamentally at odds with Social Conservatism, even if Social Conservatives opportunistically cling to one of these phrases at some time or other. If everyone can exercise maximal free will and self determination, eventually, inevitably, some of them will start living lives that do not accord with the mores that Social Conservatives believe are foundational to the society itself. In other words... inevitably... in a free society with free expression.. where people live the lives they want to live... inevitably some of those people will want to live their lives as " termites"... and we know what happens if the termites are allowed to run unchecked don't we?
TL:DR: a " small government that lets people live the lives they want to live" is fundamentally incompatible with Social Conservatism. For more I refer to Justice Samuel Alito's decision in Dobbs V Jackson Women's Health.
and thus FINALLY I arrive at what I originally meant to write.. which is of course about Abortion.
three cheers for Abortion! Hip Hip Hooray! Hip Hip Hooray! Hip Hip Hooray!
Ok Seriously. One of the favorite tactics of the Forced Birth crowd is to claim that Abortion is a mass genocide that deprives humanity of countless Albert Einsteins and whatnot. Apparently but for abortion we would have solved cancer, figured out interstellar travel and a whole bunch of other stuff that sounds frankly hilarious coming out of the mouths of science deniers who feverishly slash education budgets in the hopes that " government schools" stop existing.
But still the argument is everywhere.
so what about the counterexample....
what about those of us , like myself, who only exist BECAUSE of legalized abortion.
* I step up to the microphone
*clears throats* .
" Hi everyone, thank you for inviting me to this meeting of the People Who Only Exist Because of Legalized Abortion. My Name Is Onlyanorthernsong, and the only reason I, and my sister and my brother, exist is because forty some years ago a pregnant unmarried girl had a legal abortion. thank you"
* sits down in a circle of a aluminum chairs as the next person stands up*
yes thats rights ladies and gents. as is the case for millions of others... the ONLY REASON I AM HERE WRITING THESE WORDS is because a young unmarried pregnant woman took advantage of legal abortion.
I am going to have to be a little vague, cause if my father found this he would shit out 76 kittens and Emmanuel the Emu ( there is a reference to instantly date this blog post!). but the story is as follows.
My father, a bright young man from a Central American nation correctly labeled by Donald Trump as a " shithole" had , with no help whatsoever from his parents managed to somehow find himself a student at one of Canada's top ranked universities. During his sophomore year he met and fell in love with a red-headed irish canadian girl. From his telling this was his first real girlfriend.
you know where this is going. he got her pregnant.
My father, a scrupulously moral man of high integrity, decided to man up. This was his life now. He was about to be a father... and he had to take care of his incoming child. Summer was upon them and my father found himself on a plane to the opposite end of Canada, to a province he had never been to. Where his job was to travel from door to door through remote rural villages selling door to door. Driven by the need to provide for his new family he was very good, and in a matter of a few weeks was the crew boss, supervising others , driving and collecting salesmen etc. It was never made clear to me why ( I assume parental disapproval) but it appears that my dad and the girl didnt communicate much. Guys this was like 45 years ago. Basically another planet when it came to communication.
Anyways my dad gets back to his city with a summers worth of extremely good earnings.. goes to visit his girlfriend.. only to be told his child has been aborted.
Of course this was an enormous shock to my father. Given the ultra conservative country he came from (and in which I myself would later grow up)- where to this day women who have miscarriages are routinely thrown into prison under suspicion that they have induced the miscarriages- it is probably the case my father had never HEARD of abortion until he was told his child to be was no more. Certainly a " religious girl from a good family with good values" as he always describes her, would never be someone he would have suspected of doing such a thing.
But its a good thing, for me and my siblings that she did, cause otherwise we would not exist.
Assume that fetus had been born and become a baby. My father would almost certainly have wanted to marry the girl. Assume they had. He probably would have never left Canada. If he is married in Canada with family, he certainly does not return to Central America. Which means that he does not meet my mother. Which means I, my sister, and my brother never come to be.
Of course, there is a chance there would be a Canadian man with my name. I am the fourth person in my direct line with my name. It is traditional in my family for the firstborn male of every generation to have my name, the same name my father bears, and my grandfather before him, and my great grandfather before him, the name that marks us as the current " scion" of a family with, at the very least, pretensions that lean towards the dynastic.
But that person would not be ME. It would not be my mother's eyes that would peer out of his face, nor my mother's smile that would brighten his face. My mother with her idiosyncracies, her genes, her personality, her specific form of love, would not be that persons mother.
And my siblings of course, would similarly not exist.
Perhaps that Canadian man would have cured cancer or solved the mysteries of interstellar travel. Or perhaps one of his siblings would have. I do not know. These are after all conjectures. But what i do know is that the real me.. this me... and my real sister.. and my real brother... would not exist. Because for us to exist my Father has to marry my mother. And if that child is born, that does not happen.
So thank you legalized abortion. One of the things that had to exist in other for me to exist.
One of the things I've wondered about is what would have happened if my mother had married a different man. I wouldn't exist, at least not as the exact same person as I am now.
While it's a wonderful thing you do exist, the problem lies in the morality of what your mother did. She didn't know at that time that she would be pregnant with you and your siblings years later if she did such and such an action or made sure such and such a future happened. By "terminating her pregnancy" (which is just a euphemism for "murdering an unborn child," and that's what it is no matter what words you use), she killed an infant who had just as much right as you do to live. You and yours being born years later because your mother had an abortion years earlier doesn't excuse her actions.
That is what social conservatives want, but every political party's laws legislate morality. It's wrong to steal and most people recognize it, so it's forbidden to steal in the law. It's evil to murder someone, so that's illegal. It's wrong to use physical violence to beat someone else up over some petty argument, so that's illegal. Even Anarcho-Capitalism (I don't think it should accurately be described as Libertarian, as Libertarians in my view believe that there should be minimal government, as opposed to ACs who believe there should be no government at all) legislates morality in that they hold to the belief that taking people's money without their consent (such as via taxation) is immoral, with many holding to the Non-Aggression Principle (basically, don't use aggression to get what you want from other people).
I believe that government by mere human beings is best put on a leash; the government should be prevented from exercising more than a specific amount of authority, with any attempt to break out of those boundaries being tyranny. In that, I would probably agree with many Libertarians. I would also agree that taxation is way too high and that the economy is best served by private individuals interacting with one another, creating more tax revenue over time as more people are able to make more money to make more jobs and better help the community.
Where you and I would disagree, especially on abortion, is whether or not the government should be legislating morality. I think that the answer must be a cautious yes (cautious because mere human beings mess things up as often, if not more often, than not). Socialist and Communist governments legislate that it's fine for the government to take its citizens' property and distribute it as they see fit, while also making it illegal or very difficult to speak out against their actions. Earthly monarchs have usually rejected the idea that "the people" should have any say in running the government, and have held that their actions are above the criticism of any mere man or woman; whatever decisions the monarch makes are final. Republican idealists (not as in the Republican Party of the United States, I mean republics in general) hold that "the people" should have a right to vote, and that's it's wrong to deny citizens that right.
The only alternative to government is anarchy, which is tyranny veiled as freedom. People, especially powerful, charismatic, and often brutal people, crave power, and if all governments were to be erased at once, the power vacuum would be filled with autocratic leaders who gathered a following and enforced their rule by fear and force. Anarchy would also lead to massive amounts of crime, as there is no government to enforce the law aside from the chieftains I mentioned. It would lead to a worse situation than government does. Regardless of how much or little one loves government, it is our best solution, and all forms of government legislate morality.
I would argue that conservatives offer more freedom than liberals do; conservatives are for people owning guns, primarily for the purpose of telling the government not to overstep its boundaries (though hunting and self-defense are not left out). Conservatives are also for a free market where individuals, not the government, decide what businesses succeed or fail, are for less taxation, are for due process, and are essentially all for what the US Constitution says is legal (I am not counting such things as slavery, since this was banned by later amendments). Unlike in China and Russia (which make a law making it illegal to even call the war in Ukraine a war), common citizens are able to vote, and so are able to hold power over their legislators; if the latter make a law the people despise, then they won't vote for those legislators again. And Conservatives hold that this is possible (from an earthly standpoint) due to small government. But even that government legislates morality.
The fact that some would demonize all religion in favor of someone who believed that acting selfishly is moral speaks a lot to me. By her logic it would be immoral for someone to die in the line of saving others altruistically, because that isn't selfish. I cannot begin to cover how much I despise this philosophy. The fact that she dismissed critics without an in-depth analysis (as the Wikipedia article on her says regarding the criticism of her philosophy) also makes me angry.
Oh, for a woman to bear the child is "forced birth?" As if preventing her from murdering her own child isn't protecting the needs of the unborn infant. Anti-abortion laws protect unborn children from having their lives ended at the dictation of the mother. For a mother to kill her child because she doesn't want it is the worst kind of selfishness, and to protect her "right" (words cannot express right now how much I despise the concept) to kill it defies all logic. Yes, we point to the potential of an unborn child to (if not aborted) to grow up to be a great scientist or doctor, but even if they don't, that's not an excuse to kill them. Should toddlers, kids, teenagers, and adults be killed if they fail to entered these professions? Absolutely not. So why murder the unborn baby?
And if we want to "leave religion out of it," then there are reasons to keep the child alive. 1, the child upon reaching maturity will contribute to society, unless taught otherwise or neglected (neither of which can justify killing the child, as no mere human knows what their baby will grow up to be). This means they will contribute to society, either offering some kind of service to the community (such as holding a job or making jobs). 2, the abortion process has a chance to injure the would-have-been mother; they operate with sharp tools to literally tear the unborn limb from limb inside the womb. Tell me that doesn't have a chance of going horribly wrong. 3, holding onto traditional views on birth means the human race will continue to exist. Sexual reproduction is how most forms of life (including human, animal, and plant life) continues from an earthly viewpoint.
No, no, and no again. We don't want a theocratic society (a society ruled by priests). No, or few, Americans are going to argue for theocracy. We do want a moral society, and the laws of the conservatives you speak of go further than religious concerns. We don't want people to do drugs, because people who do drugs hurt themselves and others. We oppose drunkenness, in part because God calls it out and in part because drunken people again often hurt themselves or others. We support morality because only by being moral can society continue to function.
So government should eliminate those with opposing beliefs? The "termites," as you call them? We've had opposing viewpoints from the beginning; the debate over the Constitution (Federalists vs. Anti-federalists), the Federalists Vs. Jeffersonian Republicans, Democrats vs Republicans, and many, many more. Last I checked, the US government didn't kill or imprison all those from one viewpoint or the other. And it shouldn't. It's why you can hold your current views on abortion, instead of being forced to publicly profess to hold to the opposite view. It's why I can argue against abortion. And if we change that, then things are gonna get hairy in very, very short order (hello, Second Civil War).
Abortion should be put to death, and not replaced, because it, by itself, is something that violates another person's right to live in this world.
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No she didn't, and no it isn't. Terminating a pregnancy is a medical procedure to remove a nonsentient blob of cells incapable of independent thought or feeling pain. These are medically verifiable, by the way, so I suggest you and your antichoice mates do some research before posting such nonsense.
Nonsentient? So someone only becomes sentient when they are outside the womb? It's okay to destroy them before that?
An unborn child is a developing human being. It is so much more than a "blob of cells."
And in a certain sense, the unborn child can't think, not as we can, or even to the same degree as a born baby. But like I said, they are in development. A brain is being constructed, along with the bodily parts the child needs to function outside the womb.
Did you read any of my reply beyond that sentence? I think you fail to realize how passionate anti-death people can be. You seem to be saying that we're just unintelligent hillbillies who have no cause worth fighting for and that education would free us from that supposedly bad cause. Education has only done the opposite for me; knowing about the process of abortion and how humans come to exist (at least in a physical sense) via the reproductive process only makes me turn harder against it.
https://blog.equalrightsinstitute.com/are-pro-life-people-fake-christians/
*slow applause* You. You get it.
My comments:
That's called libertarianism.
Conservatism means protecting "traditional" values, some of which aren't really too great.
Some brands of extremist conservatism want the tradition of white supremacy back, and some want to follow the bible to the exact word (sometimes called evangelicalism), which leads to what you were dealing with.
Libertarianism wants the government to be small.
Anarcho-Capitalism wants the government to be non-existent.
Here is a video that I found interesting that compares the Abrahamic god with an abusive parent. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjZ3f-IXEXU
I've never heard that before.
That was an interesting story.
You never did know how to make a concise point, my old friend. Allow me to do so.
My grandfather served as a combat paratrooper in the Pacific theater of World War II. Hip hip hooray for Pearl Harbor! Praise be to the death and destruction caused by the Great War. Thanks Adolph Hitler, Imperial Japan, and the rest of the monsters who killed so many because if the circumstances were any different, my grandfather would never have met my grandmother and thus my mother and, in fact, I myself would never have been born.
How's that for concise? Your argument is ridiculous because ANY barbaric act of slaughter is going to cause a butterfly effect and change so many circumstances for all our ancestors that none of us would have been born -- different people would have been born instead. You cannot use this logic to justify a large-scale massacre.
Every person alive today, if you trace their ancestors' history back far enough, owes their lives to at least one, but more likely thousands of heinous acts which shaped the circumstances that ended up bringing their progenitors together. This is not a sound justification for said heinous acts, nor an argument that they should persist in the future.
Also, abortion is not abolished. Anyone who suggests this is lying.
It is merely delegated to the State level, where it can be legislated on a democratic basis, as it used to be before the Supreme Court dictated the law in the early 70's. You should be happy; democracy prevailed.
Lastly, even the best small government protects the lives of the innocent. Your straw man is nothing but straw.