I would normally not write about this, but the recent developments surrounding the leaked Supreme Court vote repealing Roe v. Wade in the Dobbs case warrants and even demands this.
As my previous post on this indicated, this is unleashing a vehement wave of cognitive warfare. A lot of it follows very familiar playbooks: protests, saturating the news cycle, talking about codifying Roe v. Wade in an actual law, sob stories, angry claims about the injustice done to women by denying them their rights, and so on. It looks a bit like panic, to me, even though any astute observer of the Supreme Court with a finger on the pulse of society would have seen this coming.
An important antidote, as my previous articles have detailed, is simply truth and awareness. So this post will explore some of the most common arguments and tactics you will encounter.
First, something I already touched upon:
You have heard this accusation: “Pro-lifers are hypocrites. They only care to abolish abortion rights to oppress women, not because they actually care about life.”
Look at this list on the website of ‘Pro-Choice America’, by the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws (NARAL):
It’s pretty hard to call yourself “pro-life” when you’re actively working to:
Imprison or execute women who access safe abortion care.
Tear babies away from their parents and lock them in cages, with no plan to reunite them.
Silence doctors and strip reproductive healthcare away from millions of low-income people.
Stand by while the maternal mortality rates skyrocket and women—especially Black women—die in childbirth.
Deny affordable healthcare coverage to people with pre-existing conditions.
Cut programs that feed hungry kids.
Block access to HIV testing and treatment across the globe.
Incite far-right violence with lies about abortion.
This is sophistry. (And so much wrong with it, it boggles the mind!) It is not because you champion a certain cause, that you therefore don’t support other causes, as well. Because you advocate humane treatment of farm animals, for example, does that mean you don’t care about pollution? Or about animals in the wild? Of course not.
A main problem is that such accusation fails to distinguish between primary and secondary issues. If you don’t let people be born, in the first place, talking about injustices in their lives is pointless.
This meme captures that aspect brilliantly:
Second, it is asinine, as so many anti-abortion groups have drives to collect money, clothes, baby needs, housing, counseling, etc. to help mothers who decided to keep their child. And larger organizations that have abortion as one of their issues, almost always also have poverty, jobs, health, etc. in their portfolio. Look at the Catholic Church.
Say what you want about it, but she isn’t just about ‘anti-abortion’. She has countless of hours of volunteer work, millions of dollars in donations, food drives, hospitals, orphanages, schools, and so on, all designed to help those in need, whenever in their lives they might need support. But stopping the killing comes first.
Stop the killing.
That brings me to the core of this whole debate.
It is a clash between 2 diametrically opposed world views (and ideologies!).
Is the fetus merely a clump of cells, or an actual human being?
If just a clump, removal is just routine, like excising a small growth, or clipping your hair. And as such, a women’s right.
But if it is an actual human being, everything changes. No longer is it just about the mother, but now also about the rights of the new baby!
Everything else is completely irrelevant compared to this question.
This brings us to a first line of thinking, out of 3 that I will present here: the scientific question. (Next, the philosophical/ethical side of abortion, and lastly the ‘culture war’.)
So, the science.
Life begins at conception.
When a law protects animals from an endangered species, that includes their eggs. No one would claim that inside those eggs are only ‘a clump of cells’, and not a protected bird, or sea turtle.
There is a lot of information on the internet, that purports to show how the scientific arguments against abortion don’t hold true. Many of those, however, are written by ‘social scientists’, rarely by biologists or geneticists. From the point of view of biology and genetics, the moment a new string of DNA is formed, a new individual is present, distinct from all others.
There is no real debate here, biologically or genetically.
They try, though.
The most sensible sounding, is this: “Since a zygote (a fertilized egg cell, still as a single cell) can differentiate into twins or since 2 embryos can form a chimaera, there is no strict point where you can say a person begins.” True, such scenarios exist, but this is trying to refute the norm by the exception. And it still doesn’t show that the zygote at any point is not a human being, either, which is the core issue.
Another attempt is to bring in ‘personhood’. But that leaves ‘science’, strictly. What is that? How to define that? How to measure that? They try to save it by inserting consciousness and such. But that is very iffy: does our level of humanity depend on how conscious we are? Is it murder then, to kill someone who is unconscious? Or in a deep coma? Braindead?
Or they talk about viability. True, a 12 week old fetus cannot survive on its own. (Neither can a 1 year old, and that is reason for some to call for allowing straight up infanticide!). But NONE of us can survive, if you deny protection from the elements, nutrition, and time. Those 3 elements are necessary for EVERY organism. A fetus needs protection from the elements, and be fed by its mother, and allowed time to develop and grow further. We ALL need those 3 elements, even if in different degrees at different times! So this, too, fails miserably as a differentiation marker to allow killing babies.
What scientific arguments are left? They will try all kinds of arguments, such as ‘they don’t feel pain’ (actually, they DO), but how is that relevant to the question if they are human persons, or not? Is it OK to kill someone as long as you do it painlessly? This is absurd.
The moment a sperm cell enters an egg cell, both half strands of DNA are merged, and a new, unique human life is present, for the very first time. Still as a single cell, a zygote, but give it nutrition, protection and time, and it will continue to grow and develop. A new human life. Sometimes, 2 or in even more rare cases, 3 or 4. Having 5 identical babies (monozygotic quintuplets) is theoretically possible, but we don’t know what the chances of having them are, as they are just so rare. Still, those monozygotic siblings are still human lives, both when they were still a single cell, as well as when they cleaved apart to develop into separate individuals.
You get articles like this: A scientist weighs up the five main anti-abortion arguments. Going down the list, you get 5 arguments that have NOTHING to do with the science on whether or not a fetus is a human being. (Or when it would become a human being.)
It talks about claims on abortion leading to depression and suicide, causing cancer, reducing fertility, that fetuses can fail pain, and that reducing access to abortion reduces the demand for it, and then goes on to ‘refute’ each of those. I won’t go into their arguments, as that would lead too far, but I will simply say this: none of those arguments are the MAIN argument against abortion: IT KILLS HUMAN LIVES. All the rest is a side show. This is lying through omission, misleading people as if the ‘main arguments’ are scientifically proven to be baseless.
Even Scientific American, in an article titled Abortion Rights Are Good Health and Good Science, the authors open with a stern warning: “The U.S. Supreme Court is about to make a huge mistake.” And they go on: “In doing so the Court will not only side against popular opinion on a crucial issue of bodily autonomy, but also signal that politics and religion play a more important role in health care than do science and evidence.”
Yet nowhere in the article do they actually refer to proper science and evidence. Stunning, really. If there was actual scientific evidence that a fetus is NOT a human being, this would be plastered all over. Yet the topic itself is shrouded in a deafening silence.
(Oh, yes, they refer to the Turnaway Study, but that is an example of how ‘the right outcome’ forgives any flaws in the study itself. Read the work by Dr. Maureen, or this review study by Dr. Priscilla Coleman published by Cambridge University Press in 2018: Abortion and mental health: quantitative synthesis and analysis of research published 1995–2009. It concludes:
“This review offers the largest quantitative estimate of mental health risks associated with abortion available in the world literature. Calling into question the conclusions from traditional reviews, the results revealed a moderate to highly increased risk of mental health problems after abortion. Consistent with the tenets of evidence-based medicine, this information should inform the delivery of abortion services.”
Want to talk about science? Let’s.
Starting by when human life begins.
Then you have the arguments about cost reduction (yeah, those are part of the ‘scientific arguments’ I have encountered in favor of abortion). Abortion is cheaper than letting the babies live. Killing people over 65 is also cheaper for tax payers: saves billions on pensions and health care costs! This is an absolutely bone cold argument to make. It is cheaper to let a cancer patient die, than to treat him or her. But NO ONE in their right frame of mind would think that is an acceptable argument to make with those 65+ or with cancer patients. Why, then, would it suddenly be ok to make that argument when it comes to abortion?
I invite you to show me where people actually debate whether or not a fetus is a human being, on actual scientific grounds. And I will show you how those making the case against the humanity of the unborn are wrong, based on the science itself.
Next, the philosophical/ethical side.
Since we identified the main question - is the unborn a human being or not - this is rather simple (which is why you will almost never hear this properly debated, or listed, among the arguments in favor of abortion).
It is unethical to kill an innocent human being. Period.
Now, people could claim that the science is not settled, and that we cannot know when exactly a human being becomes a human being. But this is not a way out: if there is doubt, you cannot kill it.
That is the classic hunters question: if you know for certain that the rustle in the brushes is a deer, it is ethical to shoot. If you know for certain that the rustle is NOT a deer, but a human, it is unethical to shoot. And if you not certain either way, it is also unethical to shoot.
And if you claim the science is settled in favor of abortion, you fool yourself. See, just to show 1 example, that study by Dr. Coleman.
That is all there is to say about this, really.
Which leaves the exceptions.
This is from statistics from Florida, if I remember correctly from where I saved this chart a few years ago. You can find similar charts, all in the same ballpark.
When you have a pregnancy caused by rape or incest, killing the innocent baby is not just. The witness of people who kept their child after rape will tell you how those babies were a sign of hope and healing, a golden edge on an otherwise very dark cloud. Accepting that the new life is a human life, makes all the difference.
In case of the life of the mother being in the balance: that is different. If a doctor tries to save the life of one, and the other dies as a result, this is not murder, as the intent was never to kill. It is unfortunate, and tragic, but in such cases, whatever the choice is (sometimes the mother even chooses to die, so her child can live), this is NOT abortion as we oppose. It is not the deliberate killing of an unborn human being.
Killing because of fetal deformity (or genetic disease such as Down) is also unethical. It is what Hitler did, in his eugenics program: kill all the mentally unfit, including all Down people. They are still humans, who can live a good and fulfilling live. How we treat the weak and the sick defines our humanity, as well.
One last point: people might make the excuse: “Well, we won’t convince each other. Let’s agree to disagree.”
I cannot accept that.
Himmler: “Ah, you will never change my mind, as I am sure I will never change yours. Let’s all agree to disagree because everyone’s reality/opinions/perspectives are all viable! I think Jews are not really human, you think they are, but hey, who is keeping track?”
Me: “Uh, NO, every opinion/perspective is NOT viable or equivalent!”
Change Himmler to the Guttmacher Institute, and Jew to fetus, and the argument is exactly the same.
I cannot accept the killing of human beings, born or unborn. We cannot keep fiddling while the city burns, nor willfully close our eyes. This is NOT a relative issue. Our answer DOES matter, and this NEEDS to be solved.
A last line of thinking to explore, is that of the ‘Culture War’.
Some on the pro-abortion side call for ‘sex strikes’. As long as the ‘choice’ of women is denied, goes the argument, the women will deny sex.
But, of course, memes have the perfect reply:
Why is this so brilliant? Because it is TRUE. People have elevated ‘free sex, when I want, where I want, with whomever I want’ as a ‘right’, as an absolute. That this has cheapened sex, and cheapened relationships and the family, and has cheapened women (and men alike), is ignored. But there is a link between sex whenever, and abortions.
That is part of the cultural war, really, a whole different topic. By now, we see where this all is leading. “Free sex/free love”, is how it started. They ‘liberated’ women, by offering them the pill and abortion on demand, so they could have sex whenever they wanted. (It also removed responsibility from the men, with catastrophic consequences). It took away the female aspect of women, making them available to men all the time. This was a major step towards making them objects, by removing objective barriers to having sex.
Next, the undue focus on sex and sexuality strengthened that objectification. Sexuality became an identity! It started simple, with a new dichotomy between heterosexuals and homosexuals. There is no such thing. There are heterosexual and homosexual acts. But that is not an ‘identity’. But it was rammed through in our society, nonetheless, and it stripped away so much of the people who were now tagged and labeled by such a narrow aspect (not even a main one!). No wonder it causes depression and suicidality.
After that, the transgender ideology started to ramp up. First it was about letting people ‘be themselves’, continuing on the refrains from the battles to ‘liberate’ gay people. But quickly it shifted to demanding ‘equal rights’, taking over competitive sports to the detriment of actual women. It is now present in schools, at ever younger graders. Grooming, indeed, for they know that they need to get to people when their minds are still unformed and defenseless, to get their ideas take root.
(And by presenting such topics on sex long before these children are mentally and physically ready for it, you destroy their innocence and you distort their expectations and views and capacity!)
And all the while you see the attempts to test when and how far they can push the acceptance of pedophilia, as a continuation of those previous arguments: it is an identity! Love is love! Etc.
This whole movement of sexual liberation undermines society and civilization, for it destroys the family. Without the family, the core building block of a society, everything else will fail, too. A family is a microcosm of society. It teaches about authority, about care, about compassion, about punishment/consequence, about mercy, about goals, about the place of the past and of the future. And this is in the relations between parents and their children, among children themselves, and among the spouses. This doesn’t need to be perfect for a society to be healthy, either. A fight between parents is not the end of the world, but it shows children HOW to fight, how to still respect the other, or, when a line was crossed and disrespect was shown, how to recover from that, how to work that out. Or having other siblings, a child learns very quickly about consequence (punishment is but a formalization of that, really, making a far off consequence immediate): tease your older sibling a bit too much, or the wrong way, and you get a reaction… Not always a favorable one…
But take that away, add in no fault divorce for good measure, and a misguided ‘war on poverty’ that actually rewards all the wrong choices, while leaving those who struggle while trying to do things right behind, and you get disaster. It disincentivizes making the right choices. Children see how the answer to a fight is to leave the other, often with a vengeance. Are you really surprised where that cancel culture ultimately came from? We, parents, have been showing this to our children for several decades, now! And this last decade, when it was fully normalized, we have taken it a step further, and what was learned in the (broken) family, was taken outside the family. Cancel those who disagree with you.
Another aspect that we have been teaching our children (and trying desperately to make ourselves believe in, as well), is that ‘I’ am the most important, the center of my existence. As a man, I don’t have to respect a woman and her natural cycles. Why wait? Grab what you can, when you want. As a woman: why respect your own body? Why wait? Grab what you can, when you want. The focus shifts from giving your partner, and respecting your partner, to going for what you want and need (NOW!). It is a hedonism running rampant.
Interestingly, 2 important voices that wrote about dystopian nightmare scenario’s, as a warning to the Western Civilizations, point at 2 different dangers. 1984 describes how fear and oppression can be used to usher in a totalitarian state. Orwell shows the extreme, but this can be achieved step by step, as well.
A Brave New World described a different kind of dystopia, where people were disconnected from each other, and given to the state to create them and educate them. Families don’t exist, everyone is insular. Drugs and sex are what keep the society complacent and ‘happy’.
What I described here, the culture war attack on the family, through the avenue of sexuality, fits perfectly in that warning. Dislodge people from the ties that bind them together, and they will become much easier prey and targets, to tie them to the state (and to those who control the state). It sounds crazy, but we see it happen, in front of our eyes. (The whole battle against ‘nationalism’ is part of that, as well. Not every aspect of nationalism is bad, we celebrate foreign cultures without any difficulty. Just not our own, somehow. Why is that?)
People who are focused on their own pleasure and wants, and never learned to look at or care about the wants and needs of others outside of themselves, are easy to control. You dangle the carrot in front of them, and they will follow it. As they are cut off from family and larger group units, they cannot effectively organize and find support, either. And just as in a Brave New World, they are given soma when they are unhappy.
Interestingly, we are being conditioned to this, on many levels.
About 10 years ago, there was this ad on TV and the radio, for a pain relief medicine. It showed a person dancing: “if you took up dancing classes, and your legs hurt, take X!”. Then it went to a computer screen: “Did you buy a new computer screen, and your eyes hurt? Take X!” And it showed one more such example, where X was the cure. Different types of pain, but a single cure! How amazing, how convenient!
This ad greatly annoyed me. If you started dancing, and your legs hurt, you’re either doing it wrong, or you need to build up some leg muscle and stamina first. And if your new screen hurts your eyes, adjust your screen settings and ambient light levels! The pain you feel, is the warning from your body that something is wrong. Killing the pain does NOT take away the reason for that pain. On the contrary, without taking steps to counter those causes, the pain will persist, and only get worse. But what did that ad teach us? Kill the messenger, ignore what your body is trying to tell you, but take our pill to take the unpleasant consequences away, and keep doing what you love!
Just as the people in A Brave New World took soma whenever they felt unhappy. Take away the unhappiness, and no one will feel the need to question WHY they are unhappy, and what they can do the CHANGE that, so they can become actually happy again… We are being taught the same way of thinking, to treat the symptoms, and not look for the cause. And, not an unimportant detail, we are to do so in order to protect ‘what we love to do’. It is all about me, the individual, and my appetites and likes and pleasure. Once I buy into that self-centered thinking, with my gaze inwards, I will be so much less aware of what is going on outside of ‘me’, to others, and won’t notice their distress signals. A fragmented society is the result, filled with people who are unable to deal with each other, nor with themselves, but reach for a quick pill or shot to forget about the pains of daily life, instead of working to remedy what ails them and what ails society…
This, too, is part of what cognitive warfare does. Dull the senses, distract people, make them not resist.
This culture war, then, is an extension of the ideological battle going on. The point is not ‘free sex’ or ‘sexual liberation’, nor is about rights for gays, or acceptance of transgenders or even pedophiles. The point of this culture war is disrupting the foundations of our society and civilization, so it can be replaced, and controlled.
To circle back to the very beginning:
I am not just against abortion, without caring what happens after.
And I am not just warning against the tactics of the elite, and stopping there.
No. I go further. We don’t just need to win the next election. We don’t need to just fire those in power. We don’t just need to put Fauci and Hillary and those crooked election officials in jail.
We need to wake up again, as a society. We need to start caring about each other again, and stop taking ourselves, and our own success, as the one and only measure of importance.
An example: we all remember when Trump was attacked on his ‘grab’em by the p***y’ comment. It was very uncouth, and not a respectful thing to say. Say that about my wife, or my daughter, and in older times I’d challenge you to a duel. Today, I’d still challenge you if you say such in my presence.
But my point is something else. Suddenly the whole media was all over that, shocked at the language and the lack of respect towards women. I agreed with them. But I also though the media did not go far enough. Why attack Trump, in what was, let’s be honest, a rather tame misstep, when you compare it to present day movies, music, advertisement, behavior by those in positions of responsibility, etc.? Or consider this: porn is ok, somehow, as well! No, I will not show examples of any of that, you know what I am talking about.
I say: ban porn. It is violent. It goes against what sex is supposed. It degrades. It makes impotent. It always leads to more extreme forms to maintain the same level of ‘pleasure’ derived from it. It is dangerous. It destroys everything. Young girls now think that giving blowjobs is part of dating. Boys expect it, and get mad if they don’t get any. How can you start a proper, healthy relationship, on such foundations? All about sex and physical pleasure, and no longer about learning to know who the other person is, and in the process discovering new parts of yourself? Learning how to deal with letting someone in your life so intimately close? No wonder there is such frustration, anger and pain.
Stop watching movies that show gratuitous sex. We all know which shows and series would fall under that. Stop listening to music with lyrics or videos that degrade women and men. Stop buying products that shamelessly advertise based on sex. Yeah, sex sells, but only because we made it permissible in our society.
I would advocate a return to proper order and courtship. For a return to proper respect. How to achieve that, is a whole other question, of course.
Just as the change in thinking about politics and the economy. It is one thing to fire and/or imprison Fauci and Hillary, for example, but we still need to reform the pharmaceutical world, and the pharmaceutical regulatory bodies. And our institutions, such as the FBI, the election boards, Congress even.
But does it stop there? No. We could be given a perfect administration today, and screw up again tomorrow. We, the people, need to change along, as well. What good does it do to have the election laws and boards all cleaned up, if we are going to vote with our passion and appetites? Failing to properly follow what is going on, and making informed decisions/votes?
We need a reveille, an awakening. That will cost us. Effort, sweat, blood and tears. Just like on January 2nd, when we look at our resolutions. We know we need them, we know it won’t be fun. But we can either grit our teeth, and make those changes, and get healthy and strong again, ready for whatever the future would throw at us, or we can laugh, and go right back to our old lives. But when the next storm comes, we’d be in a world of pain and loss, unable to withstand it.
We have to start thinking about what our resolutions will be, moving forward, as we wait with baited breath the hammer to fall in Durham’s prosecutions. For the hammer to fall on the stolen elections. On the medical fraud and lies. What will we do next? Individually, and collectively, on various levels of reach? Locally? State-wide? Nation-wide? Globally?
No, I don’t advocate just for a repeal of Roe v. Wade. Not even just for an end to abortion. I want the injustices in life taken care of, too, and to provide a fair chance to get up and move on.
And no, I don’t advocate just to jail the fraudsters. I want the system cleaned up, and I want the people to wake up to their own responsibilities and place in our society. Look again at what is and isn’t acceptable, at what is and isn’t good or fruitful. Just because something isn’t ‘forbidden’, does mean that it is ‘good’.
Apart from changing this permissive view on sex and hookup culture and porn, we need to ensure women are protected. Physically, and financially. (Or let’s start by actually defining it correctly again!) A pregnancy should never be a ‘punishment’. We need to revere women, and their ability to carry a child. We need to respect them again. We need to be in awe of them. In the literal sense of that word. And we need to regain a sense of wonder and awe about sex, as well, and not treat it so cavalier. Whatever we come up with, it should not be a band-aid, or a treatment of the symptoms only. We need a good, deep look at our society as a whole. And not ever sacrifice the unborn for our own benefit.
We all remember this line from the Declaration of Independence: “we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.”
Yes. YES! That! Mutually pledge our lives, fortune, and sacred honor. Mutually. A proper contract to one another.
But we ought not forget that line right before it: “with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence”.
That is the starting point, the actual firm foundation.
I am glad that this topic of abortion is back in the news, with such force. Time to wage this battle, and stand up for the sanctity of life. From cradle to grave. And as we’re at it, let’s clean up the other lies that wreak such havoc on our society and in our lives, as well. We care about ALL of it.
All is well.
Excellent article!👍
Yes, for quite a long time I have seen what is needed to be done to clear out the rot of how we allowed ourselves and the very fabric that holds us together, become dismantled piece by piece. i see evidence in my own parish, the value of the sanctity of family, marriage and the firm knowledge of God governing all things. To re-educate the whole looseness of lifestyles that have permeated demanding reaction only and dismissed the value of conscience of thinking by actions and examples of holy living.