In Their Own Words: Pro-choicer admits life begins at conception, but says “all life is not equal”

Photo of 10 week old baby courtesy of David Barlow/National Geographic's In the Womb seriesSometimes your political opposition’s arguments are so deeply disturbing yet at the same time revealing, that there’s no need for you to add any major comment to it. These types of arguments essentially can speak for themselves (and usually not in a good way). All I’ll add to this conversation is that I’ve – like many of you – Β come across many a pro-abort in my time who adamantly deny that life begins at conception, who’ll say it’s only a life when it becomes “viable” as per the Roe v. Wade ruling. Yeah, I know it’s warped, but this IS the “feminist” movement we’re talking about here, so keep that in mind … because what you’re about to read below is much, much worse, while at the same time being an oddly refreshingly candid admission of what we already know about the “pro-choice” crowd. Β Very few in the “choice” gang will own up to the below sentiment, but I’ve come across a few who will and, let me tell ya, for someone whose eyes were already wide open on this issue, my eyes get all the more wide every time I hear or read variations of this. Β It is astonishing to me that anyone with warm blood running through their veins can believe that life begins at conception yet still think it’s ok to terminate that life.

The writer is Salon’s Mary Elizabeth Williams and she gives you a LOT of insight into the TRUE inner-workings of the typical rabid “feminist’s” mind when it comes to the issue of abortion. Β Again, I’ll let her words speak for themselvesΒ (bolded emphasis added by me):

Here’s the complicated reality in which we live: All life is not equal. That’s a difficult thing for liberals like me to talk about, lest we wind up looking like death-panel-loving, kill-your-grandma-and-your-precious-baby storm troopers. Yet a fetus can be a human life without having the same rights as the woman in whose body it resides. She’s the boss. Her life and what is right for her circumstances and her health should automatically trump the rights of the non-autonomous entity inside of her. Always.

When we on the pro-choice side get cagey around the life question, it makes us illogically contradictory. I have friends who have referred to their abortions in terms of β€œscraping out a bunch of cells” and then a few years later were exultant over the pregnancies that they unhesitatingly described in terms of β€œthe baby” and β€œthis kid.” I know women who have been relieved at their abortions and grieved over their miscarriages. Why can’t we agree that how they felt about their pregnancies was vastly different, but that it’s pretty silly to pretend that what was growing inside of them wasn’t the same? Fetuses aren’t selective like that. They don’t qualify as human life only if they’re intended to be born.

When we try to act like a pregnancy doesn’t involve human life, we wind up drawing stupid semantic lines in the sand: first trimester abortion vs. second trimester vs. late term, dancing around the issue trying to decide if there’s a single magic moment when a fetus becomes a person. Are you human only when you’re born? Only when you’re viable outside of the womb? Are you less of a human life when you look like a tadpole than when you can suck on your thumb?

We’re so intimidated by the wingnuts, we get spooked out of having these conversations. We let the archconservatives browbeat us with the concept of β€œlife,” using their scare tactics on women and pushing for indefensible violations like forced ultrasounds. Why? Because when they wave theΒ not-even-accurate notionΒ that β€œabortion stops a beating heart” they think they’re going to trick us into some damning admission. They believe that if we call a fetus a life they can go down the road of making abortion murder. And I think that’s what concerns the hell out of those of us who support unrestricted reproductive freedom.

But we make choices about life all the time in our country. We make them aboutΒ men and women in other countries. We make them aboutΒ prisoners in our penal system.Β We make them aboutΒ patients with terminal illnessesΒ andΒ accident victims. We still have passionate debates about the justifications of our actions as a society, but we don’t have to do it while being bullied around by the vague idea that if you say we’re talking about human life, then the jig is up, rights-wise.

It seems absurd to suggest that the only thing that makes us fully human is the short ride out of some lady’s vagina.Β […]

Don’t they? The majority of women who have abortions – andΒ one in three American women will – are already mothers.Β And I can say anecdotally that I’m a mom who loved the lives she incubated from the moment she peed on those sticks, and is also now well over 40 and in an experimental drug trial. If by some random fluke I learned today I was pregnant, you bet your ass I’d have an abortion. I’d have the World’s Greatest Abortion.

“All life is not equal.” Β Margaret Sanger would be so proud.

(Salon link via @KatMcKinley)

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