A Puzzle for "Pro-lifers"

Something occurred to me the other night when I should have been in bed.

The stereotypical Republican is anti-abortion but endorses the NRA's interpretation the 2nd Amendment, according to which any infringement on an individual's right to bear arms is unconstitutional. Why does this seem problematic to people like me? Well, how pro-life can you be when you're against any moderate measures to stem gun violence, and in particular the mass murder of children like we saw in Newtown? When I say "moderate measures," I mean universal background checks, a limit on magazine capacity, a ban on weapons that fire rounds at a certain especially lethal velocity, and increased funding for mental health. I don't want to take away all the guns, because our need to protect ourselves must be balanced against the right to bear arms, which is an important right.

The answer, it seems to me, is "not very pro-life." Anti-abortion activists are willing to allow abortions only in very few cases, and some of them aren't willing to allow any abortions at all. Now, if we assume that there is a conflict in the case of abortion between the right to bodily integrity and the right to life, the right to bodily integrity is usually or always overridden by the pro-lifer for fear that a person who can exercise it will abort a fetus and take a life. Analogously, however, if we assume that there is a conflict between the right to bear arms and the right to life, shouldn't the right to bear arms also be overridden usually or always, for fear that a person who can exercise it will kill a child and take a life?

Some people argue that there is no conflict here, because the best way to stem gun violence is to arm as many "good guys" as possible. There is surely a kernel of truth in this. (Though you have to wonder how effective the good guy can be when the bad guy is wearing body armor.) Notice, however, that the moderate measures I advocate would not deprive the good guys of their firearms. Well, not all of their firearms, anyway. What it would do is cut into the profits of corporations that are making a killing off of their killing machines. And that's what's really behind Congress's inability to act in the wake of Newtown. The corporations are running the show. Fortunately for you, pro-life gun lover, your interests and the interests of the corporations making your firearms just happen to agree. But for how long, I wonder?

Lori Ziganto's Pro-Choice Argument

According to a study that was just released, "Having an abortion does not increase the risk of mental health problems, but having a baby does," writes the Associated Press.

According to NPR,

Robert Blum, an expert on reproductive health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, did not work on the study, but he has worked in the field for decades.

"This is an extremely, extremely well done study," he said. "There is no evidence that abortion predisposes a woman to psychiatric and mental health problems." 

"There is no post-abortion trauma, post-abortion syndrome, or anything of the like," he said.

NPR reports in the same story that "[a]s many as 25 percent of new mothers experience post-partum depression."

Lori Ziganto has argued again and again that the alleged existence of post-abortion syndrome makes abortion morally problematic. For example, Ziganto writes:

While feminists sneer at the idea of post-abortion syndrome, it does exist. And if they actually cared about women, they’d admit that fact and would stop encouraging women to have abortions without disclosing the trauma that can occur to the woman.

It’s clear that they don’t care about the dead babies, but they also need to stop insisting that they are For Women ™ , when they most obviously are not. You see, feminists, an unborn baby is not just a clump of cells. Many women who abort their babies, therefore, suffer intense pain and immense guilt. Their entire lives. 

Clearly, Ziganto believes that abortion is wrong, and one reason why it is wrong is the damage it allegedly does to women. Therefore, Ziganto can be interpreted as supporting the following argument:

1. It is prima facie wrong to do anything that puts the mental health of women at significant risk. 
2. Abortion puts the mental health of women at significant risk. 
3. Therefore, abortion is wrong. 

Now I think we are all justified in saying that (2) is very probably false. So much for that argument. But there is another argument that Ziganto would endorse, I'm sure, since she cares so much about the welfare of women and thus asserts (1):

1. It is prima facie wrong to do anything that puts the mental health of women at significant risk. 
2. Childbirth puts the mental health of women at significant risk (by putting them at risk of post-partum depression). 
3. Therefore, completing a pregnancy is morally wrong. 

Nice work, Ziganto. Are you and Marcotte bff's now?

Update: Surely Lori Ziganto's concern for mental health extends to men. So think about your significant others, ladies:

In a 2006 study, James Paulson, a psychologist at Eastern Virginia Medical School, assessed the parents of 5,089 infants and found that 14 percent of the mothers had signs of moderate to severe depression. And so did 10 percent of the fathers. Compare that with the 3 percent to 5 percent of men in the general population who are depressed (as well as the 8 percent or 9 percent of women). 

Abort for the men in your life, won't you? (You want to be careful. That there's dripping with sarcasm, and you wouldn't want to get any of that on you.)

The Man-On-Dog Expert Weighs In

Man-on-dog expert Rick Santorum has weighed in on the issue of abortion.

In an interview with CNSNews.com's Terry Jeffrey, Santorum scolded President Obama for his remarks about abortion during Rick Warren's Saddleback Presidential Candidates Forum in 2008. Yahoo's Holly Bailey writes:

"The question is -- and this is what Barack Obama didn't want to answer: Is that human life a person under the Constitution? And Barack Obama says no," Santorum says in the interview, which was first picked up by CBN's David Brody. "Well if that person, human life is not a person, then, I find it almost remarkable for a black man to say, 'We are going to decide who are people and who are not people.'"

Santorum was referring to Obama's comments at a 2008 forum with Pastor Rick Warren in which he said the question of whether a baby should have human rights was "above my pay grade." Obama later said his remark was too flip, but "I don't presume to be able to answer these kinds of theological questions."

Santorum took Obama to task for his position.

"Just about everything else in the world he's willing to do -- have the government do -- but he can't answer that basic question which is not a debatable issue at all," Santorum told Jeffrey. "I don't think you'll find a biologist in the world who will say that is not a human life."

According to The Atlantic's Garance Franke-Ruta (and others), Santorum's comment is "consistent with the internal narratives of the contemporary abortion rights opposition movement":

Opponents of abortion in recent years have compared the status of fertilized eggs, even pre-implantation, to that of pre-Civil War slaves who were not considered fully human. For example, materials from the Illinois Right to Life Committee argue that "The court decisions on slavery vs abortion demonstrate an equivalent denial of personhood for two different categories of human beings, slaves and unborn children."

That's why a black man is supposed to share Santorum's view of abortion, I suppose. (Since Obama's mother was white, does that mean that Obama should be only 50% pro-life? Just curious.)

Let's take a closer look at Santorum's comments. In the first paragraph I quoted from Bailey's story, Santorum claims to be surprised that a black man would deny that a human fetus is a person under the Constitution. But in the fourth paragraph, he expresses surprise that Obama doesn't agree that a human fetus is a human life. Every biologist would agree, after all, so it's not even debatable. But the following statements are not synonymous:

1. The human fetus is not a human life
2. The human fetus is not a person under the Constitution

I agree with Santorum on one thing: (1) is obviously false. But is (2) obviously false? If it were, then why do so many intelligent people assert it? They're not all morons, are they? What about unborn human entities conceived in, say, Peru by Peruvian parents?

I'm not a Constitutional law scholar like Barack Obama, so I have no real expertise in this area. But I know enough to know that asserting (2) is not stupid. And I do know what is stupid: thinking that (1) and (2) amount to the very same thing. They don't, and that is "not even debatable." Now, I'm not ready to say that Santorum is stupid. He may have simply realized that the shift from (2) to (1) would help him politically. He attributes (2) to Obama, but then shifts to attributing (1) to Obama. While Santorum may not be a moron, he may be a bit of a prick. That's right: another good Christian prick. Does Christianity really allow twisting the truth and being unfair to one's opponent when it's politically expedient to do so? Just wondering.

Those who wish to draw an analogy between human fetuses and American slaves claim that human fetuses are legally and perhaps morally on a par with adult human beings. If Santorum intended to say that this claim isn't debatable, then he is almost certainly wrong. Judging from their responses to the candidate's responses to the same question, the folks at the Saddleback Forum would probably agree with Santorum. Many folks want a simple, unequivocal response to the question whether the human fetus has moral or legal rights. That is exactly the answer John McCain gave them: the unborn human entity has rights at the moment of conception. But as William Saletan points out, if we actually seriously believed this, the thought of women of child-bearing age using birth control, nursing their young, drinking coffee, and even exercising would horrify us. That's the consequence of having a simple approach to a complicated problem.

Even if we agree with McCain and (presumably) Santorum, the inference to the truth of the extreme pro-life position is hardly automatic. For what those who embrace the extreme pro-life position either forget or simply neglect to point out is that a living, breathing person usually carries the human fetus, and that woman is a human life and also most certainly a person under the Constitution (assuming that she is an American citizen, of course). Is the pro-life position "not even debatable" when this truth is acknowledged?

I grant that the right to life is fundamental, and I can even grant that the fetus has such a right at the moment of conception. But the woman carrying that fetus also has a full set of rights, and the right to bodily integrity is perhaps just as fundamental as the right to life. If we don't even own our own bodies, then we are nothing. Any attempt to make women the legal or moral equivalent of livestock must be regarded with skepticism.

In this conflict between the rights of the fetus and the rights of the human being that carries it, what reason do we have to think that the fetus always wins? I am willing to bet that Rick Santorum is not able to provide a satisfactory answer to this question. Like it or not, the fetus and is neither morally nor legally nor factually equivalent to an adult human being, and we should stop trying to pretend that it is.

However strong the woman's rights are, neither she nor anyone else has a right to kill her child once it is born, and therefore no one has the right to abort a viable fetus. That much seems perfectly clear, to me at least. Those who claim that pro-choicers have no moral qualms about the abattoir in Philadelphia are as guilty of oversimplifying the position of their opponents as Santorum is of his.

Truth

Someone calling herself Truth left the following comment on Lori Ziganto's post, "10 Hateful Anti-Woman Acts by Leftist “Feminists”, Part 1" today. I wanted to reproduce it here just in case it disappears over there. Thank you, Truth. I couldn't have said it any better myself. 

“We unhinged nutty nuts help women, instead of urging them to abort. We help them truly have it all, education, career and motherhood via personal responsibility.” 

How? By trying to cut every benefit poor pregnant women NEED in order to actually deliver? The first time I got pregnant, it was by an abuser who often coerced sex. I had no health insurance (I briefly did, but got dropped because I couldn’t pay the bill), a $8.00 per hour job, and certainly no money for college tuition. I had two options. One was lots of government assistance, including Medicaid, food stamps, and WIC. The other was to accept that I couldn’t afford this child (nor did I want it), and abort. I avoided becoming a burden to the taxpayers, which I believe is responsible. I definitely never suffered “immense guilt.” It wasn’t that big a deal, in fact.

I don’t see conservatives rushing to support Medicaid and food stamps for pregnant women. In fact, you’re the first ones to try to take them away. How else do you think we’re going to pay for these kids? Even if you give up the baby to rich Republicans and take a vow of chastity after, someone has to pay for prenatal care and delivery. I’m guessing you’re not willing to pony up.

And who are we kidding? Conservatives hate poor women’s kids as soon as they’re no longer fetuses. My friend went through hell to give birth and try to support her biracial son–working two jobs, going on Medicaid, etc. She considered abortion but chose life because it was the “right thing.” As soon as her son ceased to be a fetus, she’s gotten nothing but hateful and racist sneers about how she’s a loser and a “welfare mom” who “spread her legs” for a black guy. The fetus-worshipers offer nothing for her son now that he needs medical care and food that doesn’t come from an umbilical cord.

And as for that abortion is black genocide nonsense? Conservatives hate black kids past the fetal stage. Some woman in my friend’s neighborhood called the cops to complain about “little thugs.” All her son and his friends were doing was playing basketball…WITH her supervision. Of course, she has a bunch of Republican campaign signs in her yard. No one’s giving my friend a slap on the back anymore for “choosing life” now that her kid isn’t a fetus.

Frauds

The National Life Chain was held today.

Perhaps you participated. You might have held a sign bearing "one of the following approved pro-life sign messages":

• ABORTION KILLS CHILDREN
• JESUS FORGIVES AND HEALS
• ADOPTION: THE LOVING OPTION
• LORD, FORGIVE US AND OUR NATION
• ABORTION HURTS WOMEN
• PRAY TO END ABORTION
• LIFE—THE FIRST INALIENABLE RIGHT 

Of course, we must keep in mind that 73% of women state as one of their reasons for aborting that they cannot afford to have a child in their present circumstances, according to a study appearing in Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health. So, for next year's National Life Chain, might I propose the following sign messages: 

• A WOMAN CHOSE ADOPTION: LOVING PRO-LIFERS SHOULD CHOOSE TO ADOPT
• PEOPLE NEED LOVE AFTER THEY'RE BORN, TOO
• PRAY TO END ABANDONMENT OF THE POOR
• NEGLECT KILLS POOR CHILDREN
• STOP LETTING POOR CHILDREN DIE: VOTE DEMOCRATIC

It's easy for pro-lifers to stand on sidewalks with signs. It's much more difficult to care for children who would otherwise be neglected by women who are too poor to care for them properly. And many conservatives can't bear the thought of their tax dollars being used to help children—those who are poor through no fault of their own. 

The people behind the National Life Chain, Please Let Me Live, quote Leviticus 18:21 in support of their pro-life view: "Do not give any of your children to be sacrificed to Molech, for you must not profane the name of your God." 

Perhaps they neglected to read Leviticus 19:9–10: "When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the alien." 

Many conservatives claim to be pro-life. They're not. Until they adopt those children they urged poor women to have, and until they stop fighting Democratic efforts to make raising children affordable, they're frauds. 

Q: Where are the balls and brains behind snark and boobs? A: Nowhere.

I haven't responded to any of Lori Ziganto's posts in a while.

It is abundantly clear that Ziganto is a bullshitter. By "bullshitter," I mean someone who makes claims merely to achieve a particular effect and has no regard for or concern about the actual truth or falsity of those claims. And I'm not simply name-calling: I have proved that she is a bullshitter in almost a dozen posts here at Your Analytic Analeptic. And I am going to do it again.

But fighting the good fight is difficult, for a number of reasons:

• As will become clear by the end of this post, Ziganto is either ignoring my criticism or she doesn't understand it. She refuses to step up her game or she is incapable of it. I can't be sure which. But she probably thinks she has absolutely nothing to learn from me, since I'm a liberal and I therefore must be completely evil. That's too bad, since responding to criticism can actually make one better. 
• It is a lot easier to shovel bullshit than critique it. My job is far more difficult than hers. For example, I try to find sources of information that Ziganto's readers would find acceptable; Ziganto uses whatever sources she wants, many of which are obviously biased and unreliable. 
• She produces so much bullshit, she's swimming in it. How can I keep up? 
• Her readers probably have no interest in what I have to say, so I can't help them, either. Most of them read her blog because it comforts them to read something that confirms their beliefs, which they don't want to subject to any critical scrutiny anyway. 
• Why do conservatives vilify well-educated types like me, including those who, like me, have been trained to evaluate arguments and evidence? Because they do not want their arguments and evidence subjected to critical scrutiny. Their abuse of intellectuals is self-serving: if you're unable to respond to criticisms, vilify those who are criticizing you so that your audience will ignore them.  

And besides all of this, Ziganto offers absolutely nothing in return except the same bullshit. One doesn't have a conversation with her: one can either agree with her or be abused by her. I disagree with her and abuse her on occasion, but I do try to clearly explain to her where and how she goes wrong. All I have learned from Ziganto are different bullshitting techniques which I have been cataloging piecemeal here at Your Analytic Analeptic. So I'll probably look for a more constructive use of my time and skills in the future, if I'm smart.

Anyway, let's get to one of Ziganto's latest posts. This one is again about feminism, and I'll quote it at great length, with her italics removed (emphases mine):

I generally ignore the irrelevant bint known as Miss Gloria Steinem, but Katie Couric interviewed her on Tuesday and thrust her back into the mock-worthy spotlight.  Plus, I’m sick fed up with her and “feminists” like her. The emergence of conservative women to the forefront recently has made them particularly unbearable, as they strive to, in every repugnant way possible, diminish said women. [1] This is just the latest from one of them, Miss Gloria Steinem, who unfortunately resurfaced from whatever Birkenstock-clad, soy latte drinking ivory tower she was hiding in . . . 

Firstly, good grief, Katie Couric. What an inane question: “Can you be a conservative feminist?” As if conservatives women are some odd, only woman-like creatures. Miss Steinem’s response? You can’t be a feminist if you oppose legal abortion. Can’t be one. That’s crimethink! [2] She caps it off with the utterly ridiculous statement that one in three women need an abortion. Now, it’s not the nebulous “choice,” it’s an actual need? Because it never really was about choice, was it? They strove to make abortion the default option.

Well, guess what, [3] Stepford Steinem Feminists? We don’t care if you don’t consider us a part of your cultish club. You see, [4] we have minds of our own. And, unlike you, we respect women and don’t think that they are too stupid to handle life on their own, nor do we think that women are perpetual victims who must be saved from things like “inconvenient” motherhood. We are also tired of your bastardizing the term feminist beyond any recognizable meaning. You are antithetical to feminism and can no longer claim that term as your own. We are taking it back. Not to use, as it’s unnecessary; [5] we know that we have equality already. But, only so that you can no longer use it as a way to promulgate lies in order to further an agenda harmful to all, but particularly to women.

Recently, another Stepford Feminist, Amanda Marcotte, claimed that Sarah Palin – and every other Pro-Life woman – thinks that women are stupid and doesn’t want to offer them a “choice.”  She based this on an honest statement that Palin made at a Susan B. Anthony dinner, wherein she openly and honestly stated that the idea of an abortion had fleetingly crossed her mind. She then said this:

"So we went through some things a year ago that now lets me understand a woman’s, a girl’s temptation to maybe try to make it all go away if she has been influenced by society to believe that she’s not strong enough or smart enough or equipped enough or convenienced enough to make the choice to let the child live. I do understand what these women, what these girls go through in that thought process." 

To the agenda tunnel-visioned like Marcotte, that meant that Palin thinks women are dum-dums and she then asserted this:

"I’ve seen everything from mild cases of morning sickness to months confined to bed in service of bringing a baby into the world, and these kinds of sacrifices should be freely chosen out of love instead of foisted on the unwilling. To suggest that all women are equipped to make these sacrifices at any point in time is to insult those who take on the burden because they want to, not because they have to."

[6] Oooh, the terrible sacrifice of morning sickness. Yeah, avoiding that is way more important than, you know, a life.

What’s insulting is that Marcotte and Steinem and other Stepford Feminists believe that women are incapable of being responsible for their own actions. That if they have the simple human emotions like fear of the unknown or self-doubt, then they should be relieved of that icky burden immediately because surely they can’t handle it. Motherhood is a punishment and a burden that only certain women can be expected to handle. Some aren’t “equipped” to do so, you see.

[7] They are also the ones who want to hide information from women, for fear that women are too stupid to handle the truth; they don’t even want women to see ultrasounds before aborting their children. They have so little respect for women, that [8] they deny the very existence of post-abortion syndrome. To them, it’s inconceivable that any woman would actually feel remorse or be racked with guilt, her entire life, after having an abortion. She got rid of that pesky, burdensome, “just a clump of cells”,  inconvenience! If she doesn’t feel joyful relief, she can’t be a “real” feminist-y woman! 

I now comment on each of the numbered passages so we can see where Ziganto goes wrong. Each numbered comment below corresponds to a numbered passage above. I know, Ziganto probably has no interest in any of this, but for those of you who do, allow me to bolster your intellectual defenses. And by the way, nothing I'm about to say presupposes the falsity of Ziganto's pro-life position. Nothing. Those of you who are pro-life can also agree with the correctness of my criticisms.

1. Note how Ziganto subjects Steinem to abuse. She says that Steinem hides in some "Birkenstock-clad, soy latte drinking ivory tower," where they might have taught Ziganto to write better sentences. (How many soy lattes can an ivory tower drink?) Why would she do that? Well, her readers are likely to agree with the characterization, but they are also more likely to disregard what Steinem has to say if she is characterized in that manner. Ziganto is simply following the play book conservatives have been using since Nixon first used it in the '60's. Ziganto's move here is a fallacious ad hominem. 
2. From Steinem's claim that some women need abortions, Ziganto infers that Steinem believes that abortion isn't about choice but should rather be the default option. This is a bit vague, but Ziganto clearly means to imply that Steinem thinks that women ought to be forced to have abortions. Now, perhaps some women believe that, and perhaps even Steinem believes that. But Ziganto's inference is a obviously a pile of shit. From the fact that someone needs something, it doesn't follow that they ought to be forced to choose that thing. I think Ziganto needs further education, but I also believe that that is her choice to make, and no one else's. Her readers aren't likely to notice Ziganto's sleazy move: they, like Ziganto, probably believe that Steinem is evil, so they won't cause trouble. But surely Steinem meant to say that some women ought not to complete their pregnancies because it is worse for them to do so, all things considered, than abort. You might disagree with that, but that doesn't sound evil. More on the issue of inconvenience later. 
3. Ziganto loves to use words in unexpected and perhaps even incompetent ways. This whole business about taking the word "feminism" back is an example. She claims that the people who call themselves feminists aren't actually feminists, and that people like Ziganto, i.e., people who are opposed to everything feminists traditionally stand for, are the real feminists. Is that clever, or merely idiotic? Anyway, she does it here again. The term "Stepford wife" was taken from a 1972 novel and was used to refer to women who were unusually submissive to their husbands, i.e., just the sort of thing a feminist would caution against. So applying the term "Stepford" to feminists is unexpected. She wants you to believe that feminists are mindless, I suppose. This dovetails with the conservative idea that liberals are mindless idiots (unlike conservatives, who have "minds of [their] own"). Her readers won't object, but Ziganto is obviously bullshitting at this point. There are stupid feminists, but there are some highly intelligent feminists also. 
4. Here, Ziganto claims that, unlike feminists, conservatives "respect women and don’t think that they are too stupid to handle life on their own, nor do we think that women are perpetual victims who must be saved from things like 'inconvenient' motherhood." It isn't at all clear that conservatives respect women, and I'll return to that point shortly. But here again she is simply mischaracterizing feminism. Feminism is about empowering women and achieving social, economic, political, and legal equality with men. Ziganto implies that feminists want to infantilize women and make their decisions for them. That is the very opposite of feminism. Ziganto will pound her little fists on the table and insist that she's right about this, but she is simply wrong. Either she doesn't know what the fuck she's talking about, or she does know but doesn't care because she is shoveling the bullshit. In either case, trusting in what she has to say about this is foolish. (Ziganto loves to write silly little screeds about the president's alleged incompetence, by the way, but she may be projecting.)   
5. Ziganto cannot know that women have equality already, because one can know only what is true, and it just ain't true that women have equality already. According to the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Report of 2007, the United States ranked 31st in gender equality; that result indicates the existence of significant gender inequality. I've got a scholarly report to back up my assertion: Ziganto has nothing. Except bullshit. 
6. Here, Ziganto mischaracterizes pro-choice arguments and therefore commits a straw man fallacy. Marcotte is right: the inconvenience of completing a pregnancy can be much more serious than enduring morning sickness. Ziganto appears to have a daughter; would she honestly claim that her daughter would at 12 be just as psychologically equipped to complete a pregnancy as Sarah Palin was to bring her running mate Trig into the world? And if so, wouldn't that indicate that Ziganto is out of her fucking mind? Either that, or again merely bullshitting. The costs of bringing a new being into the world are considerable, and Ziganto's continued attempts to downplay the sacrifices of women everywhere to complete their pregnancies merely to attack feminists is appalling. She is either out of touch with reality, or she is willing to ignore the sacrifices of real women everywhere who are "raising their families and learning through actual living," merely to score points against feminists and pro-choicers. Ziganto claims to know "the unwashed masses" a lot better feminists do, and yet Ziganto is the first to distort their experiences for her own selfish political purposes. What a bitch. 
7. Here, Ziganto claims that feminists "want to hide information from women, for fear that women are too stupid to handle the truth." Her evidence for this claim is that feminists "don’t even want women to see ultrasounds before aborting their children." There are two problems here. First, as usual, Ziganto's argument is a pile of shit. Ziganto offers no evidence for the claim that feminists think that women are "too stupid to handle the truth." She simply made it up. Why? Because feminists = liberals = members of the intellectual elite = people who allegedly have contempt for voters to whom the Republican Party panders at election time. Ziganto borrows from the same old Republican play book once again. In addition, feminist opposition to recent anti-abortion law is not motivated by a desire to keep information out of the hands of women; rather, it is motivated by a desire to keep government out of the doctor-patient relationship, as I have previously shown. Second, Ziganto's argument is hypocritical. It is people like Ziganto herself who do not trust women to make their own decisions and seek to control the information available to them. Check out this article by Dahlia Lithwick of Slate. According to Lithwick, "[W]hile the GOP position on abortion doesn't treat teenagers as grownups, it does show a growing inclination to treat grownup women as little girls. As important as the decision to end a pregnancy is, the matter of who gets to decide may be even more important. And that decision is increasingly being taken out of the hands of women and put into the hands of strangers." Go ahead, read the whole thing, if you have the guts. 
8. Here, Ziganto claims that feminists "deny the very existence of post-abortion syndrome. To them, it’s inconceivable that any woman would actually feel remorse or be racked with guilt, her entire life, after having an abortion." This is completely inaccurate. To deny the existence of post-abortion syndrome is to deny that women who have abortions are at significant risk of mental problems as a result of aborting. As I have previously argued, there is no scientific evidence that post-abortion syndrome, so defined, exists. I'm with the scientists on this one, not some hysterical bullshitting conservative blogger.  But even if it doesn't exist, it doesn't follow that no one feels guilty about having an abortion. Surely many women experience post-abortion feelings of guilt. But that alone doesn't establish that the syndrome, so defined, exists. Notice what the evidence for the existence of the syndrome is: those who believe it exists claim that they know people who have experienced feelings of guilt after abortion. This is the fallacy of anecdotal evidence. I could just as easily argue that post-abortion syndrome does not exist because I actually know women who have had abortions and experienced no guilt feelings as a result. This is inconceivable to people like Ziganto, of course, since she and others like her are pro-life. But why would someone who is pro-choice feel guilty about having an abortion? Pro-lifers can only respond by insisting on the existence of a syndrome that does not in fact exist. The moral of this story is this: if you are pro-life, don't have an abortion; other than that, mind your own fucking business. 

Ziganto does not respond to any of my criticisms, either because it interferes with her bullshitting mission or she simply doesn't have any response except to agree with all of them. I don't expect her to respond to this one either. There's remarkably little in the way of balls or brains coming from the woman behind snark and boobs.

What is the point?

I have fairly good evidence that Lori Ziganto reads this blog, or at least my criticisms of her posts. And why not?  I frequently do vanity searches on Google. Why shouldn't she? Unfortunately, it has had no effect on her thinking—or her writing, anyway.

In her latest feminism-related post, Ziganto attacks Tina Brown for "smearing" conservative women who won primaries lest Tuesday, e.g., Nikki Haley, Carly Fiorina, and Meg Whitman. According to Brown, their wins are a "blow to feminism," since many of them are "against so many of things that women have fought for for such a long time."

Ziganto's response to Brown is perplexing. Ziganto writes, "Oh, really? I must inform you, Miss Brown, that I am a woman and these women represent the things that I fight for, as a person." There are a number of problems with this response:

• Ziganto assumes that her views are representative of the views of all women.  What reason does she have to believe that? If we consider the issue of abortion, the polling does not appear to support her assumption.  While slightly more Americans call themselves pro-life than pro-choice, a majority of American believe that abortion should be legal in certain circumstances.  Only 19% of Americans believe that abortion should be illegal in all circumstances.  Since Ziganto is pro-life, we have some reason not to believe that her views are representative of Americans.  
• Ziganto is clearly opposed to what we might call the liberal feminist agenda. Ziganto has allied herself with conservative women like Sarah Palin. Surely, then, Ziganto and the politicians she supports are against what liberal feminists have fought for for such a long time, like legal abortion. So how can Ziganto assert that she and the politicians she support are fighting for women? Again by assuming that her views are representative of woman, and that liberal feminists have actually been fighting for things that women oppose. But as I have argued, she can't simply assume this. 
• A related problem is this: when Brown says that conservative politicians are against things women have fought for, she is obviously making a claim which, if true, can only be generally true. Obviously, some women are opposed to the feminist agenda. But when Ziganto assumes that those anti-feminist women are representative of women in general, she does exactly the same thing she attacks Brown for doing, i.e., assuming that her views are representative of women in general. This is a standard conservative strategy: loudly and vigorously claim that your views are representative of the views of Americans, no matter what the polling indicates. We saw this constantly during the health care reform debate. What Ziganto needs to do is some research. What scientific evidence is there that her views are representative of women? Allow me to help you get started, Ziganto.  (And I know that you may immediately be attracted to your usual biased sources.  Just fight the urge to click on those, roll up your sleeves, and do some actual work, all right?)  

Ziganto is still claiming that the real goal of feminism is to transform women into "perpetual children," who "[rely] on protected victim status." I'm not sure why she keeps saying this, and I don't have the time to read all of her posts on the subject or read her obviously biased sources. But pointing out that women are still victims of present sexism and the legacy of past sexism is not tantamount to perpetuating the victimization of women, for if it were, any attempt to address injustice would simply compound the injustice. Did the drive to abolish slavery transform African-Americans into victims? Did the fight for women's suffrage transform women into victims? If we accept Ziganto's reasoning, then any struggle against injustice is actually evil! Ziganto is deploying another conservative strategy, which is to simply forcefully insist that one thing is actually its opposite. Once you see the reasoning for what it is, its ludicrousness is evident. Feminism is a struggle to end the victimization of women; it is not itself the victimization of women. How could the fight to make women equal before the law turn women into victims?

Ziganto also repeats her claim that feminism is harmful to women:

The leftist agenda, which is the femisogynist agenda, is harmful to all – men and women – but has been particularly harmful to women in one aspect. The pushing of the abortion agenda has done more to harm women and motherhood than anything in recent history. The entire pro-abortion movement has demeaned women by diminishing motherhood to the point that it is considered a punishment and a detriment and that a life itself can be an expendable inconvenience.

I have addressed a few of these points in several previous posts. But I would like to address one point here. Ziganto appears to believe (incorrectly) that feminists promote abortion without informing women of the risks. Ziganto can insist on the reality of post-abortion syndrome all she wants, but it simply does not exist, any more than post-cataract surgery syndrome exists, or post-appendectomy syndrome exists, as I have previously argued. Anyway, I would simply point out here that it is actually conservatives who are guilty of deceiving and manipulating women and using "Big Daddy government" to save women (from non-existent threats). So, for example, a law recently passed by Republican majorities in Oklahoma "requires women to undergo an ultrasound and listen to a detailed description of the fetus before getting an abortion," according to the New York Times. Not only that, a second law "prevents women who have had a disabled baby from suing a doctor for withholding information about birth defects while the child was in the womb." What this means is this: if a doctor believes that a woman might abort if she is informed that her fetus has this or that defect, it is legal for the doctor to lie about that defect (by omission or otherwise), and the woman has no legal recourse. (So much for the importance of trust in the doctor-patient relationship.) Now, I ask you: who is treating women as if they are children or cattle? Ziganto says that she believes in small government, but that is a lie. (I'm in favor of big government, but at least I'm honest about it.) Ziganto would have the government in the examination room with you and your doctor, making decisions about your medical care for you, because neither your nor your doctor are competent to make medical and philosophical decisions on your own.

According to Ziganto's brand of "feminism,"

There is no need to constantly bring up gender as if that is why [female politicians] should win. Conservative women know that. They don’t rely on their gender to somehow protect them nor to get them ahead. They are, you know, grown-ups. They rely on themselves and on the love and support of their families and friends, not the government.

(Notice Ziganto's implication that liberal women rely on their gender to get ahead or win elections. That's another sweeping generalization that will go unchallenged by her readers.) Ziganto also asserts, without argument, that women "already are equal to men," but different. Given the ambiguity of "equal," this assertion can mean a lot of different things. So it's not clear what Ziganto is saying. (Ziganto's slippery use of the language makes her meaning often hard to pin down. I believe that is intentional, for it makes it easier for her to respond to criticisms of her posts.) But it is abundantly clear that men and women are not equal in the sense that men still operate at an advantage in our society politically, economically, and socially. Any person of average intelligence with an internet connection can find non-biased sources which confirm that this is true. So while Ziganto might not want to talk about sexism and may prefer to talk about the advantages of making herself subordinate and vulnerable to the men in her life, the rest of us would like to have a grown-up conversation about this serious problem in our society. Things might be peachy at the Ziganto household, but if she thinks that the same can be said for women everywhere, she's delusional.

Ziganto is a bullshitter, and I think she knows it. It matters not to Ziganto what I write here: she will stay the course (for cutting and running would be so wrong!) and continue posting her poorly argued, poorly researched, poorly written rants. Her views will not evolve. If she is raising money now, she will continue to raise it, and so will all the other responsibility-free talkers and bloggers. If any evolution in her views were to become apparent in her writing, there would be consequences. The Republican Party demands ideological purity of its members.

So what is the point of my continuing to criticize her posts? It is possible that I can help some of her readers see her blog for what it is. Possible, though I think unlikely.

Why Ziganto's For The Women card has been pulled

Last month, Lori Ziganto attacked Jessica Valenti at Feministing for cheering the "anonymous pro-choice hero" who defaced the following ad somewhere in the New York City subway system:

The defaced ad appeared thus:

Ziganto was apoplectic:

Want to go to college, but there is a pesky baby growing inside of you? Abort! A life is far less important than your co-ed fun and career plans, right? Your dreams are all that matters, baby be damned. Can’t let that get in the way! Follow President Obama’s thinking and don’t let yourself be “punished with a baby!”

Jessica Valenti called the abortionchangesyou.com ad “heinous.” Do you know what she said about the defaced ad promoting abortion for convenience? She called the vandal a “pro-choice hero” and then said:

Love. It.

Loves encouraging abortion for convenience. Loves encouraging abortion because a baby, a human life, doesn’t fit in with your super fun college plans. Denies the trauma that abortion may cause to the woman, but rejoices at the thought of killing a baby who isn’t timely.

But you want it to be safe, legal and rare? Baloney. Willy nilly matters of convenience are not part of that definition. You have devalued life to the point where *convenience* over-rides a life itself, in your minds.

That is heinous.

The careful reader will notice that Ziganto resorts to the straw man fallacy.  Again. According to Ziganto, pro-choicers believe that abortion is justified whenever completing a pregnancy is inconvenient.  Now, inconvenience is what one might call an elastic concept: what one person considers inconvenient might not be considered inconvenient by someone else.  But it's clear from the tone of her rant that Ziganto would perhaps never consider completing a pregnancy inconvenient.  And she also seems to think that pro-choicers would always find completing a pregnancy inconvenient.  To Ziganto, women who abort are sociopathic narcissists. 

There are two important points to make about Ziganto's rant.  First, as Valenti points out, women often have "complex, personal, and often selfless reasons" for obtaining abortions. And where Ziganto offers only snark in support of her claims, Valenti offers actual scientific evidence.  According to a 2005 study that appeared in the peer-reviewed journal Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health,

Women give many reasons for having an abortion; the most frequent are that having a child (or another child) would interfere with their ability to care for their existing children, their work responsibilities or their education, and that they cannot afford a baby right now. . . . Women’s reasons for ending a pregnancy have been consistent over time and often focus on their responsibilities to the children they already have and considerations for the children they plan to have in the future.

“There is a misconception that women take the decision to terminate a pregnancy lightly,” says Finer. “Women’s primary reasons for making this difficult decision are based on a lack of resources in light of their current responsibilities. Typically, more than one reason drives the decision, and these reasons are frequently interrelated.”

Now, one might argue that I've been unfair to Ziganto.  Perhaps I have.  She doesn't believe that women who abort are sociopathic narcissists, some might say; rather, given that abortion ends human fetal life, which is a very serious matter, abortion could only very rarely be justified.  Wanting to go to college and fulfill one's dreams certainly wouldn't justify abortion. 

But this won't do either.  As Valenti points out, "It isn't that anti-choicers don't understand why women get abortions—it's that they care so little about women's lives that any reason given to obtain an abortion is seen as 'convenient.'"  Pro-lifers compulsively insist on the rights of the fetus, but they curiously silent about the rights of the women carrying fetuses.  If a woman is obligated to ensure that the fetus she carries has an opportunity to fulfill its dreams, why do pro-lifers ridicule the woman's insistence that she have the very same opportunity?  Ziganto asks the pro-choicer, "A life is far less important than your co-ed fun and career plans, right?"  But we could just as easily ask her, "Your fetus's co-ed fun and career plans are far more important than your life, right?"

If Ziganto weren't so busy trivializing the reasons women typically have for obtaining abortions, she might have supported health care reform, since it appears that universal health care actually cuts the abortion rate.  But this business isn't about improving the lives of women; it's about raising money for herself and other responsibility-free bloggers.

I guess preventing abortions doesn't fit in with Ziganto's super-fun blogger plans.

The misogynist post-abortion syndrome propaganda of Lori Ziganto

Fundraiser and blogger Lori Ziganto loves to say that liberal feminists are anti-women:

[W]e’ve all known for some time that while the left trots out the For The Women ™ meme constantly, they are anything but. The same way that self-avowed modern day feminists are anything but feminist. In fact, they are diametrically opposed to feminism, by it’s very definition, because their entire agenda is actually harmful to women. This is why I now call them Femogynists and I’m taking the term feminist back.

Ziganto calls liberal feminists "Femogynists" (surely intending a similarity to the word "misogynist") not only to distinguish between her view and liberal feminism but also to poison the well while she's at it.  I am a liberal feminist, so I was rather surprised to hear that I am also anti-women. Why does Ziganto make such a surprising, counter-intuitive claim?

Well, for one thing,

We are tired of femogynists claiming that they speak for us. We are tired of being sneered at as gender traitors for not toeing the faux feminist line and by daring to be pro-life. We are tired of the attempts to diminish Motherhood. We are tired of women being painted as perpetual victims by the left, in need of Big Daddy Government to save us.

And you know what? I can dig this. I really can. Motherhood and child-bearing is perfectly compatible with feminism, or at least with the kind of feminism I endorse. To say that I am a classical liberal feminist is probably roughly correct. I merely insist on the legal and moral equivalence of the sexes, except in those few possible cases in which sex is morally or legally relevant. I demand only that women have the same rights and privileges that men have.  For me, the key is that women who choose to be mothers have the opportunity to do so autonomously. So I naturally abhor certain right-wing pro-lifers who try to prevent women from having abortions by deceiving and coercing them.

And this brings me to another of Ziganto's reasons for bashing liberal feminism.

According to Ziganto, "an ad campaign aimed at helping women learn about post-abortion syndrome exposed the fact that modern day Feminists rejoice at abortion for convenience and that they are anything but 'pro-women.'" According to Ziganto, "It’s clear that [liberal feminists] don’t care about the dead babies, but they also need to stop insisting that they are For Women ™ , when they most obviously are not. You see, feminists, an unborn baby is not just a clump of cells. Many women who abort their babies, therefore, suffer intense pain and immense guilt. Their entire lives." The problem with liberal feminists, then, is that they "rejoice at the idea of abortion for convenience" with reckless disregard of the dangers of post-abortion syndrome.

Well, what reason does Ziganto give us for thinking that post-abortion syndrome is really something to worry about? "While feminists sneer at the idea of post-abortion syndrome, it does exist," writes Ziganto. And if you follow her link, you will be directed to Jill Stanek's blog—specifically, Stanek's entries on the topic of post-abortion syndrome. Roughly thirty entries. No, I did not read them all. But PajamaMama's attempt to draw parallels between abortion and the Milgram experiment is interesting, and a bit amusing.

So, what's wrong with this?  As many college students have been told, when justifying empirical claims, one ought to find objective, non-biased sources.  Take, for example, tips offered by the University of North Texas Libraries.  Students are advised to ask the following questions about a source, among others:

• Does the author have expertise in the field?
• Is the article intended for an academic or popular audience?
• What point of view does the author present? You want to support your research with objective (non-biased) information that is based on research, not individual opinions.
• If your research is on a controversial topic, is the content fair and balanced? Is more than one view represented?

While Stanek claims to be a nurse, her blog is not a satisfactory source.  It's intended for a popular audience, and it presents only the pro-life point of view.  And ask yourself this: what kind of evidence would support the view that post-abortion syndrome is a real danger?  Only one kind: some sort of scientific study.  Well, why didn't Ziganto cite scientific research in this area?  Because the scientific research does not support her point of view.

According to a 2008 Johns Hopkins University review of the scientific evidence,

[T]he highest quality studies had findings that were mostly neutral, suggesting few, if any, differences between women who had abortions and their respective comparison groups in terms of mental health sequelae. Conversely, studies with the most flawed methodology found negative mental health sequelae of abortion.

("Sequelae" is the plural of "sequela," which is defined as "an aftereffect of disease, condition, or injury.") According to Reuters,

A team at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore reviewed 21 studies involving more than 150,000 women and found the high-quality studies showed no significant differences in long-term mental health between women who choose to abort a pregnancy and others.

"The best research does not support the existence of a 'post-abortion syndrome' similar to post-traumatic stress disorder," Dr. Robert Blum, who led the study published in the journal Contraception, said in a statement.

"Based on the best available evidence, emotional harm should not be a factor in abortion policy. If the goal is to help women, program and policy decisions should not distort science to advance political agendas," added Vignetta Charles, a researcher and doctoral student at Johns Hopkins who worked on the study.

Now, I'm sure that Ziganto and Stanek find the stories of individual women who have been traumatized by their abortions compelling.  Anyone who attends to them would.  But to infer from such anecdotal evidence that post-abortion syndrome is a real possibility is to commit the "I know a person who" fallacy.  And don't we also find compelling the stories of people who had many other kinds of medical procedures that unexpectedly produced undesired outcomes? Are we to ban the practice of medicine altogether in order to prevent these outcomes?  Any medical procedure involves risk.  A patient must be given information about those risks so that they can decide for themselves, autonomously, whether to assume those risks.  Instead, conservatives would rather have the government regulate the flow of information from doctor to patient in order to manipulate a woman's choice. 

So, where does that leave us?

1. Ziganto claims to be a real feminist.  
2. Feminism surely includes the view that women ought not to be prevented from making autonomous decisions. 
3. One way to prevent a person from making an autonomous decision is by deceiving them.  
4. Ziganto's argument that post-abortion syndrome is a serious threat is deceptive, since it is based on biased sources and not sound science.  
5. Therefore, Ziganto really isn't a feminist after all, and she should stop claiming that she is.  Rather, she is a responsbility-free blogger who uses any means necessary to raise money for her right-wing political causes.  

RedState's bk suffers injury in attempt to use logic

When one oversimplifies issues and refuses to make important distinctions, one will find double standards where none exist.

Such is the case with RedState blogger bk.

In "Abortion vs death penalty double standard," bk accuses "'true' liberals" of (1) working to minimize the suffering of criminals who are being executed but (2) not working to minimize the suffering of sentient fetuses that are being aborted.

I suppose that bk would respond to my criticism of his post below by asserting that I am a false liberal (whatever that is).  Anyway, here it is.

bk cites this New York Times story as evidence that liberals don't want criminals being executed to feel pain.  The story concerns the death penalty case Baze v. Rees, in which "a United States District Court judge in Tennessee ruled that the state had, in fact, violated the Eighth Amendment by disregarding the 'substantial risk' that the three-drug cocktail [used in lethal injection] would cause 'unnecessary pain.'"

Notice that the motivation isn't compassion for the condemned: it is concern about the constitutionality of the punishment.  The Eighth Amendment prohibits "cruel and unusual punishment."  bk can't simply ignore the Constitution, even if it would give him great satisfaction to know that criminals feel pain when they are executed.

Anyway, bk asserts that liberals are opposed to a bill being considered in Nebraska that "would make all abortions after the 20th week illegal because of the suffering of the baby vs the current law there that looks at viability on a case by case basis." (Notice his use of the word "baby" to refer to the fetus—a vile technique used by pro-lifers to convert others to their cause by non-rational means.) According to bk,

The same sort of liberals who didn’t want criminals to allegedly suffer for a moment just before death are absolutely outraged at this idea. They are worried because with the Roberts court having already okayed partial birth abortion bans in Gonzales v. Carhart that they might allow another “pillar” of Roe v. Wade to be chopped down by setting a fixed limit – a “bright line” – on viability.  

Allow me to explain, bk.

I am liberal.

I am pro-choice.  I believe that abortion should be legal, safe, and (most importantly) rare.  I don't believe that abortion should be available without restriction, as bk claims.  For example, I am against partial birth abortion unless continuation of a pregnancy threatens the life or health of a woman.  Aborting a viable fetus is equivalent to infanticide in my view.  Why am I pro-choice?  I believe that abortion is a serious moral issue.  The decision to terminate fetal life ought not to be made lightly.  But human beings have a right to control their own bodies.  (Indeed, if we don't have that, what's left to have?)  No government or church has a right to dictate to a woman what her reproductive choices will be.  Many pro-lifers forget that women have rights if fetuses have rights; to them, it is as if women are mere livestock.  But no right is absolute.  It is true that some fetuses are sentient, and fetal sentience is a moral problem for pro-choicers.  But fetal sentience is not the only moral consideration.

I am opposed to the death penalty.  I believe that criminal punishment is justified by its deterrent effect.  There is no scientific proof that the deterrent effect of the death penalty is superior to that of all other alternative punishments, such as life in prison without parole.  And life in prison without parole is a severe punishment.  Common sense arguments that the death penalty is a superior deterrent are no better than common sense arguments that abolition of the death penalty would deter murders.  So the death penalty is overkill: for all we know, we can deter all murders that can be deterred without it, so the death penalty is unnecessary.  And I haven't even mentioned the issue of executing innocent people, an issue that a conservative ought to be concerned about if their support of the death penalty is justified by something other than a lust for blood.  If it could be shown that the death penalty were a superior deterrent, then we would be justified in using it, even if it caused those who received it to suffer.

We ought to minimize unnecessary suffering in this world, be it experienced by the innocent or guilty, human being or sentient non-human animal.  But this is only one of our moral duties.  There are others, bk.  So I reject your rudimentary argument that liberals accept a double standard here. 

Notice that I could formulate an equally sloppy argument to show that "true conservatives" accept a number of double standards: they have concern for the suffering of fetuses, for example, but not for the suffering of infants, especially if they have preexisting conditions or their parents are impoverished.  Of course, there are actual examples of plenty of conservative politicians holding plainly contradictory positions, but we needn't go into that here.  

It is posts like bk's that engender the belief that conservative bloggers can win debates only by oversimplifying the issues, refusing to recognize important distinctions, and attributing strawmen to their opponents who they reduce to mere caricatures.  Conservatives, those debating strategies make you look like morons.  I know a lot of you think that many liberals are mindless idiots, and I suppose that some of them are.  But many of us are actually pretty smart—smart enough to see bk's post for what it is: an attempt to propagandize a readership whose intellectual defenses are down.

The Pro-life argument for health care reform

I learned from Ezra Klein today that T.R. Reid has confirmed a belief I expressed back in September that more affordable health care might lead to fewer abortions.

Back then I wrote:

The question is, how can we most effectively decrease the number of abortions? What we could collectively do is make it less likely that women who find themselves [in difficult circumstances] choose abortion. We could do more to make sure that everyone in this country has health insurance. (In fact, if health care reform is passed and more people are insured, it might actually result in a decrease in the number of abortions!)

T.R. Reid argues for this claim in The Washington Post. Here is Klein's excerpt of Reid's column:

The latest United Nations comparative statistics, available at http://data.un.org, demonstrate the point clearly. The U.N. data measure the number of abortions for women ages 15 to 44. They show that Canada, for example, has 15.2 abortions per 1,000 women; Denmark, 14.3; Germany, 7.8; Japan, 12.3; Britain, 17.0; and the United States, 20.8. When it comes to abortion rates in the developed world, we're No. 1.

No one could argue that Germans, Japanese, Brits or Canadians have more respect for life or deeper religious convictions than Americans do. So why do they have fewer abortions?

One key reason seems to be that all those countries provide health care for everybody at a reasonable cost. That has a profound effect on women contemplating what to do about an unwanted pregnancy.

The connection was explained to me by a wise and holy man, Cardinal Basil Hume. He was the senior Roman Catholic prelate of England and Wales when I lived in London; as a reporter and a Catholic, I got to know him.

In Britain, only 8 percent of the population is Catholic (compared with 25 percent in the United States). Abortion there is legal. Abortion is free. And yet British women have fewer abortions than Americans do. I asked Cardinal Hume why that is.

The cardinal said that there were several reasons but that one important explanation was Britain's universal health-care system. "If that frightened, unemployed 19-year-old knows that she and her child will have access to medical care whenever it's needed," Hume explained, "she's more likely to carry the baby to term. Isn't it obvious?"

A young woman I knew in Britain added another explanation. "If you're [sexually] active," she said, "the way to avoid abortion is to avoid pregnancy. Most of us do that with an IUD or a diaphragm. It means going to the doctor. But that's easy here, because anybody can go to the doctor free."

The Smug and the Dead

Two especially interesting blog entries concerning the Tebow Super Bowl ad produced by Focus on the Family have appeared on Slate recently. Those of you who haven't seen the ad may see it below.



In "The Invisible Dead: The grisly truth about the Super Bowl abortion ad," William Saletan discusses the facts about Pam Tebow's medical condition when she declined to abort the being who would become Tim Tebow. Saletan writes:

Pam's story certainly is moving. But as a guide to making abortion decisions, it's misleading. Doctors are right to worry about continuing pregnancies like hers. Placental abruption has killed thousands of women and fetuses. No doubt some of these women trusted in God and said no to abortion, as she did. But they didn't end up with Heisman-winning sons. They ended up dead.

Read the entire entry here.

In "Tebow Ad All Smiles, Cruelty," Amanda Marcotte discusses the perhaps unintended suggestions of the ad. Marcotte writes:

When you argue that you survived a harrowing pregnancy because you're "tough," you imply that other women who die under similar circumstances were too weak to deserve to survive. It's already bad enough that the religious right shames women who choose abortion for choosing their education, careers, relationships, already existing children, or their own lives over the obligation to have another baby. But shaming women for being weak who die trying to fill the mandate (or who are deprived of the choice) to bear children at all costs? That's dark indeed, no matter how glowingly white the background of the ad is.

Read the entire entry here.

Marcotte's blog entry resonated with me. As I recall saying elsewhere in this blog, a loathing of human beings is an essential part of Christianity, no matter how vociferously any particular Christian might deny it. Some Christians, however, reserve a special loathing for those of us who dare not to conform to their Christian worldview. The Tebow ad is an insult to anyone who is not irrational enough to roll the dice with their own lives like Pam Tebow. The smiling faces delivering the underlying "misogynist ideology," as Marcotte puts it, aren't nearly as kind as they are smug. And if there's one thing I hate, it's smugness. How they hope this ad will appeal to the very people the ad insults is a mystery.

Health care reform, abortion, and the already born

(This was originally published elsewhere August 5, 2009. It has been edited slightly.)

I just saw this headline today: "Abortion Coverage Allowed In Health Care Legislation."

Of course, if such coverage is stripped from the bill and it passes, those who join the new insurance exchange would lack coverage others have. And if this bill succeeds in making insurance available to those who cannot now afford it, then the have-nots get screwed yet again, ironically probably by those who say they actually care about the poor, i.e., religious persons.

I am certain that religious groups are already working to kill this legislation.

My problem with some of these groups is their combination of an overly narrow focus on abortion and contempt for human beings, especially those who they consider sinners. Let me explain.

I am willing to bet that most women who have abortions are not evil maniacs who thirst for the blood of the unborn. Most women have what they consider good reasons for aborting. And the fact that religious groups dismiss these reasons out of hand does not by itself show that those reasons are not good.

Some of their reasons undoubtedly arise from a desire to do the right thing. If a poor, unemployed woman finds herself pregnant and without health insurance, and the father is not willing to support her and her unborn child before and after birth, she might reasonably believe that abortion would result in the best consequences overall.

If you're pro-life, let me assure you that I agree with you about one thing: the fewer abortions, the better. The question is, how can we most effectively decrease the number of abortions? What we could collectively do is make it less likely that women who find themselves in situations like these choose abortion. We could do more to make sure that everyone in this country has health insurance. (In fact, if health care reform is passed and more people are insured, it might actually result in a decrease in the number of abortions!) We could do more to make sure that everyone who is employed earns a wage that makes raising children an option. We could do more to make sure that the needs of those who are unemployed through no fault of their own are met.

So here's my question: why don't those folks who so fervently promote the anti-abortion cause in this country also equally fervently promote the cause of economic justice? Compared to the attention abortion gets from the religious right in this country, issues of economic justice get relatively none, in spite of the importance Christianity places on economic justice. If we are to be pro-life in this country, we can't simply force women to complete their pregnancies and then turn our backs on them and their children once they are born. How can I take the pro-life community seriously when their focus is so narrow that they would allow the children they have fought for before their birth to live in squalor after? I think that this is a fair question.

And this is not purely an issue of personal responsibility. If we think we can convince human beings to abstain from sex until pregnancy is a real option, we are simply out of our minds. It's not going to work, ever. This is a fact that we have to deal with, and if we refuse to, we're being irresponsible. In addition, many people find themselves in dire economic straights through no fault of their own. This is plainly obvious once we pull the ideological shades and let the light of reality in.

Neither will the simple plea that woman place their children up for adoption solve this problem. The people whose babies are most in demand are the same people who tend to do better in this economy and are thus more likely to be able to afford abortion; this is the legacy of racism and sexism in this country, and that is a reality too with which we must deal.

Putting children up for adoption is only half the solution; the other half is that we actually adopt children, including those who might not look like us. The mere fact that an abortion has been prevented is not enough; ensuring that those fetuses that were not aborted go on to live happy and productive lives is also important.

Let us all think about this before we try to kill health care reform in this country.