One life to live

Like Fern Hill over at Dammit Janet! I almost keeled over when I found myself agreeing with The National  Post's Barbara Kay today.

Noted for her anti-feminist columns in the opinion pages -- think me, but opposite -- Kay today scored acres of newsprint for a reprint of her speech to the anti-choice "Live for Life" club at King's College, University of Western Ontario, in December, 2008.

(She recently spoke to R.E.A.L. women, misrepresenting feminism to this group of hard-core ultra-conservative ''pro-family'' -- and that's a nice way of putting it -- lobbyists.)

Anyway ...

Kay takes the position that the fetophiles in the ''Live for Life'' club and all their pro-forced pregnancy pals in other such groups are fighting a losing battle with their rhetoric comparing abortion to ''genocide'' and the ''Holocaust.''

Beginning with the worst, I cannot think of anything more damaging amongst educated observers to the pro-life cause than the Genocide Awareness Project (GAP) campaign, which draws a moral equivalence between abortion and the Holocaust.

You cannot build an argument on an analogy alone. In any debate, emotional arousal must be subordinated to rational persuasion.

You have, or should have, the political right to turn people off through shocking images (for that is largely the effect of this campaign). But you don't have the ethical right to exploit for mere rhetorical advantage a human tragedy with no logical, moral or historical relevance to abortion.

The GAP campaign is intellectually flawed because it extrapolates one detail from the Holocaust -- numbers killed -- and on that basis alone proclaims a moral equivalence.

But the point of the Holocaust is not the number of lives extinguished. Genocides aren't about numbers. They are about ideology-based hatred -- unchecked hatred for an identifiable minority group that serves to unite the persecuting majority group, and paves the way for its horrible consequences.

Unborn children are not a minority identity group, nor are abortions performed by political fiat for the purpose of furthering solidarity amongst some dominant group. Every abortion is an individual choice made by an individual woman. None of these women "hates" the potential child she aborts; they hate their situation. Most women who have abortions in fact go on to have children that they love. Nazis did not kill some Jews, and cultivate friendships with others; they hated and considered subhuman all Jews.

Moreover, you are not only describing the action of abortion as evil in this comparison, you are implying that women who abort, like Nazis, are evil people. There is neither truth nor dignity in accusing women of such moral turpitude.

Choose any factual perspective, you won't find a single moral parallel between the situations. And that is why it is not in your interest to pursue the campaign. Or in our mutual interest, because it stands in the way of an alliance between us.

I wonder if those who think the GAP campaign is defensible have really assessed the damaging image it creates in intelligent observers' minds. It brands you as people who feel passionately, but who do not think clearly. High emotion and the absence of reason are the marks of extremists and conspiracy theorists.

So far so good.

But Kay then winds up with this vague -- and rather ominous -- strategic advice (Boldface mine):

You should end the so-called pro-choicers' monopoly on women's "rights" with "A Woman's Right to Informed Consent" and "A Woman's Right to Optimal Reproductive Health."

Focusing the debate on women's health, you would then occupy the moral high ground feminists claim as their particular precinct. What campus union could in conscience refuse an information session on women's health?

The pro-choice movement has stereotyped you. Don't let the media and student unions pigeonhole the pro-life movement as Christian evangelists and stay-at-home moms with 10 children (not that there's anything wrong with that). There are many secular career women who sympathize with or actively support your cause. The motto of an American group called Feminists for Life is: "Women deserve better than abortion." I like that positive message, and so will many other Canadians.

Canada is never going to outlaw abortion, but an abortion law with benign, sensible constraints that line up with those of all civilized countries except ours, should be the goal of our mutual endeavours.

''Benign sensible constraints?'' ''Informed consent?''

Such as? Waiting periods? Mandatory pre-abortion psych counselling? Lectures on the risks of abortion (but not on the risks of pregnancy and childbirth?) State rape by ultra-sound so that women are forced to see their embryos?

All of these ideas have been pushed before.

All of them restrict women's rights, reproductive, privacy, physical and emotional.

No thanks.

No woman gets up in the morning and decides, ''Hey! I think I'll drop by the abortion clinic today!'' Terminating a pregnancy is difficult enough. None of us needs the government -- and people who think we're committing genocide -- to tell us how to live for our lives.

 

Comments

[sooey]

She sounds like any one of those Republicans who were suddenly embarrassed being associated with Sarah Palin but had no trouble being associated with George W. Bush. Tough nuts that she doesn't like the language used by GAP. Pro-Lifers, including Barbara Kay, are irrational and unreasonable. There's absolutely no point in arguing with any of them about abortion because they don't understand that women must have reproductive control over our own bodies or we have no human rights at all.

[fern hill]

This is part of the rebranding of the forced-pregnancy movement. The new look is 'abortion hurts women' and 'women deserve better than abortion'.

Babs wants in, but the GAP crap stuck in even her craw. I really liked her destruction of it. I'm hanging on to that link for future reference.

And the informed consent meme. Somewhere, maybe at StageLeft, SUZY ALL-CAPS was trying the 'people don't know what abortion is' schtick. JJ replied something like: 'OMG, you're totally right, when I had an abortion I thought I was going for a Brazilian wax'.

Idiocy, all of it. Thanks for staying on top of it, Antonia.

[brebis noire]

The modern anti-abortion movement is essentially based on the idea that abortion is equivalent to genocide. Or slavery. Or eugenics - whatever atrocity they can think of, they will compare and equate it with abortion. They are also hoping that the generation of women who remember what life was like for women and unwanted children before legal abortion and widespread availability of contraception will die out and that history will be forgotten.

In fact, the younger women of this movement are willfully ignorant of that history themselves.

So Kay isn't going to make any friends among them by reasonably suggesting that they are utterly wrong and offensive when they make those comparisons.

[jpeg]

Usually when it comes to an article about abortion, I don't read it. But because I'm a regular reader of your blog, I decided to tackle it.

I had an abortion 3 years ago. It hurts me deeply when I read articles from pro-lifers that compare me to a murderer or insinuate horrible things about me.

No one runs to have an abortion, swinging their arms and thinking yee-ha. It's a painful, difficult, personal decision. Do I regret my decision? No. Does it hurt? Yes.

It's so difficult to live in a society where it's debated so tremendously. Do you know who the three groups are that are constantly plagued and put together as the major evils by evangelicals: people who have had abortions, homosexuals and adulturers.

And every time I read an article that frames any of those three as 'evil', I lose a bit of myself. I feel such tremendous sadness and I realize that there are some people that hate what I've done so much that they hate me.

But they don't even know me! And where would they have been if I'd had that baby? I don't know.. but many probably would've judged me then too.

I wish I felt comfortable to actually tell someone I had an abortion and I'm sorry taht I'm using this venue as the place to do it.

It was an awful experience. But it was the choice I made given my limited financial and emotional resources at the time. I'm better for it but that doesn't mean I loved making that choice.

[Antonia]

Thank you Jpeg for your story.

I have to say that most women I know have had abortions, and I am talking in the dozens. (At a recent girls night out, I polled the six women at the table and five of us had abortions.)
With one exception among all my friends, each had only one and most of those went on to have children. Not one regrets her decision because of the time, place and space she was in when she found herself young, pregnant and alone.
Accidents happen.
I have to say that the friend who had three abortions, she had, shall we say, ''issues.'' She is a person who is emotionally needy and looked for love in all the wrong ways from the wrong men.
Not one of these women are ''evil.'' Not one would hurt a fly. In every case, each woman made her decision with great regret and care. Some, because they became pregnant before abortion was accessible, travelled out of the country at great expense. Others went the back alley route. Let me tell you, you don't want to find yourself that desperate EVER.
Also, despite all the anti-choice nonsense about abortion causing physical and emotional problems, pfffffffft.
My sense is, if there are subsequent emotional problems, they were there before the woman became pregnant. As for physical risks, well, hey pregnancy is not without its risks either.