Morality Play...

On the moral values stage, gay marriage is just the warm-up act -- a loud and brazen farce with outrageous lisping queens to get the audience riled up and paying attention.  But the masked players quickly mince offstage to catcalls and jeers as the house lights dim for the main event.  A tear-jerker about the tragic end of an innocent child at the hands of brutal and heartless villains.  The show plays to packed houses across the country and the donation tin is always full.  The title: Abortion on Demand.

The story is formulaic, the plot hokey, the characters two dimensional, but it has a cult following, and that cult has spawned a movement.  It has forged common bonds between Protestants and Catholics, between the well-intentioned poor and their rich plutocratic exploiters, between moderate liberals and moderate conservatives.  The stereotyped villains in the story serve as the bedrock for the demonization of godless liberals who want "mercy for serial killers but none for unborn babies."

This story is dragging us all down.  Its mythology must be exploded, its alliance of pathos destroyed.

There are many ways to attack the flaws in the storyline, many of which I hope to visit in future postings.  The difficulty that I encounter is that my arguments are largely intellectual, but this story does not work at that level.  It's an emotional argument, drawing as it does on our enormous mammalian affinity for babies and things that are superficially like babies.  The only way to counter it is with another emotional argument, outrage at its injustice or snickering at its absurdity.  With some concerted effort we might find the right balance, just enough to open a window for more reasoned arguments to get a hearing.

- jack*

Comments

[jimBOB]

You'll never change anybody's mind about abortion, certainly not with logic. You might as well try to bring down an elephant with a pea-shooter.

Abortion is an issue that will work against whichever side advocates the status quo. As long as it is legal, there will be accusations of baby-killing etc. Nothing that anyone can say will convince the pro-lifers that a clump of cells isn't the moral equivalent of a diapered bundle of joy, and since the procedure is legal, you won't have dead and maimed mothers from amateur abortions to look at.

Once they get Roe Vs. Wade overturned, the dynamic reverses. Suddenly getting the knocked-up middle class high schooler dealt with will be a lot harder. And there will be horrific cases of botched illegal abortions. At the same time, removing legal abortion will undercut large amounts of right-wing fundraising and remove much of the religious right's reason for being. Opposing abortion has long been an ethical freebie; Once abortion is illegal, the real costs of forbidding it will become evident.

With the results of the 2004 elections, I imagine Roe is doomed. The only thing that could save it would be a cynical realization by Republicans that they need the issue more than the victory. Whether that will be enough to defy the true believers is going to be interesting to watch.

[AlanR]

Here's an idea that's been kicking around my head.

Begin by establishing what opposition to abortion means.

First, it makes no sense unless it is absolute: "except in case of rape or incest" isn't good enough for murder; if abortion is murder, neither rape nor incest can justify it. After this, all but 20% of the populace is alienated from anti-abortionism or pushed farther to the right than they are comfortable with.

Second, it accuses anyone who recieves an abortion of murder in the first degree; worse, it accuses mothers of murdering their own children in the first degree.

Now, cite statistics and examples of women who get abortion; a particularly good one is Irishwomen who visit Britain for legal abortions. Ask the audience: "Are these women murderers? For if abortion is the murder it is said to be, these women are murders in the most depraved fashion. Will you say to them that they are guilty of murder, murder of their own children, murder most foul?"

Get that message out, and I predict anti-abortion zealots will go the way of neo-nazis.

[bedrocktruth]

I've made a similar post on another blog but this thread is so close it may be appropriate here.

I wouldn't support making abortion illegal for the many reasons pointed out here and certainly the mother's life, rape or incest is a valid reason for it. But my focus is not so much on zygotes and embryos as it is on a fully developed child, visible by ultra sound even to the degree that the child's expressions; smiles, frowns, can be seen.

And on the double standards I see in some attitudes about abortion and the death penalty.

For example, earlier this year the Senate passed the "Unborn Victims of Violence" act recognizing that more than one life would be affected if,say,a pregnant woman were slammed in the stomach during a house robbery, killing her 7 month old baby. In the Scott Peterson case, for example,he would be on trial for taking 2 lives,not one.

The Senate thought it made sense, passing the legislation by an almost two thirds majority, 61-38. Most rational Americans think it makes sense too, that the unborn child that the couple has viewed many times through ultra sound, already named and decorated the nursery in the appropriate colors for has a claim on existence, is an entity, has a God given right to live.

Well, guess who didn't agree with the legislation.

It was,of course,the same organization that vehemently opposes the death penalty as cruel and inhuman punishment for even the most vicious killers in our society.

"ACLU Calls Senate Anti-Choice Vote Misguided;Reproductive Freedom Could Be Undermined By Bill’s Passage
March 25, 2004
WASHINGTON - Following the Senate’s adoption of the so-called "Unborn Victims of Violence Act," the American Civil Liberties Union today called the measure an ill-advised assault on reproductive freedom, saying that pregnant women could be protected without adopting the bill’s approach of undermining the right to choose abortion."

Thankfully, California amended its homicide statute to include the killing of a fetus by a third party and Peterson was charged with two counts of murder, but I hope you see the double standard here.

Serial killers have the ACLU, legions of lawyers and a hopelessly bogged down judicial system to insure their right to life-as worthless,in my opinion-as it is. It took 16 years for example to finally bring John Wayne Gacy, convicted of 33 murders, to justice.

Now if we could just get the same sanctity of life concerns and legal guarantees for little Susie in the womb, the child would be a healthy teen ager before she could finally be brought to justice for her crime-that of being conceived.

[AlanR]

Bedrocktruth, you bring up what appears to me to be a double standard with regards to murdering children in the womb. In your analysis, if I understand what you have written correctly, when a third party ends a pregnancy a child is murdered, but when that same pregnancy is ended by an elective abortion, no murder has occured.

I do not believe this to be the case, and I hope that my reading of your post is mistaken, so that you may not believe this to be the case.

I believe that a woman has a right to choose, and that no outside agency, whether it be the government or if it be a criminal, may violate that right. When, in the course of assault, a woman's pregnancy is ended by violence against her, that is itself a crime, and the victim of that crime is the woman whose pregnancy, which she has an inalienable right to, has been terminated against her will.

This also covers certain governments who coerce their female citizens to undergo abortions against their will.

[jack*]

Seems to me you failed to read the entire ACLU press release:

http://www.aclu.org/ReproductiveRights/ReproductiveRights.cfm?ID=15299&c=30

Your "focus" may not be on zygotes and embryos, but the legislation you tout was. It legally defines destroying a zygote as murder, and requires criminal penalties even when there was no criminal intent (e.g. accidental). These two unnecessary provisions make it a quite deliberate and direct attack on reproductive rights. "The ACLU fully supports efforts to punish acts of violence against women that harm or terminate a wanted pregnancy," but they know bad legislation when they see it.

As for the death penalty, you beg the question by saying that Gacy's 16 years in prison (and the more he would have spent) meant nothing and that "justice" was only done on his death.

[jack*]

Bedrocktruth has responded to this thread in the "Mythical Perfection..." comments area.