Somewhere toward the end of "A Few Good Men" comes the only scene from the movie that anyone actually remembers. It's the one where Jack Nicholson in a uniform begins chewing the scenery and turns a dreary Aaron Sorkin adaptation of an Aaron Sorkin play into a memorable movie while inflicting Sorkin on the entertainment industry for the next two decades.
The familiar thesis of Nicholson's Colonel Jessup is that he does what needs to be done and what no one wants to talk about needing to be done. His existence may be "grotesque and incomprehensible to you", but he does the ugly things that make it possible for everyone to go about their day.
The speech is an extended wordy distillation of a familiar quote that was variously attributed to Churchill or Orwell. "People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf."
In the urban battlefield of Philly, one of those rough men doing violence on behalf of liberal ideas was a Thomas Jefferson University grad by the name of Kermit Gosnell. Gosnell was one of those unsung heroes doing the dirty work that allowed the activists putting on another round of the Vagina Monologues sleep safely in their beds at night.
Most supporters of military intervention don't like looking at photos of dead children after a bombing raid. They will contend that they are a fact, but not the point. Gosnell's butcher shop is similarly a fact, rather than the point. Pro-choice activists will argue that it is not representative of abortion clinics. And it isn't.
It is representative of what abortion looks like once you cut through the upper layer of the medical services provided to Sarah Lawrence grads and down to the street level of the lower strata that don't visit abortion clinics to assert their reproductive empowerment, but because the family unit is broken and they are trying to escape the same cycle of broken families that they can never leave behind.
Kermit Gosnell wasn't running an Aaron Sorkin abortion clinic. He was running a Colonel Jessup abortion clinic.
Margaret Sanger got her start setting up shop in Jewish and Italian neighborhoods because those were the two groups that the upper strata of the day thought were having too many children. Back then it was supposed to be about wives overburdened with too many children. Now it's about families that never existed where the abortions don't happen at the clinic, those are just the final expressions of a larger societal abortion that took place when the family died.
Abortion is the final act of the death of the family. It pretends to solve the problem that arises from the absence of the family. The first abortion kills marriage. The last abortion kills the child that might have come from a marriage that never existed.
The family isn't dead everywhere. It's more likely to be dead in the places that men like Gosnell do business than the places where the policymakers and the non-profits who dress up destruction as empowerment do business.
Most arsonists don't set their own houses on fire. Most liberal policies don't affect liberals. And that's true in the family sphere where the liberals in the top 1 percent are more likely to have a stable marriage than the bottom 1 percent bleeding in Gosnell's house of reproductive freedom because their dead baby does not have and will not have a father.
Dr. Kermit Gosnell was doing the dirty work of the liberal state by cleaning up some of the mess. It was bloody and murderous work, but it was made necessary by the sort of people who talk about reproductive freedom while little realizing how little freedom the women who bled, and sometimes died, in Gosnell's offices really had.
The issue isn't as simple as Pro-Choice. Abortion is just the conclusion of the sordid package of social liberalism. The package begins with sex ed, complete with the obligatory LGBT mentions, runs through national STD infestations, hookup culture, single parenthood and packs of young men and women recreating the mistakes of the parents they never had and then flushing those mistakes down the toilet before settling down with three kids, by different fathers who are never around, and a package of subsidies from the welfare state administered by social workers who have seen it all.
It's not the story for everyone, but for many of the women who found and find their way to places like Gosnell's butcher shop, that is their story. It's not a story about abortion. It's a story about what happens when you replace the family with free love that turns out to be neither free nor love. Like teaching first graders sex ed or handing out condoms on the street, abortion is one of the ways that the liberal state tries to limit the fallout from its destruction of the family.
The fallout is ugly and bloody. You can see it in the packs of angry teenage flash mobs smashing through stores. You can see it in the food stamp cards that mothers tote like coupons, the teen domestic abuse hotline posters hanging around neighborhoods "If he respects you, he won't beat you" and the other posters of frightened pregnant teenagers holding their stomachs and whispering, "I don't want to lose my dream."
The end of that long brutal journey through black eyes, plans for a GED and medical tests at the clinic is one of Dr. Gosnell's slabs. The men and women who made Kermit Gosnell's business boom don't want to look at him. Why would they? How many people wanted to look at William Calley? They are satisfied knowing that somewhere rough men in latex gloves are doing violence of the world they made. The world they unmade.
They are beginning to claim Gosnell's story already and remake it into another drama about the lack of access. More money must be given to Planned Parenthood so that no Dr. Gosnell's happen again. Reform and accountability are key. More money must go to groups that promote the lifestyles that lead to abortion and then dispense abortions so that the whole cycle can continue to expand. The babies have to be destroyed to save the next generation of babies from being punished with babies.
But the Gosnells aren't going anywhere. They are everywhere. Sometimes they're Middle Eastern. Other times they're Chinese or Pakistani. Their medical skills are poor, but it's not because they're stupid, it's because they don't care. They set up shop in poor neighborhoods. The philosophy is fast food. In and out. Maximize patients. Maximize cash. The treatment is sloppy but so are the patients and no one cares because there is a separate waiting room for the white patients.
Often they work the Medicaid/Medicare angle where they defraud the government, ordering endless tests from clinics they have relationships with while offering the lowest standard of care possible. And some cash in on the abortion business. Patients aren't people to them. They're wallets or insurance cards with eyes, teeth, bones, genitalia, muscles and any other parts that they can bill for.
It's easy to take a whack at them, but vultures only gather where there is carrion. The Gosnells are vultures. They will eat what they can, gorge themselves on bloody meat and then waddle in the sun. But they didn't make this world where family is becoming an alien concept and a child is an alien fetal parasite. They are just cashing in on it.
Kermit Gosnell is the future. And the future in places like this is ugly and grim. It's broken families living on social welfare creating more broken families. It's dead children whose murder churches and synagogues are forced to pay for. It's living children who grow up hoping to be able to kill. It's feral packs of lost boys who will never be men and the girls who suddenly become women reading an ad and taking a bus down to 3801 Lancaster Avenue because they're lonely and afraid and they're afraid of losing their dreams, even if they don't know what they are anymore.
This is the world that liberalism made. It is small, mean and ugly. Call it Sex Positive Education or Reproductive Freedom or any other euphemism and out of sight of the specialized study sessions at overpriced colleges, it still ends with mothers towing screaming children down the street, going to church on Sundays even though they don't believe and there are hardly any younger men there and others mothers becoming girls again at Dr. Gosnell's hands.
Kermit Gosnell will be locked up. There will be a brief spurt of inspections. And then things will go on as before and the empowerment educators who wear "I Had an Abortion" t-shirts while they drive to the soccer games of their children in some placid suburb will sleep well at night knowing that somewhere in Philly, NYC and LA there are rough men doing violence to the wombs of desperate women and the lives of their unborn children on behalf of their ideologies and policies. Rough men in dark places doing the inevitable dirty work in the world they made.
The familiar thesis of Nicholson's Colonel Jessup is that he does what needs to be done and what no one wants to talk about needing to be done. His existence may be "grotesque and incomprehensible to you", but he does the ugly things that make it possible for everyone to go about their day. The speech is an extended wordy distillation of a familiar quote that was variously attributed to Churchill or Orwell. "People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf."
In the urban battlefield of Philly, one of those rough men doing violence on behalf of liberal ideas was a Thomas Jefferson University grad by the name of Kermit Gosnell. Gosnell was one of those unsung heroes doing the dirty work that allowed the activists putting on another round of the Vagina Monologues sleep safely in their beds at night.
Most supporters of military intervention don't like looking at photos of dead children after a bombing raid. They will contend that they are a fact, but not the point. Gosnell's butcher shop is similarly a fact, rather than the point. Pro-choice activists will argue that it is not representative of abortion clinics. And it isn't.
It is representative of what abortion looks like once you cut through the upper layer of the medical services provided to Sarah Lawrence grads and down to the street level of the lower strata that don't visit abortion clinics to assert their reproductive empowerment, but because the family unit is broken and they are trying to escape the same cycle of broken families that they can never leave behind.
Kermit Gosnell wasn't running an Aaron Sorkin abortion clinic. He was running a Colonel Jessup abortion clinic.
Margaret Sanger got her start setting up shop in Jewish and Italian neighborhoods because those were the two groups that the upper strata of the day thought were having too many children. Back then it was supposed to be about wives overburdened with too many children. Now it's about families that never existed where the abortions don't happen at the clinic, those are just the final expressions of a larger societal abortion that took place when the family died.
Abortion is the final act of the death of the family. It pretends to solve the problem that arises from the absence of the family. The first abortion kills marriage. The last abortion kills the child that might have come from a marriage that never existed.
The family isn't dead everywhere. It's more likely to be dead in the places that men like Gosnell do business than the places where the policymakers and the non-profits who dress up destruction as empowerment do business.
Most arsonists don't set their own houses on fire. Most liberal policies don't affect liberals. And that's true in the family sphere where the liberals in the top 1 percent are more likely to have a stable marriage than the bottom 1 percent bleeding in Gosnell's house of reproductive freedom because their dead baby does not have and will not have a father.
The issue isn't as simple as Pro-Choice. Abortion is just the conclusion of the sordid package of social liberalism. The package begins with sex ed, complete with the obligatory LGBT mentions, runs through national STD infestations, hookup culture, single parenthood and packs of young men and women recreating the mistakes of the parents they never had and then flushing those mistakes down the toilet before settling down with three kids, by different fathers who are never around, and a package of subsidies from the welfare state administered by social workers who have seen it all.
It's not the story for everyone, but for many of the women who found and find their way to places like Gosnell's butcher shop, that is their story. It's not a story about abortion. It's a story about what happens when you replace the family with free love that turns out to be neither free nor love. Like teaching first graders sex ed or handing out condoms on the street, abortion is one of the ways that the liberal state tries to limit the fallout from its destruction of the family.
The fallout is ugly and bloody. You can see it in the packs of angry teenage flash mobs smashing through stores. You can see it in the food stamp cards that mothers tote like coupons, the teen domestic abuse hotline posters hanging around neighborhoods "If he respects you, he won't beat you" and the other posters of frightened pregnant teenagers holding their stomachs and whispering, "I don't want to lose my dream."
The end of that long brutal journey through black eyes, plans for a GED and medical tests at the clinic is one of Dr. Gosnell's slabs. The men and women who made Kermit Gosnell's business boom don't want to look at him. Why would they? How many people wanted to look at William Calley? They are satisfied knowing that somewhere rough men in latex gloves are doing violence of the world they made. The world they unmade.
They are beginning to claim Gosnell's story already and remake it into another drama about the lack of access. More money must be given to Planned Parenthood so that no Dr. Gosnell's happen again. Reform and accountability are key. More money must go to groups that promote the lifestyles that lead to abortion and then dispense abortions so that the whole cycle can continue to expand. The babies have to be destroyed to save the next generation of babies from being punished with babies.
But the Gosnells aren't going anywhere. They are everywhere. Sometimes they're Middle Eastern. Other times they're Chinese or Pakistani. Their medical skills are poor, but it's not because they're stupid, it's because they don't care. They set up shop in poor neighborhoods. The philosophy is fast food. In and out. Maximize patients. Maximize cash. The treatment is sloppy but so are the patients and no one cares because there is a separate waiting room for the white patients.
Often they work the Medicaid/Medicare angle where they defraud the government, ordering endless tests from clinics they have relationships with while offering the lowest standard of care possible. And some cash in on the abortion business. Patients aren't people to them. They're wallets or insurance cards with eyes, teeth, bones, genitalia, muscles and any other parts that they can bill for.
It's easy to take a whack at them, but vultures only gather where there is carrion. The Gosnells are vultures. They will eat what they can, gorge themselves on bloody meat and then waddle in the sun. But they didn't make this world where family is becoming an alien concept and a child is an alien fetal parasite. They are just cashing in on it.
Kermit Gosnell is the future. And the future in places like this is ugly and grim. It's broken families living on social welfare creating more broken families. It's dead children whose murder churches and synagogues are forced to pay for. It's living children who grow up hoping to be able to kill. It's feral packs of lost boys who will never be men and the girls who suddenly become women reading an ad and taking a bus down to 3801 Lancaster Avenue because they're lonely and afraid and they're afraid of losing their dreams, even if they don't know what they are anymore.
This is the world that liberalism made. It is small, mean and ugly. Call it Sex Positive Education or Reproductive Freedom or any other euphemism and out of sight of the specialized study sessions at overpriced colleges, it still ends with mothers towing screaming children down the street, going to church on Sundays even though they don't believe and there are hardly any younger men there and others mothers becoming girls again at Dr. Gosnell's hands.Kermit Gosnell will be locked up. There will be a brief spurt of inspections. And then things will go on as before and the empowerment educators who wear "I Had an Abortion" t-shirts while they drive to the soccer games of their children in some placid suburb will sleep well at night knowing that somewhere in Philly, NYC and LA there are rough men doing violence to the wombs of desperate women and the lives of their unborn children on behalf of their ideologies and policies. Rough men in dark places doing the inevitable dirty work in the world they made.
Comments
Many good points. But when abortion was illegal, there still were plenty of "butcher shops" doing that work. So, is it better to make it legal and improve access, at least for those who need it?
ReplyDelete“So, is it better to make it legal and improve access, at least for those who need it?”
ReplyDeleteThe same old tired rebuttal? Really?
Here’s a question to answer the question: So, it’s better to facilitate killing millions in clean safe environments to prevent killing a handful in dirty illegal facilities? By that reasoning nothing should be illegal so that nothing can be deemed wrong.
Daniel, you always get underneath the beast and look at the belly don’t you?
Not one of your best pieces, Daniel. Too emotionalist and chock full of imagery that shouldn't be a part of any argument on the subject of abortion. As one philosopher once remarked on the subject of discarded fetuses: A picture is not an argument. Women do have the right of ownership of their bodies; unconscious, dependent fetuses do not own the bodies of their hosts. You can argue the subject from an emotionalist perspective – and then it's not arguing, but just shouting – or you can calm down and examine the issue scientifically, rationally, from a medical perspective. And also argue for getting the government out of the issue entirely. But then we live in a political atmosphere in which the government or society or demagogues claim that everyone belongs to the state and exists for the state. How do you reconcile individual rights and collectivism? You are not doing it here, because it can't be done regardless of the subject. You're a brilliant and prolific essayist, Daniel, but on this subject you're absolutely wrong.
ReplyDeleteMr. Cline, scientifically, the child is not a "part" of Mom. He or she has a different genetic makeup, etc., etc., etc. As a registered nurse and mother who witnessed the feminist propaganda of the 1960s firsthand, I can only rejoice at Daniel's insights into the destructiveness of abortion and those who practice and promote it. Thanks Daniel for this well thought out and very perceptive article.
DeleteThere is a middle ground between slavery to the state and slavery, either with the unlimited power of life and death over another.
ReplyDeleteOutstanding article, Daniel. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteLiberals tend to die out because their anti-children and pro-gay policies significantly reduce their numbers from one generation to another. That's where the Latin Americans come in.
ReplyDeleteWell said, Daniel. One thing that has always bothered me is that adoption is barely, if at all, mentioned in the "pro-choice" rants.
ReplyDeleteMargaret Sanger promoted contraception not abortion. She was opposed to abortion except when medically necessary. It was after she died that the movement included abortion. She thought the non-medically necessary abortions were a disgrace.
ReplyDelete"Sanger's family planning advocacy always focused on contraception, rather than abortion. It was not until the mid-1960s, after Sanger's death, that the reproductive rights movement expanded its scope to include abortion rights as well as contraception. Sanger was opposed to abortions, both because they were dangerous for the mother in the early 20th century and because she believed that life should not be terminated after conception. In her book Woman and the New Race, she wrote, "while there are cases where even the law recognizes an abortion as justifiable if recommended by a physician, I assert that the hundreds of thousands of abortions performed in America each year are a disgrace to civilization."[109]
Historian Rodger Streitmatter concluded that Sanger's opposition to abortion stemmed from concerns for the dangers to the mother, rather than moral concerns.[110] However, in her 1938 autobiography, Sanger noted that her opposition to abortion was based on the taking of life: "[In 1916] we explained what contraception was; that abortion was the wrong way no matter how early it was performed it was taking life; that contraception was the better way, the safer way—it took a little time, a little trouble, but was well worth while in the long run, because life had not yet begun."[111] And in her book Family Limitation, Sanger wrote that "no one can doubt that there are times when an abortion is justifiable but they will become unnecessary when care is taken to prevent conception. This is the only cure for abortions."[112]" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Sanger
More liberal mythology, courtesy of Wikipedia.
DeleteSanger only cared about the results ... The eventual elimination of the "inferior races."
You are assume that liberals are born only to liberals and gays. That is not what happens all the time. A family can have a mixed political orientation. Liberals can have conservative parents or Conservatives can have more liberal parents. One child could be more liberal or conservative than his/her sibling. As long as people are born you will have a range of political views.
ReplyDeleteEd Cline forgot to add: And everyone will be happy forevermore. The End.
ReplyDeleteI agree, Daniel, an outstanding article. I note that one commenter thinks you are absolutely wrong. Not just wrong or mistaken, but absolutely wrong.
ReplyDeleteThe American liberating commander of Dachau make the people of the town go through the camp and view and even help remove the bodies. The commander failed to realize that a picture is not an argument. Having the villagers see and touch the handiwork of the leaders they supported was no way to make an argument.
I guess the counterargument is that maybe the Nazis had a logical and reasoned argument for what they did to the people in the camp, and the villagers could not see this rational argument when subjected to the raw emotion of viewing the results close up.
Why there must be all kinds of rational arguments for cruelty and murder. I seem to be drawing a blank though.
I have to chime in one more time but I did it in my blog, sending readers to the mighty Sultan first.
ReplyDeletehttp://bagsallpacked.blogspot.com
Meema
Typo: "unamde".
ReplyDeleteYou hit the target dead center here; Edward Cline's response is evidence of that, if any evidence were needed.
This article reminds me a lot of the guy that stands every week in the parking lot of my farmers' market with the poster that says "Drones kill babies" and a bunch of bloody pictures of presumably innocent civilians killed in the course of our war on terror.
ReplyDeleteImagery of bloody babies is a cheap way to appeal to peoples' emotions, but it does not constitute a cogent or reasonable policy argument. If the goal is to promote the health of the family, abortion is clearly orthogonal to that.
I still haven't ever seen a coherent response to the fact that in contemporary America today, pretty much the only group that is en masse actively carrying on the ideal of the nuclear family - i.e. two adults waiting until they are married and financially stable to have kids, and then staying married - are liberals. If you want to see this kind of stable nuclear family you need to check in with Alexandra Pelosi, not Bristol Palin.
So it clearly isn't abortion or gay marriage that is causing the destruction of the family. It is something else, and until Conservatives are willing to explore that, nothing will improve.
Man, this guy Greenfield sure can write! Invective as literature.
ReplyDeleteDespite that, he's not entirely persuasive. Abortion, like anything else, can be done wrong or done by the book. There are laws that govern that sort of violence, as there are laws that govern Col Jessup in the military.
And the daughters of the upper classes have abortions too. Where the goings on behind the scenes can be as deadly and criminal as anything Dr. Gosnell did. There's no reason for them to be different. They could even have the same doctors.
And it's not just liberalism that gave us the situation of today's underclass, it's slavery and reproductive technology and the relentlessly sexualized drumbeat of the media. It's the high-tech globalized workplace that leaves working class men unemployed with fewer paths to self-esteem. It's a lot of things.
No pictures of bloody babies in the article which is more about the disintegration of the family than about Gosnell's butchery.
ReplyDeleteAs documented by Charles Murray, the upper classes do far better at maintaining marriages. That is commented on in the article. But that just means the political coalition between liberals and minorities exempts those at the top from the damage they inflict on those at the bottom.
In theory, evolution will make abortion a self limiting, short term problem.
ReplyDeleteIf you'd murder your unborn baby, you're a piece of human garbage anyway, so let mother nature discard your entire genetic line.
Maybe the liberals are right.
Abortion isn't genetic. It's cultural.
ReplyDeleteYes, a demographic projection would I indicate a spiritual revival.
ReplyDeleteThanks for this article Daniel!
ReplyDeleteDo not grow weary in doing good.
No, abortion cannot be done "wrong or done by the book".
ReplyDeleteAbortion today and throughout much of history is rarely done to save life. Rare being not quite a dramatic enough word for it.It is rarer than rare.
Abortion is done for convenience sake and as a method of birth control. As such it is just plain wrong.
Self involvement has replaced love of life for many I think.
As Daniel well knows, Grover Norquist, the strangest political creature ever, is trying to equate being for the deportation of illegals with being pro-abortion, on the grounds one should always be for more people. In a world where Norquist can exist and thrive by being simultaneously anti-tax, pro-Muslim, and pro-Amnesty any argument is possible. We live in a reality where words can be twisted to mean anything and preordained conclusions reached with something that superficially resembles logic. This works really well when there is no debate, and today there rarely is on most things that matter where it would matter.
ReplyDeleteThe libs control the agenda on the issues related to family where it matters, in public and many private schools, and of course the MSM. They've made it painful and costly to state blatantly anti-lib opinions in many venues. The goal of the conservative movement should be ruthless control of the means of information by buying liberal media properties. You can't fight propaganda with logic when you don't have access.
While reading this decent article, I was thinking that as hard as America's founders tried to limit the power, scope, & cost of government & insist on coupling liberty with a population possessed of responsibility, knowledge, wisdom, & religion, for the past 110 years Progressives & every imaginable allied special interest have too successfully peddled the opposite, their belief in the supposed greatness & compassion & necessity of the intervention of the Liberal state (federal, state, & local largesse; & including Liberal Republican policies that contributed to this largesse), defeating the efforts of Conservatives & Libertarians who have been unsuccessful in defending Liberty & in repelling the suicidal forces of the Left. The few victories of Conservatism of the last 110 years were able only to barely slow the so-called progress to what is not a better world, but toward insolvency that is ALWAYS the result of too much government.
ReplyDeleteWe actually stand now, not with the false 17 trillion of debt claimed by Washington, but with over 220 trillion dollars of unfunded mandates (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, state pensions, etc.) over the next three or four decades, the costs of which will continue to grow quickly as we borrow on interest. This is an incomprehensible amount of money to raise, particularly while having to overcome the suicidal forces of the Left halting much of our ability to grow out of the situation (THEY actually got us into over the past 110 years, not Bush, who did contribute by not fighting hard enough to reverse the entire housing boom built on Liberalism that is what directly crushed our economy) by stifling everything productive in America while quickly growing the Welfare rolls.
Yet, not only is the Left unconvinced of their massive failure, they continue their utter insanity by asserting, as they always do & always have for 110 years, regardless of the ominous result, that we haven't grown government enough. The war on poverty has made more impoverished & now threatens ubiquitous poverty & greatly increased the income gap. The war on drugs has cost trillions, filled & grown our expensive justice system, killed hundreds of thousands, yet completely failed. Government medical & education intervention have driven up the cost of both to impossible levels (& the over 2 TRILLION DOLLAR Obombercare will collapse under its growing 21,000 pages of regulations). And the list of government failures goes on, but the point being that, regardless of how destructive government intervention has been to everything in America & the world, the smoke of well-meaning that the Left blows around all of their intervention AS WELL AS the Right's inability to clear that smoke AND reverse the damage, the few times they were given the chance, leaves too many blinded to the connection of government overreach & growth to the inevitable complete failure of our country & the likely conclusion of the Progressives’ 110-year regression from our truly Progressive Founders’ vision.
Of course, for those of us who know that mankind has no way to peacefully manage their own affairs effectively, God will give us an actual Messiah who will be empowered to right everything & lead us to meet God as we have never perceived Him. We know everything has a Divine purpose & the Left may not be allowed to destroy much of the world, again. For this, some of us pray.
Mme Scherzo remarked: "Ed Cline forgot to add: And everyone will be happy forevermore. The End." Another obtuse comment, meaning nothing. Would Mme Scherzo please elaborate or clarify?
ReplyDelete"...where Jack Nicholson in a uniform..."
ReplyDeleteI missed that the first two times I looked at this article, then when I got I burst out laughing. Beautiful line.
What the woman taking her kids to the soccer game might more truthfully say on her T shirt if she actually wants to educate her children is:
ReplyDelete"I killed your brother, you should feel lucky it wasn't you"
Many people commenting here fail to understand the point of Mr. Greenfield's moving essay: Abortion isn't the issue, the massive destruction wrought by the liberal welfare state is. Abortion and the millions of young lives it snuffs out is merely collateral damage, if that, to a liberal welfare statist.
ReplyDeleteYour argument assumes, Ed, that there is a rational way of arguing about abortion where everyone ends up in agreement. At least, that is how it sounded to me.
ReplyDeleteOn being too emotional - really? The tone of the article was weighted with a calm and almost clinical analysis of our current state of degradation as a civilization. Like a doctor reciting his postmortem into a recorder. No screaming and waving of dead baby parts, although the trial is, well...emotional. I hear it's raining babies there, right now, at the trial in Philly. You might want to avert your gaze.
It is just that the emotional part is ignored by the blissfully sleeping journalists and their aging hippie comrades. Steinem is near 70. The fish bicyclist has pedaled free sex and abortions for all for a long time. She's celebrating her happy ending. No argument, rational or emotional would persuade her of the devastation she's unleashed upon the country. In fact, in her happy ending the destruction of the family is considered a plus.
But what really appalled me about your unbiased, emotion-free fisking was your description of an unborn fetus not having rights to the host's body is bizarrely legal. Technically speaking.
And evil, itself.
You cannot have a rational argument with evil people. To be nice and rational, as they define it, is to acquiesce and that is another layer of evil.
The sordid beauty of liberalism is that you are allowed to deform the language in whatever way you feel, so as to avoid ever acknowledging the horrendous real-world ramifications of your poisoned policies. "In the Beginning was the Word..." And who would be most likely to distort the word, if not Satan himself? In the final analysis, the left have surrendered to evil.
ReplyDeleteThe honest, sad reality: If it's wanted, it's a baby. If it's not wanted, it's a clump of cells.
ReplyDeletePeople who seek an abortion are making decisions about what they believe. The belief merely facilitates the choice already made. They already feel trapped and without choices because that's what is reflected to them from every source of their succor. So in reality, all that remains between life and death for a beating heart is a "feeling" about its unmistakable existence. A feeling easily manipulated by clever word players.
"Feeling" has become the benchmark catechism of the Left. Abortion is its pagan blood sacrifice. Poverty is its best work of "righteousness." They don't provide a choice, they make a religion.
I see ever more trolls coming to the site and attacking with the same tired old lines...Margaret Sanger was really a Saint (when she is caught on video admitting that she wanted to reduce or eliminate the black race through abortion)...If it wasn't legal than it would be like it was before Roe vs. Wade with millions of women would be dying in back alley butcher shops (when probably less died per year in the past's back alley butcher shops than die in today's mall front butcher shops)...the fetus has no claim on the mother (i.e. "the violinist" argument, but if followed to its rational conclusion, a mother has no claim to the child once it is born)...Its just a clump of cells (but aren't we all?). It saddens me that so many people can think in these terms and not see it for the evil that it is. Woe onto those who call evil good and good evil.
ReplyDeleteWhat is your attitude towards women as individuals? This latest essay of yours shows a tendency to stereotype women -- "Sarah Lawrence grads", "activists", poor teenagers with vague "dreams", etc. -- while shifting the focus to the imagery of dead fetuses. Do you understand why an individual woman may conclude that having children is a poor choice for her on grounds of temperament, ambitions, and other personal preferences? What do you think supersedes that? Why do you conclude that her rights are suspended in the instant she conceives? Are you hostile towards sex for reasons other than procreation? Do you define "human being" in the mystical sense of a "soul" implanted by a god at conception – when it is merely a drop of unconscious protoplasm in a vagina – or are you open to a rational definition? Do you at least recognize that an impregnated woman may disagree with you about the mystical "soul" and that your faith is not conclusive on the issue? I ask these questions because your implicit position on women seems to parallel that of Islam, that women are merely to serve as obedient baby-factories whose nature doesn't permit individual minds, choices, or lives. This emotionalist take on women and in particular the issue of abortion (and perhaps even on contraception) beggars my esteem for you as one of the most rational observers of contemporary issues and culture. You seem to harbor a very serious conflict in premises and conclusions.
ReplyDelete"It's not a story about abortion. It's a story about what happens when you replace the family with free love that turns out to be neither free nor love."
ReplyDeleteThank you Daniel. Excellent piece.
@Edward Cline
ReplyDeleteIf she is not ready have a baby, then she should stop having sex. She should especially stop having sex with men that she has no inclination of having a long term relationship with, let alone marriage. If she wants to be treated like a responsible adult individual, then she needs to start acting like one, and show a measure of self-control and temperance. She needs to especially stop expecting others to pay for her "mistakes" or "indiscretion" through government coercion (the Sandra Fluk's of the world). Please, someone explain to me why I am being tapped to pay for someone other persons momentary good time?
As for the rest of your rubbish, getting drunk feels good! Maybe we should extoll drunks as heroes and subsidize them! Doing drugs can feel good, maybe we should do likewise with them. Sex is a natural thing, can feel good and even be a good thing but has consequences if used irresponsibly, whether pregnancy, STD's, or emotional damage. You seem to desire to alleviate or rationalize away the consequences of an individuals decisions, much of it through empowering the state and robbing others to pay for someone else's good times.
'The Sandra Flukes' of the world!'
ReplyDeleteAgain the stereotype of women who are types to some men.
No mention of the men using these women. After all men are individuals but one can of course fit all women into several camps.
Here's the scientific, realist, medical standpoint: You can't be a little bit pregnant. Trying to pretend you can has not only done great damage to medicine and medical ethics, but much of the rest of society.
ReplyDeleteDaniel, you are sot on as usual. For the rest of the comments, you all know that abortion is killing a human at the very beginning of its life for the selfish sake of personal indulgence. Sex was designed to make infants: DUH. Stop feeling sorry for people who refuse to deal with it.
ReplyDelete@The British Observer
ReplyDeleteYes, "The Sandra Fluk's of the world", those women who have been trained to beleive that they should have maximum freedom of action with ZERO responsibility. Within the University system, they are legion.
As for men, in relationships, the vast majority are dogs. They will conduct themselves to the level and expectations of their masters i.e. women. If a woman pisses and craps all over the house, the man is going to do likewise (speaking mataphorically...usually). (HT Glenn Beck for the metaphor)
In no way am I making excuses for men, just pointing out the facts.
I'm not a big fan of pictures defining an argument but in the case of abortion and animal rights it is absolutely necessary...if people were allowed to see the carnage and cruelty abortion does it would have been outlawed years ago...and conscience on animal rights would have been elevated and mankind would have been the better for it..kept out of sight these horrific sins will be revealed by G-d on our judgement day...
ReplyDeleteAnonymous: I would prefer that Daniel speak for himself, and answer my queries, not you.
ReplyDeleteSo a woman should just stop having sex if she doesn't want a baby? And that somehow equates her with Sandra Fluke, the sleep-around floozy and career student who wants the government (i.e., taxpayers) to pay for her promiscuity? You really need to bone up on your syllogisms, because that's not a valid one. And, well, yes, a fetus is a part of the mother, until it can breathe and function on its own. You're thinking like an 18th midwife, not a 21st century nurse. If there was a bit of honesty in you, you'd have raised the issue of trimesters and "preemies." But, you don’t.
And your garrulous dismissal of "selfishness" betrays your religious bent. Everyone is selfish, even those who flaunt their selflessness, such as Mother Teresa, that wizened old crone who lived to lick the sores and wounds of the poor, and without whom she would have no purpose in life. Advocating a political policy of selflessness is also a value, but an irrational one. The Catholic Church's history is proof of that. And now Christians are frightened that a new ideology of selflessness is knocking its door, a rival moral code: Islam.
In short, stop emoting, stop chewing the scenery, and say something rational, something that makes sense.
Individual rights begin at birth when the umbilical cord is cut.
ReplyDeleteNo amount of tangential dissimulation will ever alter that simple and inexorable fact of reality.
If you think the situation is bad now just wait until they make abortion illegal.
John W
You've exhausted your short repertoir of rebute Ed. Not enough big words to hide your childish intent. You move along boy.
ReplyDelete"You've exhausted your short repertoir of rebute Ed. Not enough big words to hide your childish intent. You move along boy."
ReplyDeleteYou have misspelled "repertoire" and there is no such word as "rebute" and neither have you offered a coherent argument for your opinion - an argument is a course of reasoning aimed at demonstrating a truth.
Do try again but if you feel out of your depth why not ask an adult for help? John W
John W, Typos are common in these exchanges. Anonymous obviously meant to write to Ed Cline, "You've exhausted your short repertoire of rebuke."
ReplyDeleteIf only this statement were correct, for Ed Cline's reply shows that he has an almost unlimited "repertoire of rebuke." Cline's comments are vituperative and emotional attacks that deny scientific facts. Once conception occurs, a new human exists, who is dependent on his mother, but NOT a part of her (I am the anonymous RN and mom).
While Cline raves, he objects to others commenting. What a great censor he would make.
As for abortion becoming illegal--as it was for 140 years in New York and many other states--that would be great. Let's hope abortion is outlawed soon. Legal or illegal, abortion kills babies and mothers.
The Washington, DC, March for Life in January 2013--the fortieth anniversary of the Supreme Court's infamous Roe vs. Wade decision--was the largest ever despite the freezing temperature. Over 500,000 people participated, including many teenagers and young adults, whose signs proclaimed "We Are the Pro-Life Generation."
Diehard supporters of abortion (including Big Brother Obama) don't seem to care if it progresses to infanticide and matricide--as happened in Dr. Gosnell's "house of horrors" and also in abortionist Leroy Carhart's miserable clinic in Maryland where a 29-year-old woman--who had a husband and a home--went to "lose" her unborn baby of 33 weeks and lost her life as well this February.
Daniel, one of your most evocative and powerful pieces ever. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteWomen always have the "choice" to not drop their panties. After that decision, the child has a "right to life." It's no longer just about a "woman's body." Women have become so self-centered and detached from the reality of their bodies that they don't even consider they have a real baby in their wombs. No, it's a "fetus." If they want it, THEN it's a baby. You have to be psycho to be a liberal!
ReplyDeleteEveryone has the choice. Sex that can result in a baby is heterosexual. And men find abortion as convenient as women do for many of the same reasons.
ReplyDeleteIt's not a single gender issue.
Yes, men find abortion convenient but only a woman can put her legs in the stirrups and have the baby killed. Sorry, but the onus is on her alone in the end. That's the point of truth.
ReplyDeleteIf men didn't want abortion to be legal, it wouldn't be.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous said'Yes, men find abortion convenient but only a woman can put her legs in the stirrups and have the baby killed. Sorry, but the onus is on her alone in the end. That's the point of truth."
ReplyDeleteSo you hate women that much eh? What a creep you are to avoid responsibility.
In the end the pressure put on a girl by the men involved can be powerful and significant. She faces a life alone without proper support or care. She is desperate in many cases. While abortion is abhorrent, you are even more so.
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