Learning from the Opposition’s Plan to Protect Abortion Rights: Very Insightful Article
See my comments throughout the quotes from the article, and read through to the end for more of my notes.
Pro-abortion leader: We’re losing
http://www.jillstanek.com/2011/02/pro-abortion-leader-were-losing/
Abortion rights are under attack, and pro-choice advocates are caught in a time warp
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/18/AR2011021802434.html
Following quotes from pro-abortion side:
“The opposition to legal abortion has increased dramatically. Opponents use increasingly sophisticated arguments – focusing on advances in fetal medicine, stressing the rights of parents to have a say in their minor children’s health care, linking opposition to abortion with opposition to war and capital punishment, seeking to make abortion not illegal but increasingly unavailable – and have succeeded in swinging public opinion toward their side…”
Okay, so these things have helped, but they are changing strategies in order to make these things not matter as much.
“Those of us in the abortion-rights movement have barely changed our approach. We cling to the arguments that led to victory in Roe v. Wade. Abortion is a private decision, we say, and the state has no power over a woman’s body. Those arguments may have worked in the 1970s, but today, they are failing us, and focusing on them only risks all the gains we’ve made…”
Note that they used to want the state to stay OUT, but now they know their power is having the state on their side.
“We can no longer pretend the fetus is invisible. We can no longer seek to banish the state from our lives, but rather need to engage its power to improve women’s lives. We must end the fiction that an abortion at 26 weeks is no different from one at six weeks…”
Hmmm…. They recognise that a 26-week-old fetus can survive outside the womb, the body parts are bigger and easier to recognize. Science tells them that the bigger babies feel pain. But remember, the six-week-old embryo is just as human as the 26-week-old fetus. Life is there – it just needs the womb environment to grow.
“It may not have a right to life, and its value may not be equal to that of the pregnant woman, but ending the life of a fetus is not a morally insignificant event…”
The human life inside the pregnant woman is not equal? Where have I heard that before?? … Why exactly is abortion not morally insignificant? They always use the line that they want abortion safe, legal, and rare. WHY do they want it rare? Maybe there is something WRONG with it. Something immoral??
“We need to firmly and clearly reject post-viability abortions except in extreme cases. Exceptions include when the woman’s life is at immediate risk; when the fetus suffers from conditions that are incompatible with a good quality of life; or when the woman’s health is seriously threatened by a medical or psychological condition that continued pregnancy will exacerbate. We should regulate post-viability abortion to include the confirmation of those conditions by medical or psychiatric specialists…”
Who defines “good quality of life”? What “psychological condition”? … Sure, “those conditions” can be confirmed by specialists. How about the ones making money off the abortions?
“Finally, the abortion-rights movement needs to change the way it thinks about the state. Right now government is mainly treated as the enemy… We need to fight to get government to provide resources that women need, from subsidized birth control to better prenatal care. We also need a real effort to reduce maternal mortality and pregnancy complication rates in this country, which Amnesty International has called ‘shocking.’”
They are looking for subsidized birth control. That means we get to pay for it.
“Even abortions in the second trimester, especially after 20 weeks, need to be considered differently from those that happen early in pregnancy. Women who seek abortions in the second trimester generally have special needs and would be helped by more extensive counseling than that available at most abortion clinics. Women who discover their fetuses have anomalies, teens who did not recognize they were pregnant, women who could not make up their minds – these are not routine circumstances. Mandating and funding non-directive counseling on all options is a good thing.”
“Women who could not make up their minds”???? “Mandating and funding non-directive counseling on all options“???
“We have been demanding that the state mind its own business. That lets government abdicate all responsibility for funding reproductive health care…”
They have been advocating that the government should keep their hands off women’s bodies, but now they are changing their minds by demanding government funding for everything related to procreation.
“We need more responsible and compassionate state policies. But respect for fetal life also requires that men and women take every step possible not to create fetuses they will have to abort…”
“Creating fetuses they will have to abort”??!!
“The moral high ground on abortion is not to be found in asserting an absolute right to choose. Instead, it is to be found in the movement’s historic understanding that when abortion is illegal, it is poor women who suffer…”
Targeting the poor has been a very successful tactic.
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Pro-aborts feel like they are losing ground, but do statistics prove that? Maybe a little in public support, but not much in the volume of abortions performed. One thing that might worry them is that public figures are beginning to be a little vocal after decades of silence. Pre-natal technology shows us the secret world of the unborn child, but also gives the other side advances to end lives earlier and more efficiently. The internet is shedding light on their deadly deeds. Try explaining abortion to a child, and you will get incredulous looks of disbelief and shock. “Who Broke the Baby” is just as bewildering today as it was decades ago.
So, in order to protect their choices, pro-aborts are going to try to compromise. What they are proposing will likely entrench abortion in our society for years to come… They are looking for areas of agreement with the general population. They want to relate to normal, regular, caring people who don’t like abortion and don’t want to see women suffer.
Here are areas where I see they will get the most public support or public apathy:
1. If the pro-choice side continues to get public support in the “hard cases” like rape and incest, then unborn children will never be recognized as persons. An unborn child is still a human being, no matter the crime of the father, no matter the despair of the mother. And in most cases, killing her child will only give the victim more pain. Abortion will continue unless the “hard cases” are challenged.
2. The pro-choice side is winning in regard to the population’s view of handicapped and disabled children. People want healthy babies and will do almost anything to get them. Pre-natal screening is a huge industry with anxious expectant mothers on pins and needles worrying about the health of their unborn babies. If the doctor even suggests there might be a problem, abortion is the answer. Who will ever know if the child would have been born healthy? No one. The evidence is destroyed. But what if the child wasn’t healthy? Who are we to play God and decide who lives and who dies? Why should we get to decide who is worthy of life? Children with Downs Syndrome are easy targets of such search and destroy methods.
3. Hiding abortion in public funding. In Canada, we have been paying for abortion for years. Nobody looks into this stuff. It is all secretive and ignored. It is easy to get away with when people don’t notice. Regular people are already working so hard to pay for the many government programs, that it is impossible to even list the things with which we disapprove. Thomas Jefferson said, “To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.” That is the story of the Canadian taxpayer.
4. Controlling the internet and media. This is big, and it will be done under the guise of public safety or some such reason agreed upon by most of the people. Right now, many a young woman chooses life after searching on the internet. That freedom will be taken away.
5. Continuing to target the poor. People generally look down on the poor. Think they deserve it, etc. Pro-aborts gain many allies in this area.
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