Sun Tsu teaches that to defeat one’s enemy one must know who (or what) it is. The enemy, in its own defense, will always try to deceive, creating artifices against which its victim can expend great effort and resources, weakening itself to the point where the attacker can triumph with few losses. We call these artifices “Straw Men.”
So it is with good and evil. Evil never has strong footing but is very clever at creating false targets or disguises of its true purposes. Good can dissipate evil in a heartbeat but, being more trusting, gets diverted away from the target evil and even allies with it for a time, believing there is some greater good being served. And so it is with abortion.
The evil that is expressed through abortion is very clever. Abortion, we are told – and sold – is an expression of freedom and even civil rights. Most of us respect “freedom” and are quick to defend it. Most of us feel the same about individuals’ “civil rights,” and “Constitutional rights” even more. Being thoughtful and caring, most of us hate to admit that we have been deceived into defending evil when our whole intention is to defend rights, freedom and the Constitution – all “straw men” in this battle.
It doesn’t matter whether our core beliefs are religious, although such are great resources to bring into the battle against “abortion: “abortion” being the industry of the practice, now infecting medicine and even churches. Agnostics and atheists are free, certainly, to question our spiritual underpinnings as archaic or no longer relevant in a scientifically sophisticated world, believing that “science” has, or should, take the place of religious “superstition.” It doesn’t matter: religious truths and rules of honor are still operating regardless of any individual’s belief or disbelief. We still should strive to expose the Straw Men erected to protect abortion.
Among the other effects of the most famous opinion authored by Justice Harry Blackmun in 1973, Roe v. Wade cemented the repudiation of morality into federal law. Following the failures of moral struggles in the 1960’s, and as the federalization of welfare in the “Great Society” gained momentum, Blackmun conceived an invisible right to “privacy” that forced government’s hands off of virtually any moral judgements toward individuals’ behaviors. In effect, Roe justified evil, couching evil as a “right.” Historically, under a basically Christian impetus toward responsibility for one’s actions (essentially answering to a greater moral code than an individual might create for him- or her-self), individuals were free to be stupid, or to simply fail, but not to be immoral. Those who fought against immorality, or for a greater morality, were lauded and rewarded in society. Those who worked for licentiousness had to hide their purposes, often appealing to sympathies for the confused or otherwise “unfortunate” members of society who turned to an immoral path as their “only” means to elevate themselves from still worse circumstances. Straw Men on the march.
One need not follow any of the major religions to be uncomfortable at the destruction of unborn babies. If one is “religious” in outlook, he or she recognizes a more-or-less direct connection to God for every gestating child. This imparts a more-or-less direct responsibility – an obligation – to protect the holy innocents, there being no person of greater innocence than a pre-born baby. We should recognize the straw men arrayed against morality as those who seek to protect the abortion industry.
First is the claim that what has been conceived and is growing in the womb, is NOT a baby. It is merely a “fetus” which, in the view of abortionists, is a “mass of cells.” By implication, the proto-baby is a “foreign invader” and obligating the host-mother to protect and nourish it is a form of slavery or oppression. This argument is not biologically sound, nor is it morally solid. Humans, generally, are sympathetic to “baby” anythings, be they chicks, lambs, puppies or kittens, even heifers, foals, piglets and hippopotamuses. By great dint of effort, we have been divorced from the same emotions regarding our own babies. Indeed, appeals for donations to feed orphaned animals are far more successful than for the prevention of child abuse. How grotesquely odd; who benefits from this strange incongruity?
Women who have “bought” the entire narrative of oppression and “not a baby” still are likely to suffer some separation anxiety, even sadness, after an abortion. The older the fetus the more likely the grief. Who was that baby going to be? Would he or she have loved me? Blackmun found a right of privacy that flushed the destruction of the unborn clear of morality or meaning; the Right to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, he couldn’t find. Interestingly, 90% of women who consider abortion choose to become mothers after seeing an ultrasound test and hearing the baby’s heartbeat.
Abortion can be rationalized with sufficient hatred, yet the essential child-mother bonding that commences very early on after conception, is real. More than simple hatred is needed to convince a mother that her irreplaceable role can be dissolved by mere hatred of a “growth” in her belly. It is a special virulence that brings a woman into an abortion provider’s lair, and it has to be carefully taught. For many abortion advocates, the essential hatred is hatred of male oppression. Such a transference of emotion is another variation of the Straw Man syndrome.
The country appears to be divided over the question of easy access to abortion on demand. This means that abortion advocates want abortion to be available within a bus ride, inexpensive or covered by insurance, and bound by few, if any, limitations.
The divide seems to follow party lines, with those on the left: liberals, progressives and socialists, the most in favor of unrestricted abortion; conservatives and Christians the least likely to approve of abortion on demand. The Democrat party has devolved into the party of death; it seems IM-Prudent to identify as such. Advocating for the most premature death possible is a form of evil. For religious citizens, it is proof of the actions of the “Devil,” which is to say, “Deified Evil.” Some call him Satan. Whether one “believes” or doesn’t, abortion is never as “nice” as the RIGHT to choose one. Even pro-abortion advocates should be able to recognize that pro-lifers who believe in the sanctity, or sacredness of innocent life, cannot compromise with the killing of that life.
It is worth wondering about the nature of the anger generated among pro-abortion advocates. It seems, well, out of proportion. Where pro-lifers might sing hymns or pray or simply try to speak with those heading into an abortion clinic – and this is understandably upsetting to those who have decided that death of their proto-baby is a solution to life problems – pregnancy support agencies are more likely to be vandalized and threatened. Where laws have been passed to protect access to abortion clinics and to prevent “harassment” of potential abortion clients, there are none that restrict the same for pregnancy support centers. Laws against vandalism and arson exist locally, of course, but seem to be less well enforced than the FEDERAL laws protecting the abortion industry, even when the industry, itself, breaks federal laws.
Demonstrations by pro-abortionists exhibit intense angers and even hatreds for pro-life defenders. One wonders why feelings are so high and angers so hot, in favor of abortion. Often there are threats of retaliation against those who oppose abortion. “If abortion isn’t safe, then neither are you!” Most pro-abortion / pro-death advocates have never suffered an abortion, yet they turn red in opposition to pro-lifers. Why? Clearly, if motivated to join a demonstration in favor of abortion, an individual believes he, or usually she, believes that a gestating baby is not a baby. Perhaps he or she also believes so strongly in Constitutional rights that the risk of breaking laws is well worth the righteous defense of such rights.
Yet, the only Constitutional right most pro-abortion advocates have ever defended is the right to terminate pregnancies. Is it just to defend the practice of licentious sex? Is the responsibility for the consequences of fornication so foreign a concept that the right to abortion must be defended? Is it that simple? It seems not.
Obviously, pregnancy resulting from rape is a special case, as is incest, and to protect the health/life of the mother goes without question. Requiring birth of a baby in these cases is cruel and unusual punishment, and society is not prepared to take that step. Neither is Prudence. Still, the baby is completely innocent in any case. We have to arrive at an agreement of person-hood at some point in gestation, whereupon Constitutional rights apply. We have not been able to do so.
It seems as though the right to kill innocent life is behind – or beneath – it all. It is an act that is as anti-religious, anti-God as is possible. If abortions were committed by sociopaths on the sidewalk, who then held the dead baby aloft like a battlefield triumph, we would arrest and incarcerate that evil person until his trial for first degree murder, a capital offense! Rightly so. But hiding the act away behind “clinic” doors and surgical gowns and rubber gloves enables us to defend it as a solemn right. Solemn rite, more like.