Feminists Hate Babies?
The latest drivel on Feministing - a bottomless bowel of perversion and debasement – is about two activists who were trying to stop a prosecutor for charging a pregnant woman whose drug abuse may have caused her unborn baby to be stillborn. Apparently one, the author, is pro-choice while her compatriot jihadist “Jo” was not.
I am consistently awestruck at the ineptitude with which these people rationalize the world.
First, the sheer contempt that these pro-choice feminists display for unborn children in every form is staggering especially in contrast to what every person on this planet knows about the undeniably vast majority of mothers, including feminists whose unborn children actually survive their ideology, which is the devotion women display to their children. Once born, that is.
The idea that anyone would rally in defense of a woman who continued to abuse drugs while pregnant is repugnant. Haven’t we learned anything?
But no. These activists paint the accused as a victim who needs help for her addiction instead of punishment for her reckless endangerment of human life which resulted in human death.
If you would believe these feminists, you would believe that in this world, crystal meth stalks it like a jungle cat and leaps from the bushes at unsuspecting, helpless women who are subsequently addicted to the substance to such a degree that no force, including pregnancy, can bring them into rehab voluntarily.
In the world that I live in, drugs aren’t going to enter my body unless I consciously seek them out and imbibe them. You might say that I have the right to choose whether or not I do drugs. In the world that I live in, I am a victim neither of my own free will nor the choices made in pursuit thereof.
It’s not hard to understand why a pro-choice feminist in love with her crusade would be inspired to fight the fight to void these charges. A successful conviction by a jury of her peers would be a referendum on the status of unborn life. A successful, unanimous conviction here might illustrate in living color the changing of the cultural tide. A tide which now indicates that we’re not afraid of the volume of the feminist voice any more and we’re willing to walk the path our consciences would take us without the fear of confrontation with militant types like the author of this Feministing garbage.
But, in truth, that’s all such a result would do: illustrate. The conviction would make its way through appeals court and eventually land in the United States Supreme Court where Sotomayor and Roe v. Wade would promptly overturn it. For the accused in that time, who will certainly be in prison, she might actually kick her meth habit. Not a terrible outcome.
And that hinges upon the likelihood of conviction. The author, “nancyg” asserts that the medical community hasn’t been able to establish a causal relationship between amphetamine intake and fetal mortality, a fact which I’m sure the defense attorneys will raise in court and which, if true, might convince a jury that her actions were inconsequential to the death of her unborn baby and thereby lead to acquittal.
But nancyg and Jo don’t want to allow the criminal system to take its course. Rather, they want to march on the court house, chain themselves to the door of the prosecutor’s office, and essentially hinder our government from operating as it does for everyone charged with a crime for two reasons. First, they’re afraid of what the result might be, and second, it gives them something to do and a reason to feel good about themselves, as if they’re agents of social good.
Their tactic in this campaign was to “hand out flyers” and get petitions signed. As a commentator to one of my recent posts eloquently pointed out, we don’t live in a democracy, we live in a republic. We rule by law, and the opinion of a mob should not and will not influence the machinations of our criminal justice system. We do remember lynch mobs, don’t we?
Their base motives are obvious despite their best attempts to disguise them. Here’s one such attempt:
[The district attorney] didn’t credit the prosecution’s likely chilling effect on addicted pregnant women who would now avoid prenatal care altogether or decide against disclosing their addiction to health care providers and seeking help, believing these sort of prosecutions necessary as deterrents to drug use during pregnancy.
For a woman who has no moral objection to terminating a pregnancy at will, she seems awfully concerned about pre-natal care. Does anyone else find this bizarre?
Oh, I’m sorry. I keep forgetting that a woman who chooses to terminate her pregnancy and a woman who chooses to keep her baby (but uses heavy drugs while pregnant) are in different categories. I would think a feminist who supports abortion would be advocating that any drug addicted woman who finds herself pregnant should simply abort the pregnancy. But the reason they don’t might be linked to their pro-choice philosophy. It’s hard to argue that the fetus’s welfare is important when you believe that a fetus can be killed whenever the mother wants, so even if drug use does hurt the baby, so what? This might explain how a feminist can believe that we shouldn’t even try to discourage pregnant women from using heavy drugs during pregnancy. When we have a total disregard for human life until it exits the vagina, why should we care?
The only way any of this makes sense is if you explain it this way: when a baby is wanted, the mother is owed prenatal care and shouldn’t be scared away from receiving it for fear that if she continues to take action injurious to her baby she might be criminally charged. However, when a baby is unwanted, go ahead and kill it. It’s your body, your choice.
This doesn’t come across to me in any other way that extremely selfish and flatly philosophically bankrupt. The value of an unborn human life is not dependent upon whether or not, or by how much by some unknown measurement, the mother wants the resulting baby.
It was only later that I learned that for Jo, this set of circumstances amounted to the state putting itself in a position that required drug-addicted women to get abortions or run the risk of being charged with murder when they attempted to carry the pregnancy in spite of their addiction.
What?
If I wasn’t already confused by the way these people think, now I’m absolutely dumbfounded.
Let me see if I can paraphrase pro-life Jo’s reasoning. If we prosecute a drug-using mother of a stillborn baby, we (the state) have criminalized drug use while pregnant to the extent that it is considered homicide. Once criminalized, we (the state), now must kill the baby before the drugs do to spare the mother from commiting the crime we just committed on her behalf.
No. If we prosecute a drug-using mother of a stillborn baby (and convict her), we (the state) are declaring it unlawful to kill your own baby by drug use (and therefore, by any other means, such as those practiced in abortion clinics nationwide).
I understand why a pro-choice feminist would necessarily oppose this stance or else forego her pro-choice feminism. But a woman who supposedly self-identifies as pro-life opposes it?
I often wonder if I’m the only one on the planet Earth who thinks clearly.
It was after my sole visit to see the client in jail that I learned that Jo was pro-life. I don’t remember how it came up, only that I reflexively fell into “If only you knew better” mode. I instantly told Jo the story of what a relief it had been in the seventies to be able to get someone close to me a safe, legal abortion when she accidentally became pregnant as a teenager. Surely she’d understand then! Jo listened and nodded. She said she thought the abortion solution to the problem of an unwanted pregnancy represented an act of violence that frees the man involved, but can tie the woman up for the rest of her life.
The person close to her was probably a little sister. What a relief it had been in the seventies to be able to free someone close to her up to engage in so many other enriching pursuits like disco dancing and a degree in Women’s Studies. If that abortion hadn’t happened, that baby would be in its 30s right now. This also tells me that nancyg is just another washed out old battle-axe from the heyday of feminism who apparently has lived with her eyes and ears closed for those last 30 years and hasn’t realized her own irrelevance yet.
But I want to focus on that last sentence: “an act of violence that frees the man involved but can tie up the woman for the rest of her life.” What does that even mean? How does an abortion tie up a woman for the rest of her life? Tie up in what manner? This leads me to believe that Jo the pro-lifer had an abortion in the seventies too. I’ve yet to meet a woman who isn’t ashamed to even admit that she had an abortion nor one who doesn’t regret it. I’m sure they exist, but I for one am relieved to know that I don’t know any.
We didn’t try to convince each other — just respectfully stated our opinions. Years later, we’re still tight.
Such is the strength of their conviction that they didn’t even bother to persuade one another and simply continued to coexist peacefully. Where there is no conviction there is no truth.
I’ve never explicitly asked Jo to explain further why she’s pro-life. But watching her live a life committed to helping others, and serving some higher good — consistently, compassionately, and generously — I think I can guess. Nor does it appear to be a mystery to her, though she has never asked me explicitly, that I try to lead a similar life but am pro-choice.
So, nancyg attributes Jo’s pro-life stance to her good, wholesome life in which she helps others, in the very face of the fact that her own self-proclaimed similiar lifestyle led her to reach the exact opposite conclusion.
In other words:
If a, then b. If a, then not b.
This is the textbook definition of an oxymoron. A logical impossibility.
When I tried to find words for our friendship, I wrote to Jo, “ We are joined at the root. Our differences don’t shake that foundation.” She responded, “The bond formed by our compassion for others means that we are joined at the root. Our respect for each other’s genuine belief in different means of expressing our compassion represents divergent stalks arising from that common root. It also represents a unique (dare I say feminine) gift we give each other: we care for and about another who is not a carbon copy of our self.”
Perhaps they should both start caring about another who is a carbon copy of themselves, e.g., their own children, born and unborn. If they did, they would be on board for putting a woman who poisons her unborn baby with crystal meth in prison where she belongs. This so-called feminine gift – no sexism there – translates to ignoring entirely their moral and philosophical underpinnings for the sake of social cohesion. I agree, that is a very female trait.
As a man, I have a very hard time getting along with people who I don’t respect, and that category includes people who reach very bizarre and perverted moral and philosophical views of the world with which I do not agree. I am also not afraid to draw a line in the sand and declare everyone on the other side of it my enemy and kill them if they cross it. Ah, testicles.
In reality, this Jo person has demonstated herself to be a very strange version of pro-life. No abortion, but yes to bathing your fetus with meth in the womb. Even if we accept the idea that meth isn’t unhealthy for the baby in utero – and that’s a pretty big stretch – what kind of mother will a meth head make to a newborn baby?
I will never understand how these women think. If nancyg or her ilk have just read this sentence, please do not interpret this as a validation of your puzzling and jumbled thought process. The fact that I don’t understand it is not a function of a morally relative ethos in which we agree to disagree or that there is no universal truth to be found here. I am a staunch opponent of post-modern thinking and you should be too. No. When I say I will never understand how these women think, I say it because I claim everything they think on this subject is flat-out, objectively wrong and I am willing to do my best to persuade you, vis-a-vie, this post, and furthermore, if given the opportunity, I would legislate my morality.
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