PrintJanuary 22, 2009
Roe Is Only the Beginning
I have always frankly admitted that abortion is murder, the extermination of the powerless by the powerful. Liberals for the most part have shrunk from facing the ethical consequences of their embrace of abortion, which results in the annihilation of concrete individuals and not just clumps of insensate tissue.
- Camille Paglia
If given the choice, I always prefer to debate atheists, such as Camille Paglia, on the abortion issue. The arguments are simple, direct and uncomplicated by walls of denial.
An atheist's defense of abortion, as opposed to say, first degree murder for money, rests upon a single characteristic of the unborn child: location. In this view, we accept the reality of our murdering the "unwanted" child for our own convenience, simply because the child requires his mother's womb to continue living. In the atheist's mind, this matter of utter dependence confers the right to kill without provocation.
It seems to go unnoticed, even by atheists, that a great many others are also completely dependent upon other human beings to continue living, all infants and young children, severely handicapped persons, many infirm elderly, etc.
Thinking of individual persons as property is certainly not new, not by any means. Yet even modern atheists recoil at the notion of slavery, as a barbaric practice among less-enlightened people. However, as Alveda King, niece of MLK passionately explains, abortion is quite akin to slavery:
How can the "Dream" survive if we murder our children?Every aborted baby is like a slave in the womb of his or her mother. In the hands of the mother is the fate of that child - whether that child lives or dies.
What else can one call abortion but another form of slavery?
As the slave was legally considered the property of the slave-owner, giving legal authority over the life or death of the slave, so does the Roe decision grant this right to the owner of the womb, in which an equal-in-all-manner, merely smaller, human being resides. The very Latin word, fetus, translates simply to "little person." Atheists, at least, are quick to admit this fact.
Just as African slaves were once considered not "real" people, and therefore unworthy of Constitutional protection, so the decision in Roe comes down against protection of the child in his mother's womb. Even Justice Blackmun, the author of Roe, admitted that once "personhood" could be medically/scientifically established, the fetus would necessarily be given full protection by the 14th Amendment. Ultrasound technology accomplished this visual proof 2 decades ago; yet Roe still stands.
On the matter of abortion, we wish not to be confused with inconvenient facts.
In the end, atheists fall back on the woman's womb as sacrosanct property of the mother, not to be interfered with by the state. It's a hard argument to refute. Abolitionists faced the same resistance from slave owners, who regarded their plantations as private property, absolutely sacrosanct in the eyes of American jurisprudence. This argument, too, proved difficult to refute and required a Civil War to finally decide.
Nevertheless, I'll always prefer to argue abortion with atheists.
At the very, very least, neither the atheist nor I, is put into the scientifically indefensible position of claiming that abortion is not murdering another human being or that it is in any way a positive, much less altruistic act.
Honestly, the contortions a practicing Jew or Catholic or Protestant Christian will go to in defending the abstract "rightness" of abortion is mind-boggling.
So why, oh why, do we do it?
The answer really is quite simple. We continue, despite 40 years of heavy Darwinian indoctrination, to be a Nation of religious people. Nearly 90% of us profess to be Christians. Orthodox and conservative Jews make up a small percentage of our population, but are often even more vocally dedicated to moral certitude being codified by law.
The matter of abortion puts Americans, philosophically speaking, between a huge rock and a very hard place. The fact that we remain a religious people in a Nation that has systematically murdered 49 million of its own offspring through abortion over 36 years, absolutely requires that we be in complete denial and continue to debate its merits in bastardized language.
Let's get real, shall we?
Isn't it high time we get real on abortion? Twisting our words on a matter does not change its character one whit.
And there's no longer any need to mince words on the matter.
Abortion is not in danger in these United States of America.
Its absolute legality is the law of the land in all 50 states. We have just elected a President sworn to pass the Freedom of Choice Act, which will codify Roe, require payment by the state for abortions, and even strike down the conscience clauses that now protect medical personnel. Our new President is also certain to appoint Supreme Court justices highly supportive of abortion rights. No one is mounting an army to rush in and destroy abortion mills all over the Country. Abortion is set to reign in America, perhaps forever.
There is nothing that I, as an individual, can do to change this reality. I continue to pray for the awakening of moral conscience, continue to offer substantive help to women who want to choose life for their unborn children, and continue to vote for candidates sworn to uphold the most basic human right there is -- the right to life, from the moment of conception as a unique human being. Unless I were willing to become a murderer myself, intent on bombing abortion mills and killing those inside them, I can do nothing else to stop it.
One thing I absolutely will not do, however, is surrender my common sense to the psycho-babble position of morally defending abortion. I insist that it be named precisely what it is -- murder of a helpless person for convenience.
There is absolutely no reason to continue the charade of defending our legal support for the "right to abort," as a humane and altruistic thing. If we are the enlightened, postmodern, post-Christian nation that liberals believe us to be, then there is positively no reason for verbal shenanigans aimed at reassuring our moral sensibilities. We are supposed to have outgrown them.
Abortion and Genocide
Abortion in America was once quite rare and a highly individual choice. No one in our government, our public square, our churches or our schools was advocating abortion to young people caught unaware by inconvenient pregnancies. Today, nearly 1 out of every 3 pregnancies ends in fully state-sanctioned, and some would say, "encouraged," abortion.
Webster's New World Encyclopedia, Prentice Hall General Reference, 1992, defines "genocide" as "The deliberate and systematic destruction of a national, racial, religious, political, cultural, ethnic, or other group defined by the exterminators as undesirable." The jurist, Raphael Lemkin, a Polish scholar of international law, coined the legal concept of genocide in 1944 in response to the Holocaust taking place at the hands of Nazi "exterminators." He joined the Greek word, genos, meaning "race" or "tribe," with the Latin, cide, meaning "killer" or "act of killing." Thus, the word, "genocide," entered our international vocabulary.
According to Genocide Watch, The International Campaign to End Genocide, there are 8 stages to Genocide, of which classification, the Holocaust was the first acknowledged internationally.
Is abortion the new, unacknowledged genocide?
The 8 stages of genocide are:
1. CLASSIFICATION: All cultures have categories to distinguish people into "us and them" In abortion, the "us" are all citizens we can see, those of us already born; the "them" are those still residing within a woman's womb, technically the "unborn." Specifically, abortion requires a further separation of those intended for extermination, the "wanted unborn" as opposed to the "unwanted unborn."
2. SYMBOLIZATION: We give names or other symbols to the classifications. We call the unwanted, unborn child, the fetus, the blastocyst, the glob of tissue, or anything whatsoever except the unwanted, unborn child. Nearly all of us, quite naturally, call the wanted child the baby. Maternity clothing shops abound with t-shirts bearing the phrase, Baby on Board, and not Blastocyst Herein.
3. DEHUMANIZATION: One group denies the humanity of the other group. Members of it are equated with animals, vermin, insects or diseases. Planned Parenthood of Minnesota/South Dakota, for instance, has run newspaper advertisements which read in part "BABIES ARE LOUD, SMELLY, AND EXPENSIVE. UNLESS YOU WANT ONE. 1-800-230-PLAN." The slogan for Planned Parenthood, the Nation's #1 provider of abortions to the tune of more than $100 million each year, is "Every child a wanted child," thus dehumanizing the group of children deemed "unwanted." Unwanted children are dehumanized for the express purpose of extermination.
4. ORGANIZATION: Genocide is always organized, usually by the state. While abortion in the United States remains (at the moment) the "free choice" of individual women, it is largely state-supported, through taxpayer funding for Planned Parenthood and other groups promoting abortions and through pro-abortion educational models present in American public schools. American obstetricians routinely counsel expectant mothers to abort any baby found to possess any abnormality. To say that abortion is "organized" and "promoted by the state" is not a far stretch by any means.
5. POLARIZATION: Extremists drive the groups apart. Hate groups broadcast polarizing propaganda. Polarization on abortion occurred quite early in Roe's life as our mainstream media adopted pro-abortion language, deeming abortion proponents as being, "pro-choice," as opposed to pro-life defenders being deemed as "anti-choice." This polarization in the media puts the onus of defense upon those dedicated to upholding the worth of the unborn child as opposed to the other way around. (Once sane people consciously admit that there is no biological difference between a child that is "wanted" as opposed to one that is "unwanted," this polarization becomes impossible. But at the moment, it reigns undaunted.)
6. PREPARATION: Victims are identified and separated out because of their ethnic, religious or other group identity. This stage began the day the Roe decision was announced, January 22, 1973. From that point onward, the baby in the womb of a mother who happens not to want it, was separated out due to group identity ("unwanted children"), and prepared for extermination.
7. EXTERMINATION begins, and quickly becomes the mass killing legally called "genocide." It is "extermination" to the killers because they do not believe their victims to be fully human. If we ever once admit to ourselves as a society that the unborn (all of them, whether wanted or unwanted) are human beings, then abortion will be viewed as the American Holocaust and its defenders will be as few as Neo-Nazis. Six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust; 49 million Americans have been killed by abortion. No one in his right mind can conclude that abortion has not become "mass killing."
8. DENIAL is the eighth stage that always follows a genocide. It is among the surest indicators of further genocidal massacres. As we remain in this final stage of genocide, "Denial," we can be absolutely certain that "further genocidal massacres" are in our foreseeable future as a Nation. Any study of Hitler's Holocaust quickly uncovers the fact that his first victims of eugenic exterminations were not the Jews. His first victims were the incurables, the handicapped and the insane.
Boomers are Next
I predict that the next American genocide will be the elderly, large swaths of the 79,000,000 Boomer generation. By sheer numbers, and in an economy that threatens long-term scarcity, these Boomers stand to be the next big losers in our increasingly utilitarian morality.
I predict that the next American genocide will be the elderly, large swaths of the 79,000,000 Boomer generation. By sheer numbers, and in an economy that threatens long-term scarcity, these Boomers stand to be the next big losers in our increasingly utilitarian morality.
As any student of genocide can predict, once the innate and inviolable value of any group of human beings is rendered less than the value of others, then extermination (once all utility has been garnered from the group) is the natural inclination of human beings. And as long as we continue in the state of denial, then any group can become a target.
Roe, at 36 years old today, is only the beginning -- the mere sprout of the onion in the killing fields that America has become. Until we decide to change course, then every one of us is fodder for someone's genocide.
And no amount of rationalization or moral relativity or verbal contortionism can alter that immutable fact.
Roe's thriving at 36 threatens the very existence of our Republic. No Nation can survive a blatant disregard for God's simple, ancient dictum: Thou shalt not murder.
To paraphrase Immanuel Kant, "Murder is not abominable because God prohibits it; God prohibits it because it is abominable. Mass murder -- genocide -- is not only abominable; it is cultural suicide.
Kyle-Anne Shiver is a frequent contributor to American Thinker. She welcomes your comments at kyleanneshiver@gmail.com.
