The Paradoxes of Abortion: When Is Politics Exposed?

Newsweek [12/6/96] reported that FBI statistics indicated 207 children younger than a week were murdered in 1994. That is a 92 percent increase since Roe v. Wade legalized abortion in 1973.* 

Cassidy Goodson and Juana Valencia are just one of an epidemic of neonaticidal mothers who have recently faced conviction for murder.  Teresa Maldonado apparently killed her baby through trauma to the head. Veronica Via beat her infant to death because she "would be better off dead than growing up poor and fatherless."  (That's an awful familiar argument.) Rozlynn Rodgers performed her own 5th trimester abortion for reasons that Mary Elizabeth Williams understands all too well.  There's Jessica Blackham, Katie McCoy, Amy Grossberg, Melissa Drexler, etc.

And yet, when asked whether he is for abortions into the 9th month, Barack Obama flatly affirms, "I support abortion."  In spite of the opinions of many Democrats and Republicans alike, liberals have backed partial birth abortions as a civil liberty.  Here is one summary of the paradox:

In any case, this riddle—the different fortunes of the ninth month abortion and the baby drowned in the toilet (or abandoned in the dumpster)—might lead you believe that abortion politics aren’t entirely about civil liberties. One fetus-destroyer is a liberated woman; the other, a murderer.

But this is but one paradox in abortion politics.  Previously cited Mary Elizabeth Williams is in the vanguard of progressives abandoning the safe liberal position that "something magical happens at the moment a baby passes through the birth canal."*  A fetus is quite obviously a human life according to Williams, but the value of that life lies precisely in whether that life is wanted.  "I’m a mom who loved the lives she incubated from the moment she peed on those sticks, and is also now well over 40 and in an experimental drug trial. If by some random fluke I learned today I was pregnant, you bet your ass I’d have an abortion. I’d have the World’s Greatest Abortion."*  Let's rephrase that summary: 

In any case, this riddle—the different fortunes of the loved embryo and the unwanted preemie—might lead you believe that abortion politics aren’t entirely about principle but about convenience. In one instance the fetus-carrier is a sanctified mother; the other, a liberated woman.  In one instance the fetus is a baby to be cherished; the other, an unacceptable change of plans.

Barack Obama, who says we should do everything we can to save lives once they are born, opposed regulations for insuring protections and care for preemies who are born following an unsuccessful abortion.  One of the many reasons he cited for this was that he thought doing so set a bad precedent for the God-given liberty to destroy one's own fetus.  This might seem especially odd given the care we take and the expense that is afforded for a non-person that enters personhood prematurely:

In any case, this riddle—the different fortunes of the preemie and the potential abortion survivor—might lead you believe that abortion politics aren’t entirely about civil liberties. One fetus is a life to be saved; the other, an obstacle to civil liberty.

And now for something (almost) completely different.  Here is some very similar language applied to the seeming disparity between opposition to stem cell research and "morning after" pills and the lack of picketing at IVF clinics.  To Pamela Haag, this paradox is easily explained by guessing that the pro-life movement is fueled by "anger about other women’s lives and choices":

In any case, this riddle—the different fortunes of the abortion clinic and the IVF clinic—might lead you [to] believe that abortion politics aren’t entirely about embryos. One embryo-destroyer is a sanctified mother; the other, a murderer. *

In case it isn't obvious by now, this was the original quote I've been riffing on.  And here we are in an era in which the New Morality are arguing for 4th trimester abortions (infanticide), while educated (and not-so-educated) liberals are laughing at the Great Unwashed for thinking that tolerating some gray leads to tolerating the dark.  For Pamela Haag, inconsistency says a lot to her about the motivations of others.  Then what do the other inconsistencies about this issue tell us?

Abortion: An American Horror Story

Several spoilers follow for both seasons of "American Horror Story":

In the original "American Horror Story" the featured haunted house that is lousy with demented ghosts is haunted as well by the original owners of the house.  A sort of Victor Frankenstein-like doctor is goaded by his wife to perform quiet abortions for Hollywood starlets who find themselves in a "difficult situation."  One starlet has a husband/boyfriend that considers his baby to have been murdered and retaliates by mutilating and killing the doctor's infant son.  (An anti-abortion activist starts the cycle of violence!)

Everyone that dies in this evil house finds their spirit trapped, including the mangled infant son of the doctor.

In the series a baby dies in the home immediately after being born.  It also is trapped.  Because it has a soul.

Not a single unborn baby's soul is trapped in the home.  You get the impression the show's creators believe that the fetuses never had any souls to be trapped.

Progressive propagandists Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk present a nuanced presentation of abortion in the "reboot" tv series "American Horror Story: Asylum."  In an Akin-esque turn of events, a woman finds herself pregnant after being raped by a serial killer. She goes to have an abortion and decides against it out of compassion.  She has the baby and gives him up for adoption.  This turns out to be a mistake.  Many people die as a result of her compassion, and ultimately she has to kill her son who has followed in his bio-father's footsteps.  Kind of a 200th trimester abortion, if you buy the implicit premise of the story.

“this most precious, vital part of ourselves” — Obama in his own words

Obama had an interesting description of birth during his gun control speech at the vigil for the Newtown children.

“Someone once described the joy and anxiety of parenthood as the equivalent of having your heart outside of your body all the time, walking around. With their very first cry, this most precious, vital part of ourselves, our child, is suddenly exposed to the world, to possible mishap or malice.”

Let me get this straight: The "most precious, vital part of ourselves” is not exposed at first, and then suddenly becomes exposed to the world?  They didn't suddenly become precious and vital with “their very first cry"? They were already precious and vital before they were exposed to mishap and malice?  Got it.

It would seem that even though infanticide has been practiced by various cultures around the world, Barack feels no need to explain how “possible mishap or malice” to a baby “violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all.”

And yet, one of Barack's assorted reasons for killing the Born Alive Infant Protection Act in Illinois was that “I [would] have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all.”  You mean, a principle that was accessible to hard-core atheist Christopher Hitchens?  Barack would not be able to explain (since it is above his “pay grade,” one assumes) that what gets “exposed to the world, to possible mishap or malice” is the “most precious, vital part of ourselves.”  But wait, isn't that what he was explaining at the prayer vigil for the Newtown children when he said that essential liberty was not worth a situation where children's safety was at stake?

'Cuz he's so consistent...

But he explicitly made the sacrifice of babies the price of “abortion rights” (a “right” that was interpreted as part of a Constitutional right to privacy, unlike the very explicit Constitutional right for the People to be their own deterrent against tyranny), when he decided that having medical attention be guaranteed for survivors of “live birth abortion” (forcing early labor and then leaving the preemie to die) would set a bad legal precedent (see #1 and #10), and might cause a problem for the "right” that brings in money and votes for the Democrat political machine.

Barack intentionally voted to expose the “most precious, vital part of ourselves” to certain “mishap or malice,” because, as a great Constitutional law professor, he decided that that was the price of freedom.  Let freedom ring, since in the case of abandoning newborns to die, it apparently does not “violate some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths.”

Asked if he supported abortion all the way into the ninth month, Barack said blanketly, "I am pro-choice." And he balked at the idea of bringing in a second opinion if a baby shows signs of life following induced labor. It's completely unnecessary, he argued.  Hey, Barack, what if it could save just one life, hmmm?  I agree that at some point extra laws might not prevent terrible things, but "surely we can do better than this."  Are you going to say "that the politics are too hard"?  Are you going to say the painful death of babies "is somehow the price" of women's "freedom"?

Barack said of the little ones of Newtown, “God has called them all home.”  And what other little ones are being called home, Barack?  The ones you fought to not be saved lest Abortion-palooza not be possible?

“[As President he's] helping the country in a quasi-ministerial role, trying to bring meaning to an event that seems fundamentally meaningless.”*

Thank you, quasi-minister Obama, for helping us navigate the moral swamp in determining which children to protect, which rights are worth giving up, and which moral trade-offs are worth making.  Let us kiss your ring.