I started this thread about my encounter with an anti-abortion protestor. Like most anti-abortion protest threads, it beame a debate about abortion. So I am stating this loud and clear: THIS IS NOT A THREAD ABOUT ABORTION!! No discussion of fetal rights vs. women’s rights. Abortion is legal, whatever your viewpoint.
So why aren’t the “pro-abortion” people killing people in the adoption business and buring down orphanages? Why don’t anti-abortion protestors go to Washington and have the law changed instead of killing doctors and burning down clinics?
First, I question your assumption that anti-abortion activists don’t “go to Washington and have the law changed.” Certainly they do. They got the partial birth abortion law in place, they’ve gotten individual states to pass laws which severely restrict access to abortion or mandate nonmedical procedures (like viewing ultrasounds) before a woman can get an abortion…they’re there, lobbying their butts off, for a legislated end to abortion.
Second, I don’t understand why on earth an abortion rights person would *want *to start “killing people in the adoption business and buring down orphanages”. As far as I know, most of us sincerely are about women having choices, and adoption and state care are perfectly valid choices. I understand there is a contingent who believes that adoption is not without its own problems, but I’ve never heard it suggested that abortion replace adoption, merely that adoption may need to be restructured to work more effectively.
I see both groups as people with a strong belief that they are working to protect the human rights of their fellow man…only they’ve got different entities they are protecting. Abortion rights activists primary concern is with protecting the human rights of the pregnant woman, and anti abortion activists are primarily concerned with protecting the human rights of the fetus. (Any more commentary on that will violate your “not about abortion” rule.)
Just like any human rights struggle, some people chose legislative routes and some people prefer to get more local and vocal about it.
The point Annie was making, I think, is that the “pro-life” anti-abortion activists tend to stereotype pro-choice people, not as favoring a woman’s right to choose whether to carry her fetus to term, but as actively in favor of abortion. The idea that someone might think abortion to be the best of a series of bad options, or be opposed both to abortion and to the legal banning of them by state action, seems to escape them.
If one is going to play that game, the one could also point out that pro-choicers frequently stereotype pro-lifers as well. On this board, for example, people repeatedly insist that pro-lifers only care about the unborn, and that once a child is born, they don’t give a whit. That is demonstrably untrue, as evidenced by the hundreds of crisis pregnancy centers that provide housing and material assistance to pregnant women. Or when pro-lifers are characterized as pushy or violent placard-carrying screamers, when the majority of them are peaceful in their methods.
“But they are! They are pushy and violent!” some here would say. As I said, gross stereotyping.
The difference is that the people and the goals of the anti-abortion side are malignant and irrational. They are driven by religion and the hatred of women, so ruthlessness is to be expected.
In other words, bad people act badly; good people don’t. The difference is only puzzling if you insist on moral and intellectual equivalence between the two sides.
You mean the places where they terrorize, lie to and insult women in order to traumatize them as much as possible.
No, they don’t care about the child, except as a weapon that can be used to punish women for the crime of being female.
I assume you are asking why the extremes on both sides don’t have the same levels of violence as each other, since the majority of pro-life campaigners never kill anyone?
I would think that the best way to answer it is to look at several explanations.
Firstly, if you compare abortion to killing Jews in camps (I know its an imperfect analogy, and Godwins the thread, but bear with me for a sec).
The people who want to stop the practice blow up the oven and nazi guards, in order to stop the murder that goes on inside.
The nazi’s use the camp itself to commit their violence, and use the law of the land to punish those who oppose the killing.
Thats a very flawed analogy, but basically because the law is pro-choice, the pro-choice people don’t need to commit violence - they can just use the law to help them, as the law supports their aims.
The second reason, and much better then the one above, is that pro-choice people don’t want to kill all foetuses - most have no ill will towards the unborn, except the odd minority who refer to them as parasites.
What they want is for the particular mother to be able to decide whether or not to destroy the particular foetus. In this sense, the pro-choice campaign have no-one to do violance against except the foetus, whereas the pro-life campaign can strike at the people who kill the foetuses, and the places where they are killed.
Finally, and maybe more important than the other two - the pro-life have more to fight for. They belive that the foetuses are alive and have value, even if other people think that they don’t - they believe that being human, even if mindless, confers its own value. Therefore abortion is babykilling and heinous.
If you are pro-choice, then not having abortion legal means that a woman is forced to walk around with a baby inside her for nine months, most of that period without signicant discomfort. It may violate her rights, but there is no way a rational person could see a healthy woman being forced to keep a baby as being anywhere close to as bad as killing a baby.
Motivation wise, the pro-life crowd have a much more pressing concern - they are more willing to turn to violance.
I apologise to any pro-life people I may have offended - I am aware that most pro-life campaigners are non-violent.
I’m not arguing your point, but that is a really bad example. Why would providing services to pregnant women answer the accusation that pro-lifers only care about the unborn? Wouldn’t you need to provide an example of services being provided for mothers and children after birth?
What percentage of anti-abortion protesters are also doctor killers? How many zeroes to the right of the decimal point?
And you do realize that in order to change the abortion “law”, you’d need a constitutional amendment. However, there have been many attempts to limit abortions by law at the federal and state level.
There is a hilarious comic I saw once involving Dorathy killing and eating the lion - cooking him in a pot made from the tin man, over the burning straw man.
You’re right; I misstated that. The services that they provide typically extend to women who have already given birth. These include infant clothing and food items, plus (before liability issues became a legal concern) infant furniture. They also include support groups, child care, and – for a few of the more fortunate centers – job training assistance.
That’s just a cross-section of the services that they provide to mothers and their children. The bottom line is that they do provide a wide range of services, even after birth.
No violent movement contains anything more than a small percentage of people who actually commit violence. You also have to include those who support such people, either directly by hiding them from the authorities, or indirectly by creating a climate where doctors are called baby killers.
It works the other way also. I’ve never aborted a fetus, or paid for an abortion, or even drove anyone to an abortion, but I’ll admit to fostering a climate where abortion is legal by support of pro-choice candidates.
Perhaps a less inflammatory way of showing that there are few if no pro-abortion people (as opposed to pro-choice people) is that no one publishes abortion statistics proudly claiming that an increase in the number of abortions is a good thing.