Pamela Haag posts, at BigThink, an interesting opinion piece pointing out “a problem with abortion politics. It’s a dishonest debate today.” She claims that:
The sides often don’t name or state accurately the incandescent things that they feel in their guts. They euphemize instead.
This got my interest because I see pro-aborts euphemize all the time but I don’t see pro-lifers doing the same thing. Ms. Haag hits the pro-aborts first:
For the pro-choice side, if you listened to mainstream discourse, you’d think that abortion was all about “choice,” whatever that precisely means, or “women’s health,” whatever that precisely means.
But Ms. Haag says, that for pro-aborts (my term, she prefers the euphemism “pro-choice”), on-demand abortion is really just about sex and avoiding the natural consequence of sex.
It’s about the fact that women of all ages and marital statuses are having sex. They are having sex in a variety of ways, and consensually. They have sex for sex’s sake, and not for the sake of marriage or motherhood. Although they’re imagined as promiscuous, most have sex in relationships. Many enjoy sex. Their male counterparts enjoy this lifestyle, too.
And nothing stifles sex like a realization of the responsibility to take care of a child. So, though pro-aborts don’t allow themselves to think in these terms, it’s important for their sex lives to be able kill the child through abortion. Sex is more important than a child’s life. Ms. Haag continues:
But sexual agency and freedom, expressed as such, aren’t winning ideas these days….Instead, pro-choice forces seek shelter behind choice and women’s health, and invoke the most wrenching, non-consensual cases of pregnancy resulting from rape or incest as examples, or emergency medical conditions where abortion is clinically required to save the mother’s life.
Yes, pro-aborts love to hide behind rape victims. Because rape is such a horrifying crime, it’s a powerful emotional tactic. This way they can avoid talking about the babies whom they support killing. In addition, pro-aborts blatantly lie that recognizing unborn human beings are persons would mean women couldn’t get life-saving medical treatment. For explanation, see Prenatal Personhood, can mothers get life-saving medical treatment?
After explaining that sex is what really drives abortion advocacy, Ms. Haag turns her sights on pro-lifers. I will discuss that in another post.
