Written by Bill Muehlenberg - Used with permission.
Hardly has a week gone by when one columnist wrote a ludicrous and misleading
piece on pro-lifers, and already we have another writer doing exactly the same
thing. We have another pro-death opinion piece demonstrating similar sorts of
mental confusion and moral imbalance.
The earlier piece and my commentary on it can be
found here: www.billmuehlenberg.com/2011/11/04/no-choice-from-the-pro-choicers/
The piece in today’s Melbourne Age covers the same story and uses
the same twisted logic and suffers from the same ethical diarrhoea. Both pieces
mentioned the Occupy protestors, and both complained about peaceful pro-life
vigils outside of abortion mills in Melbourne. And both pieces insisted that
these pro-lifers must be moved on.
Suzy Freeman-Greene, like Susie O’Brien before her, displays a rather large
deficit in clear thinking and moral reasoning. Neither one can see through the
logic of their own reckless presuppositions, and neither one will allow facts to
get in the way of their pro-death ideology.
The easiest way to cut through their moral fog is to point out the moral
equivalence of their position to that of a very similar issue of a few centuries
ago. Indeed, simply replace a few terms and we all can see the utter bankruptcy
of their positions.
For example, Freeman-Greene says this: “Terminating a pregnancy is a deeply
private matter. Women should not be subjected to harassment and surveillance on
the morning of the operation. They deserve better.” To see the utter foolishness
of this, simply see how others argued the very same thing not all that long
ago:
“Keeping a slave is a deeply private matter. People should not be subjected
to harassment and surveillance when they purchase a slave. They deserve better.”
Like slavery, abortion is not at all a private matter but a basic human rights
issue. In both cases those promoting these activities have sought to convince us
that the person in question (a black or an unborn baby) is in fact a non-person,
and can therefore be treated as we please.
Just as the slave owner could treat a slave as mere property and not as a
human being, so today the pro-aborts want to treat the unborn as mere blobs of
tissue instead of unique persons with every right to life as they have. We now
rightly deplore the depraved logic of the pro-slavery crowd, but we don’t yet
seem to see the same conceptual ugliness of the pro-abortion brigade.
Freeman-Greene cites a study which shows that women going to the killing
centres feel uncomfortable about the protestors: “70 per cent felt stigmatised
by them”. Of course they feel stigmatised. A group of peaceful anti-slavery
protestors holding pictures of poor abused black people would also make slave
buyers feel stigmatised as well.
In the same way showing pictures of bloodied and battered baby seals makes
the seal killers feel stigmatised. That is the whole idea: to raise public
consciousness about these bloody activities. If a woman feels guilty about going
to an abortion mill, perhaps that is a very good thing indeed. It shows us that
she is still a real person with a conscience.
It is only when the conscience gets fully deadened that such guilt and shame
no longer can produce the desired effect. Guilt and shame are inbuilt warning
devices, seeking to alert us to a course of action which must be reversed, and
pronto.
And if the worst these women feel is some stigmatisation or guilt trips, at
least they can still live to reflect on it all. The end result of abortion is
only always just one thing: a dead baby. The baby has absolutely no choice in
the matter, and he or she does not even have the luxury of feeling stigmatised
or not – only living people can experience that – or anything else.
I have not been the only commentator to write on these matters. When the
first article came out last week, one writer managed to get an opinion piece
into a website, and it is worth mentioning. Joel Hodge examined the issue of
sidewalk protests, and discussed the calls to move them away from abortion
mills.
Says Hodge, the Occupy crowd is not at all like the pro-life movement: “Most
people (including the Mayor) see a difference between permanently occupying a
public place which makes it inaccessible to others, and occasionally
congregating on a footpath that still remains accessible. The irony, of course,
is that the great mantra of the pro-abortion movement, about the integrity and
control that a woman should have over her body, does not seem to apply to those
who have an opposing view. If there is a chance, it seems that the state should
take control of the bodies of protesters, disrespect their rights and forcefully
move them on.”
And as he rightly notes, the real issue here is freedom of information and
informed consent – the sort of stuff choice is all about. Women should be able
to hear about the risks they may face, and the options and alternatives
available to them. But the abortion mills and their media supporters want to
take this choice away from women:
“The clinic supporters want people who are providing information about
alternatives to abortion to not have the chance to give women, who are often
confused and in difficult situations, information and opportunities about
alternatives to abortion. Good information and financial support results in real
choices, in which some women decide to actually allow their baby to be born.
Yet, the clinic supporters want these information-providers moved on and choice
denied. Why? One argument is that it is bad for business and staff turn-over. It
is good to remember that abortion is a business, as well as an ideological
agenda.
“As some feel threatened by the Occupy movement, it could be that the clinic
supporters want the state and the police to protect their economic interests
against those who provide alternatives. We should be careful when businesses
call on the state, particularly in the form of police coercion, to protect their
interests. These are murky waters. I’m not arguing that the clinic should not
have its legal rights protected. I am arguing that the state should not be
called on to do more than protect legitimate and legal rights, especially in a
competitive marketplace where people are supposed to have the chance for
‘choice’.”
Yes, at the end of the day, the pro-choicers care little about genuine
choice. The abortionists themselves are simply about making money – lots of
money. They do not want women to hear the truth about their greedy practices,
and they don’t want the public to know either.
In the same way, the slave traders did not want the public to know what they
were up to. They wanted to paint a pretty picture of an immoral trade. But
campaigners like Wilberforce did everything they could to let the public know
what the reality in fact was.
That is just what the pro-life street vigils are all about: offering
important information and real informed choices to the public at large and to
these women in particular. People like O’Brien and Freeman-Greene want to strip
away that right of the pro-lifers, and ban that information from getting to
those who need it the most.
What an anti-choice bunch those “pro-choicers” are.
www.theage.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/some-occupy-to-protest-others-to-hamper-harangue-and-hurt-20111111-1nbn4.html
www.abc.net.au/unleashed/3638758.html
