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Thursday, October 15, 2009

Semantic Games and Abortion Guilt

Back in the 70s an article ran in the New England Journal of Medicine that talked about the "semantic gymnastics" necessary to the abortion debate. It stated that pro-abortionists use word games to dissociate themselves from the fact, a fact everyone really knows, that unborn children are living human infants from the very beginning. The semantic gymnastics continue today, but occasionally a bit of honesty breaks through the shroud of lies. Sometimes, however, the honesty paints an even more grotesque picture than the lies.

Such is the story of abortionist Lisa Harris who acknowledges that second trimester abortions do, indeed, involve violence. She describes aborting an 18 week old infant at the same time she was 18 weeks pregnant with her own child:

With my first pass of the forceps, I grasped an extremity and began to pull it down. I could see a small foot hanging from the teeth of my forceps. With a quick tug, I separated the leg. Precisely at that moment, I felt a kick - a fluttery "thump, thump" in my own uterus. It was one of the first times I felt fetal movement. There was a leg and foot in my forceps, and a "thump, thump" in my abdomen. Instantly, tears were streaming from my eyes - without me - meaning my conscious brain - even being aware of what was going on. I felt as if my response had come entirely from my body, bypassing my usual cognitive processing completely. A message seemed to travel from my hand and my uterus to my tear ducts. It was an overwhelming feeling - a brutally visceral response - heartfelt and unmediated by my training or my feminist pro-choice politics. It was one of the more raw moments in my life. Doing second trimester abortions did not get easier after my pregnancy; in fact, dealing with little infant parts of my born baby only made dealing with dismembered fetal parts sadder.


Harris' "sadness" has not led her to stop doing 2nd trimester abortions. In fact, she continues to justify them describing that she rationalizes her actions based on whether the child is in or out of the woman's body. This is similar to using the rationale of "wantedness" which judges the baby's value by the mother's feelings about the pregnancy. Both rationalizatons have nothing to do with the baby, but involve extraneous and irrelevant issues. Many people have been unwanted at one time or another and targeted because of where they live. Lisa Harris and others who follow her logic play a dangerous game, one that isn't new.

History is full of examples of "unwanted" peoples whose murders were rationalized by their killers: the Christians unwanted by the Armenian Turks were robbed and murdered while Christians in other nations were unmolested. The Jews unwanted in the Third Reich died in the death camps. They would have survived in America. The Tutsis were unwanted "cockroaches" to the Hutus, but those who escaped to other African nations survived.

But there is another death, worse than the death of the body: the death of the soul. The results of such evil rationalization is the hardening and brutalization of the killers. To go on living their lie they must dissociate from their own humanity and become more beasts than men (or women). Their wills are hardened. The likelihood of them turning back to God becomes remote.

Lisa Harris' rationalization is so complete that she claims acknowleging abortion as violent will be a virtue actually strengthening the "pro-choice" movement. "Honesty," she says, "[can] be the basis for a stronger movement - one that makes it easier for providers and the teams they work with to do all abortions, especially second trimester abortions." If this is so it will be because the killers have become so brutal and hard-hearted they can kill as easily as stepping on a spider. The cost of "easier" abortions is to destroy the capacity for compassion. Harris' strange sentiment is so dissociated from reality, it boggles the mind. It is like Dr. Mengele claiming his grotesque experiments would be easier if he acknowledged the Jews were equal in value to himself. But in fact, he dehumanized his subjects as did the entire Nazi machine. Jews were subhuman; so experimenting on them was no different than using laboratory mice or monkeys. There is no "golden rule" among those who murder the weak and vulnerable.

Frankly, I don't believe Lisa Harris' testimony. Her claims remind me of another pro-abortion woman who defends murdering children. Columnist Anna Quindlen chose to abort her own baby and went on later to write an article about baking "guilt cookies" whenever she had to go on a business trip and leave her living children. They were well cared for, but still she "felt guilty." But wasn't that her mind playing the same rationalization game. She wouldn't allow herself to feel guilty about murdering her poor baby, so she dissociated from it and let herself release "guilt" over something obviously innocuous and not worthy of guilt.

Lisa Harris is playing the same game. She admits abortion is violent and that she is "sadder" now when she kills. But she continues to justify it. Does her "sadness" make her actions less monstrous or more?

10 comments:

  1. Abortionists know exactly what they're doing, and whom they're killing. They don't care anymore about their murders than did Mao, Stalin or Hitler about theirs

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  2. She thinks she is sad now. How about eternal Hell if she doesn't repent? Spending eternity thinking about all those unborn babies that she murdered!

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  3. That's sickening. How have we become so brainwashed - especially women? How in the world could you kill a baby in another's womb while carrying your own?

    God have mercy on us.

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  4. Yes, we know what we're doing: we are committing JUSTIFIABLE HOMICIDE.

    Sure fetuses are persons. But it doesn't matter WHAT they are--what matters is WHERE they are. If something is inside my body, then I'm entitled to have it killed, no matter what it is. Even if it's an innocent person. No exceptions. If you were inside my body, then I'd be entitled to kill you. If I were inside your body, then you'd be entitled to kill me. That's part of the meaning of the word "my" in the phrase "my body"--I get to decide who besides me gets to live in it, and when, AND HOW LONG.

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  5. Even the state doesn't allow you to have the unrestricted use of your body. You can't use it to bash the brains of your newborn against the hospital wall because the child is the wrong sex. You don't have the right to scream "fire" in a crowded theatre. You don't have the right to take a false oath, or rob a bank, or even inject your body with illegal substances. So you don't, in fact, have a right to use your body in any way you like.

    But if your photo is accurate and you're a guy, I'm not surprised that you argue this way. Abortion is the easy way out for predatory men who use women as sex toys and then want to recycle them when they get pregnant. A large percentage of women are coerced into abortion by guys like you who tell women, "It's your choice," while they drag women into abortion mills. I know because I spent years on the sidewalk and I saw it again and again. When the woman tried to talk to us, the man often dragged her away snatching our material away and saying, "She's already made her choice." Convenient for him, eh?

    Not only does he make the choice for her and get off the hook, but he convinces her she made the decision and carries all the guilt.

    But you can't fool God. And He is the one who owns each of us. Jesus bought us by His blood. Your repulsive ideas can't change that. You belong to Him too.

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  6. Mary Ann, no, woman in USA don't get coerced into having abortions (with a few, peculiar exceptions). The woman can always leave the abortion-doc's office if she doesn't want the abortion, any time before the beginning of the procedure.

    What DOES sometimes happen is, women experience pressure to abort, and CHOOSE to yield to that pressure. That's not coersion.

    If anyone ever tries to coerce you into having an abortion, tell the police and they will arrest him. Problem solved!

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  7. It is hardly worth it responding to lunatics. His argument has the same force as if you're living in my house and I don't like it I can kill you. It has about that cogency. If I invited you in as the woman does (generally) in the case of abortion then you don't have the right to turn around and kill the person. The case of rape is only a little more complicated, but in that case the child is an innocent. But expecting anything like brains nowadays is fairly hopeless. The only thing they are taught in school is that they are slaves of their passions and animals like all the rest. So that act the part.

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  8. You must not read the news much, OC. There are numerous cases of women beaten up, having their drinks laced with abortifacients, and even murdered because they won't do what their "lovers" want. Women like to please the men they love and will often have abortions to keep them. What they don't realize is that the predators leave anyway because it was never about love for them in the first place. And a suffering woman isn't much fun to be with. Fun and games -- that's what it's all about for many men. They use "love" language to get sex, but haven't got a clue about what real love is. Women for them are lollipops to be sucked down to the stick and then thrown away.

    I thank God for good men like the one I married who knows the meaning of true love.

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  9. Ray Schneider, killing someone IN YOUR HOUSE is not the same as killing someone IN YOUR BODY. We routinely force people to give up their EXTERNAL property (taxes, alimony, houses, etc) but we do NOT force you to give up, or use, the contents of your body.

    When you enter my house, you give up the rights and privileges you were enjoying by being in your own house, or on public property. This obligates me to let you leave, rather than killing you, when I tire of your company. In contrast, the fetus does not give up anything by being conceived--before conception it has nothing to give up, not even a self. Its short, in utero life from conception until abortion is just so much gained for it.

    As far as inviting someone in, sure, when you have sex, you're inviting in the not-yet-conceived fetus. But the invitation is CONDITIONAL and TEMPORARY. The invitations (at least the ones I issue) say, clearly, in large letters: "Dear not-yet-conceived fetus-to-be: you are invited to enter my body and live inside it, for just as long as it takes me to discover the pregnancy and get to an abortion clinic. Longer only if I so choose. That's ALL I'm offering; take it or leave it. If you can't deal with the fact that I may decide to abort you, then you should decline this invitiation and go get yourself conceived in someone else's uterus. Not mine."

    Giving blood does NOT obligate me to also give the next transfusion the patient may need; similarly, giving you a short life in my body does NOT obligate me to also give you a longer one.

    Mary Ann, women also get beat up, and kidnapped, and murdered, by right-to-lifist boyfriends, for choosing to HAVE abortions. "If you kill my baby I'll kill YOU!" Sometimes the boyfriends go after the docs instead. A few months ago there was a case of a boyfriend who tried to save "his" baby by arsoning the abortion-doc's office. So the girlfriend went to a different abortion clinic. Doioioioioi!

    And you wrote: "But you can't fool God."

    That's true--you cannot fool fictional characters. In order to be fooled, one must first exist.

    "And He is the one who owns each of us."

    Call me a bigot if you like, but I do not work for fictional characters. If you want to own me, you must first prove you're really there.

    "Jesus bought us by His blood."

    That's a fairy tale.

    "Your repulsive ideas can't change that. You belong to Him too."

    Nope. I belong to me.

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  10. Those scientists who thought Pasteur's theory of germs was a fairy tale were wrong and that his cure for rabies was a fairy tale, and his belief about what caused anthrax. One of the most brilliant scientists who ever lived was a devout, rosary-praying Catholic. But you have that loudmouthed atheist Richard Dawkins in your corner. I'll take Pasteur myself.

    Facts don't change because a person refuses to believe in them. God exists. His fingerprints are everywhere including unexplained miracles. For those with eyes to see, God's existence is not hidden. He desires to be known by each of us. He calls us by name.

    The refusal to believe is usually based on the desire for power, to be your own God. Ah then you can do anything, eh? Lie, cheat, fornicate, kill -- whatever your heart desires.

    Nietzsche proclaimed that God is dead, but Nietzsche died insane and utterly miserable. I'll pray that you have a better outcome, OC.

    You no doubt are familiar with Pascal's wager. I'm betting on God. I have nothing to lose and everything to gain. You, on the other hand, will not only lose, but will continue losing for all eternity.

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