Suppose that humans happen to be so constructed that they desire the opportunity for freely undertaken productive work. Suppose that they want to be free from the meddling of technocrats and commissars, bankers and tycoons, mad bombers who engage in psychological tests of will with peasants defending their homes, behavioral scientists who can’t tell a pigeon from a poet, or anyone else who tries to wish freedom and dignity out of existence or beat them into oblivion. – Noam Chomsky
When I was writing That Was the Week That Was (#3) I started thinking about the name of “The Physicians’ Committee for Responsible Medicine”, and how it cleverly forces its opponents to give it a compliment and essentially promote its own propaganda just by saying its name. As I explained in that column, the PCRM is “a fanatical animal-rights group with ties to PETA which relies primarily on scare tactics and gross-out ads in its continuing attempt to impose veganism on everyone, and less than 5% of its members are physicians.” But because its name contains these positive, respectable words, one can’t speak of opposing them without sounding to the uninitiated as though one opposes physicians or responsible medicine.
This is of course the same tactic employed by the prohibitionists; they call themselves “abolitionists” or “anti-trafficking activists” or the like, to imply that anyone who is against them is in favor of slavery. It’s a cheap trick, but it does put one’s opponents at a subtle disadvantage; that’s why I refuse to use such terms. When it’s an actual name I use initials wherever possible, and when it’s a common descriptor I substitute my own; thus I call them “prohibitionists” rather than “abolitionists” (because they do in fact work for prohibition of something), and anti-prostitute or anti-sex worker activists rather than “anti-trafficking” or “anti-prostitution” activists. As Furry Girl rightly points out, anti-sex worker activists try to pretend they’re not against people but rather practices and concepts, but in reality the laws and policies they advocate result in the persecution, marginalization, imprisonment, rape and death of actual human beings. They claim to be against ideas, but are really against people, and should be so labeled.
The day after I wrote that column, another good example of it turned up; an Anne Summers essay entitled “There is No Such Thing as a Pro-Life Feminist” appeared in The Age, and as I saw that title “tweeted” over a dozen times it began to sound ever more bizarre to me. Yes, I understand that Anne Summers was using the anti-abortion people’s own preferred term, and that by “pro-life” she really meant “anti-abortion”, so why didn’t she just say “anti-abortion”? Why give them what they want? People who want something banned or outlawed (whether it be meat, prostitution or abortion) need to be described as “anti” whatever it is, not “pro” some vague positive concept like “responsibility”, “equality” or “life”. Summers’ title makes it sound as though she’s actually calling her fellow feminists mass murderers or something. If feminists aren’t pro-life, what does that make them? Anti-life?
The late, great Jack Kirby was a prolific comic book writer and artist from the 1930s to the 1980s who created many well-known characters including Captain America, the Hulk, Iron Man and the Fantastic Four. But one of his most intriguing creations was the godlike supervillain Darkseid, ruler of an evil planet named Apokolips. All of Darkseid’s complex machinations were aimed toward one end: the discovery of a mysterious formula called the “Anti-Life Equation”, which he believed was somehow hidden in the minds of humans. Despite what you might think, this equation was not a death ray or anything like that (Darkseid already had one of those, the “Omega Force”), but rather a means of destroying all free will and controlling every sentient being. Kirby understood (as “pro-life” fanatics, opponents of assisted suicide and others of their ilk do not) that for a sentient being, “life” is not mere biochemical function but rather the capacity to make one’s own decisions. To “live” in the biological sense while being denied volition, agency and the control of one’s own body and mind is not to be a man or woman; it is to be the equivalent of a cabbage or a sponge, a thing without freedom, dignity or humanity. It is not life at all, and anyone who opposes the right of human beings to make their own choices, no matter what lying excuse he gives, is therefore anti-life.
Kirby is said to have intended Darkseid to be the apotheosis of every power-mad tyrant there ever was, so one might say there is a little bit of him in every petty dictator on Earth. Every prohibitionist, moralist, crypto-moralist, lawhead, control freak, cop and politician; every censor who wants to prohibit certain substances, sex acts, ideas, tools, words, images or types of clothing; every busybody who wants to deny others the right to privacy, self-defense, profit, free movement or free association; every official or “concerned citizen” who thinks it’s his job to tell others what to eat, watch, read, think, say and do; and every costumed ape who thinks he has the right to brutalize the bodies, steal the property and control the movements of those without a costume, has in his mind a minute fragment of the anti-life equation. It doesn’t matter whether they claim to be “pro-life”, “pro-woman”, “pro-law”, “pro-safety”, “pro-family”, “pro-health”, “pro-morality”, “pro-equality”, “pro-Homeland”, “pro-nature”, “pro-God” or pro-anything else, because in reality they’re all anti-choice and anti-freedom, and therefore anti-life.
One Year Ago Today
“An Educated Idiot” presents a study of street prostitution in New York City by a sociologist who, while he seems to sincerely want to get at the truth, has to be among the most credulous people on Earth.
In the past whenever I heard “pro-life” I automatically thought “anti-abortion”. It’s something they do to put a positive spin on a name which as you say is actually anti-choice.
I’m anti-abortion … but I have no idea why they labeled it … “Pro Life”.
Most of the “pro-life” people I know would rather be called “anti-abortion” anyway – since we are NOT in all cases “Pro-Life”.
I’m most decidedly “PRO-DEATH” when it comes to murderers, violent rapists, child molesters and terrorists – or to anyone else who threatens “my tribe” of Americans.
I’m even “Pro-Death” for a baby in the womb when it actually threatens the life of the mother.
And Pro-Choice people? Are they really Pro-Choice? How many of them are FOR a woman’s choice to have sex with anyone she wishes under the conditions she wishes – even for monetary exchange?
So Maggie – we can throw this same label right back on the “Pro-Choice” extremists. Let’s not forget here that THEY TOO wish to control others since they are always at the forefront of advocating the involuntary extraction of taxpayer dollars from anti-abortion Americans to fund the abortion services of Planned Parenthood. And they were all over the provision to federally fund abortions via ObamaCare – until that provision was defeated in the House.
A fanatic is a fanatic, and I’m opposed to all hypocrisy. Those who oppose abortion because “all life is sacred” yet support capital punishment, and those who oppose capital punishment because “the state doesn’t have a right to kill” but support abortion on demand, are equally hypocrites in my book. There are valid arguments for accepting one of those and rejecting the other, but they aren’t simple enough to be reduced to slogans so the sheeple can’t understand them. Furthermore, as I’ve stated before, I have no tolerance for “feminists” who bleat about a “woman’s right to choose” abortion but deny her the right to make her own choices about sex.
Nobody has the right to control any other person’s body in any way. Period. And that goes double for government.
There is no federal funding for abortion services. Ever hear of the Hyde Amendment?
LOL – just because there is a law against something in America – doesn’t mean the government doesn’t find unique ways to violate it. Isn’t there a law against the government putting dangerous weapons into the hands of violent criminals a la “Fast and Furious” – why sure there is, but they did it anyway!
Americans are most DECIDEDLY paying for abortion services. If they’re not – then why do Pro-Life agencies so vehemently defend federal funding of Planned Parenthood?
NO MONEY should be involuntarily taken from an anti-abortion American and given to an organization that performs abortions. Now – you’re free to disagree with me on that point – but as long as you are doing it, then don’t complain about anti-abortion folks exercising their political power in order to keep their hard earned dollars from funding an endeavor they disagree with.
If it’s not a big deal – then simply defund Planned Parenthood.
a) Abortion is about 3% of what Planned Parenthood does.
b) None of the federal funding Planned Parenthood gets is allowed to be used for abortion. It’s one of the reasons they’re always asking for donations.
c) Thus, if you defund Planned Parenthood, you do little about abortion. But a shipload of women will suddenly have trouble getting mammograms, birth control, and help bringing wanted pregnancies to a healthy delivery.
d How many pacifists pay taxes which go to military spending? Do they get to withhold taxes? No, they do not. How about extreme anti-car environmentalists? Do they get to withhold their taxes from roads, the GM loan, or oil subsidies? Don’t think so.
I totally agree with you re. control of one’s body — but I have to disagree on the term “pro-life”. I have pro-life friends, and they actually, literally believe that a fertilized egg, instantly and magically, is a human being possessing a soul (and presumably the intelligence and “moral sense” that that implies).
No amount of reasoning (or explaining that the forebrain develops much later) can shake these people’s belief. So I have to grant that “pro-life” is not code for anything but is the sincere reason for a sincere belief, senseless though it is.
You totally don’t understand the anti-abortion point of view. A lot of us don’t even believe there is a soul.
YOU deserve to have your life protected don’t you? Why is that? What magical line did you cross that gave you the legal protections you now enjoy?
If a fetus survives the womb and birth canal – is it a “person” with legal rights when it emerges? Is it a person with legal rights five minutes before it emerges? If not – why not?
Where is the line. Everybody has a different answer and no one can come to consensus on when human life begins.
So I “err” on the side of conservatism.
I also note – that I’m FOR allowing people to suffer the consequences of their own decisions. If I ride my motorcycle without a helmet and have a wreck – then I could be injured and that injury may impact the rest of my life.
I’m sorry – but people can use more than one method of birth control. So I’m sort of “pro-choice” here, once you’ve made the choice not use it – you’ve made your choice and ought to live with whatever consequence that brings about.
You will not fight anti-abortionists with straw men. The arguements may seem successful in a crowd of people who agree with you – like here. But they are not reflective of what your opponents believe. And until you realize that and stop fighting the strawmen – you will not win the arguement.
The line drawn most places in the world is either A) ability to survive outside the womb, or B) brain activity. But in the ridiculous US, it’s never that rational; the only two choices we’re allowed are “illegal in all cases from the sex act on, and miscarriages are suspect” or “legal on a whim until the point the baby’s head is about to emerge”. Nowhere else in the world is the issue framed in such extreme terms. But in the US, everything has to be black and white, because our culture is deeply sick.
As I said once before, I am NOT opening abortion as an issue for discussion because Americans are congenitally unable to discuss it rationally. BOTH groups in the US are really anti-choice and therefore anti-life; they both want women to be wards of the state whose sexual decisions are for their “betters” to control. The only difference is that the soi-disant “pro-life” crowd want women locked into traditional families, and the soi-disant “pro-choice” crowd wants us locked out of them.
What do they think of fraternal chimeras? What about identical twins?
If identical twins have sex, is that incest, or masturbation? Now, what if it were some random person and a clone of that person, created in a laboratory? If in an episode of Star Trek: The Generation After That the transporter creates a duplicate of Lt. Yuki “Yummy” Yamaguchi, and the two have sex… well damn that’s hot! But is it incest, or masturbation?
Geeks have more fun. 😉
I don’t think they’d find those even puzzling. By the time you get to that point there are clearly two people.
The question of fraternal chimerism and identical twins is: ‘when does the number of souls change’? In the first case you have two eggs matched to two sperm. Two souls? And then, they merge… one soul? What happened?
And of course in the other case you start with one, and end up with two.
And then of course there are the billions and billions of naturally aborted embryos – but of course it’s A-OK if God does it, so I don’t expect that to be even puzzling.
Christians claim that humans have souls and lower animals don’t. So unless they accept that the great apes at least (and perhaps even monkeys) have souls, it clearly takes a brain of very high order to “hold onto” a soul. If that’s so, obviously the soul doesn’t enter a fetus until it begins to show brain activity of that level of sophistication, in the third trimester. Any argument for an earlier investiture with a soul on the basis that the structure will be a human someday is moonshine comparable to referring to a slab as a “house” or a bowl of flour a “cake”.
Exactly. Hence my suggesting raising the question.
Was this column precipitated by our conversation the other day, or was this something you had planned?
Grant Morrison’s recent “Final Crisis” had its problems, but he made Darkseid terrifying again.
From Darkseid’s narration, after he succeeds in taking over Earth – in the process breaking the resistance of Dan Turpin, whose body he possesses:
I. AM. THE. NEW. GOD.
ALL IS ONE IN DARKSEID. THIS MIGHTY BODY IS MY CHURCH.
WHEN I COMMAND YOUR SURRENDER, I SPEAK WITH THREE BILLION VOICES…
WHEN I MAKE A FIST TO CRUSH YOUR RESISTANCE. IT IS WITH THREE BILLION HANDS!
WHEN I STARE INTO YOUR EYES AND SHATTER YOUR DREAMS. AND BREAK YOUR HEART. IT IS WITH SIX BILLION EYES!
NOTHING LIKE DARKSEID HAS EVER COME AMONG YOU: NOTHING WILL AGAIN.
I WILL TAKE YOU TO A HELL WITHOUT EXIT OR END.
AND THERE I WILL MURDER YOUR SOULS!
AND MAKE YOU CRAWL AND BEG!
AND DIE!
DIE! DIE FOR DARKSEID!
I wrote this toward the end of January, almost four weeks ago. But I was pleased by the synchronicity. 🙂
Penn had a rant along these lines in one of his shows, arguing that both the pro-life and pro-choice labels are bogus. Everyone is pro-life and pro-choice; the difference is whether they are for or against abortion being legal.
Yes. I wouldn’t go so far as to say everyone is pro-choice; control freaks want those they control only free to choose things that don’t matter, like which food to eat or which TV show to watch (both from approved lists of acceptable choices). But to call an “anti” position by the name of a different “pro” position (“pro-life” for “anti-abortion”) or to label oneself with a “pro” position one accepts only in part (“pro-choice” to mean “free to make a choice on abortion but not prostitution, BDSM or other unapproved sexual activities”) is nothing but a contemptible lie.
Well, I’ve often said that, for many on the Left, abortion is the only thing they are pro-choice about. They don’t think we should have choices on healthcare, retirement, education and diet. We should narrow that down even further that they are far too often anti-choice on prostitution and drugs.
They don’t think we should have choices on healthcare, retirement, education and diet.
This is absolutely correct, Mike. But they aren’t alone in this malady. The latest kerfluffle with the Catholic church over imposed abortion and contraception requirements demonstrates the problem.
Various institutions in the Catholic church have been promoting nationalized health care for decades like the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Society of St. Vincent de Paul.
They thought they had covered their bases with the Stupak-Pitts Amendment but it turns out that Obama wasn’t an honest politician. He didn’t stay bought.
Now the Catholic politicos have agreed to the compromise position where the rest of our insurance premiums will reflect that their Catholic institutions don’t have to pay for that which they find doctrinally objectionable – their insurance providers will now have to offer that coverage for “free.” Funny, that I don’t remember consenting to take on that financial burden or even having a seat at the table.
Those Catholic institutions that supported Obamacare and were lately upset with being forced by law to do something they found morally objectionable are taking an interesting position: That their “freedom of conscience” is more important than my freedom of association and right to contract. They were perfectly willing to use the government gun to take away my choices in health care but were very upset when that same government gun was deployed against them.
If the Republicans had a principled bone in their collective political body, their response to these Catholic institutions would have been, “We will certainly accept your assistance is rolling back this gross infraction of liberty in its entirety, but we will not make special exceptions to the law for your benefit so that you can continue, with impunity, to advocate the abrogation of the rights of association and contract of your fellow citizens.”
>NO MONEY should be involuntarily taken from an anti-abortion American and given to an organization that performs abortions.
Are you proposing that that be specific, or a general principle, that “money taken from Americans”, i.e. Taxes, should never be used for anything an individual doesn’t agree with? And just how do you expect the government to manage that? Millions of tax dollars, all with different, unique restrictions?
We have to make broader decisions. We will support education, or healthcare, and sure, some money will go to things that some of us don’t agree with. But until someone can propose a workable system otherwise, then it must be so.
>If it’s not a big deal – then simply defund Planned Parenthood.
Another simple, and wrong headed idea. First, Planned Parenthood does a lot more than abortions. Abortions are actually a small part of what they do. The organization has had to expand to provide services that weren’t otherwise available. I remember going to them when I was 19, and considering sterilization. They did a great job of informing me, in a non-judgmental way, that I couldn’t get elsewhere. In some places, they are the only practical source for things like breast exams, pap smears. Defund them, and you’re taking a major shot at women’s health care.
Look, the only time my opinion on the rightness or wrongness of abortion should matter is if it’s me considering having one. Otherwise, my opinion shouldn’t matter. But the choice should be there.
The other day, we were all treated to the spectacle of a bunch of Republican congress MEN on a panel listening to a bunch of male religious leaders debate women’s health care. And we’re supposed to be fighting the Taliban?
Specific … the government has no interest in anything Planned Parenthood does. Abortion nor contraception (which ARE the two major things PP does) have no interest to the vital security of this nation or anything else government is supposed to be doing – which is, or should be, an extremely limited number of things. Nothing that PP does fits into that.
You seem to justify the FUNDING of PP by saying they do a lot of other great things besides providing abortions. Fund another organization to provide for women’s health care for things like pap smears, contraceptives etc … problem solved. Everyone’s happy. YOU and George Soros can then fund PP to do it’s abortions … and those of us who don’t want our tax dollars going to that type of social organization can completely SHUT OUT of the discussion because we’ll no longer have a dog in the hunt.
What’s wrong with that solution?
I’d agree with that if and only if none of my tax money went to anything government currently gives it to that I disapprove of…and I warn you, that’s a mighty long list.
>Specific … the government has no interest in anything Planned Parenthood does.
We see the world differently. I believe a government should (not that ours does) provide for the well being of it’s people, that one builds a better, strong nation that way.
Health care is a way of doing that. I’m very much in favor of a national health care scheme.
>Fund another organization to provide for women’s health care for things like pap smears, contraceptives etc … problem solved. Everyone’s happy.
Actually, everyone wouldn’t be. Most of the Republican party and the religious right wouldn’t be, since they are also against contraception and women’s health. And we refuse in this nation to fund health care, alone among developed nations.
>and those of us who don’t want our tax dollars going to that type of social organization can completely SHUT OUT of the discussion because we’ll no longer have a dog in the hunt.
And then do I get to withdraw my tax dollars from everything I don’t approve of that the government does? And once we’re all doing that, how does the government keep straight whose tax money can be spent on what? Seems impossible.
One more comment, from the Salvation Army poster photo that Maggie has in this column.
We all want to help someone like Suzanne. My heart breaks for her. I too was on my own as a teenager, and I know that story.
But the anti-trafficking organizations, the cops, they aren’t helping! Far from it. If anything they are making it worse. When I was a teen, out there on my own, there was no way I would go anywhere near the cops, or any of the organizations that were supposedly “helping”. Why? Because I knew if I did, I’d be scooped up in their system, and lose all control over what was happening to me, and I was never going to allow that to happen again. I’d rather take my chances on the street.
As long as hooking is illegal, as long as run away kids are seen as criminals, there won’t be any help. You’ve got to reach these kids on their terms, and realize that they’ve been though it, and have no reason to trust you. You’re going to have to have a very open door. You won’t be able to have an agenda, other than helping them.
Precisely; I wish that could be (painfully) hammered into the heads of every control freak in the world. Control is like shit; it contaminates and ruins everything it’s mixed with. As soon as some politician says we’re going to criminalize something to “help” people, the whole thing is ruined.
As for men deciding abortion, I recognized long ago, as the Founding Fathers did, that laws imposed on any group by those outside their group are morally invalid, and the group so imposed upon has not only the right but the DUTY to disobey them. Rules imposed on American colonists by British legislators who never lived there, or on East Asian people by Washington, or on homosexuals by heterosexuals, or women by men, or prostitutes by clients, are intrinsically invalid from the get-go, and obeying them is therefore a sin and a crime against human dignity.
Maggie,
I have read a lot of Tom Clancy and while his work has suffered of late, I’ve enjoyed much of his writing. But there is an extended plot-thread that has always grated on me.
It’s dangerous, of course, to attribute a position in a novel to the author so this could either be an author-filibuster or an entirely too accurate description of our modern political class.
Warning: Spoilers follow for “Without Remorse” and “Debt of Honor.”
In “Without Remorse” the protagonist meets up with and falls in love with a “trafficked” whore who was also being used as a drug mule. She falls back into the hands of the drug dealers and is sexually tortured and murdered. Several of her co-prisoners are subjected to sexual torture and two more are murdered.
The protagonist, using his skills acquired as a Navy Seal, hunts down and kills the entire criminal crew including some of their contractors with the local mob syndicate.
Moving forward 30 odd years, a colleague of the protagonist is being elevated to the Vice-Presidency of the United States. The VP-select does some quid pro quo and arranges a pardon for our Navy Seal. The throwaway line when the President agrees is, “All he had to hear about were the drugs…”
Really?! So trivial little things like kidnapping, raping, torture and sexual murder are mere peccadilloes compared to dealing drugs? Where the violence comes from the fact of prohibition rather than anything inherent in the trade itself?
The modern political class apparently learned nothing at all from the failure of the Volstead Act. And so, apparently, it is with all prohibitionists.
Pretty much. Sad, isn’t it? Have you ever read something written in the past that just leaves you shaking your head at their moral hierarchy, in other words which things were considered worse than other things? Like for instance the idea that raping a woman was worse than murdering her? Well, the modern ideas about drugs affect me like that. The idea that the Crime of Crimes is selling a vegetable product others can use to enjoy themselves is as bizarre to me as the taboos of some tribe in Borneo.
One of my brothers lives in proximity to Elizabeth Smart’s home in Sandy, UT. His commentary about that criminal act was that he thought it would be better that his daughter died rather than be kidnapped and molested. I was aghast at the inverted hierarchy and told him as much. I said, “You can recover from rape. It’s a bit hard to recover from dead.”
I’ve noticed that there are other devoted xtians who subscribe to this moral inversion. And even though I come from a religious background, I’ve always thought that that idea was at least absurd if not outright immoral.
At least the tribes in Borneo can claim ignorance for their lack-wit behavior. The Johnnie Law barbarians in the drug war have no claim to that fig leaf.
It’s easy to be pro choice when you don’t have to witness the atrocity and the aftermath. After years of being a pro choice R.N. I simply couldn’t stand to see the bodies piling up on saturdays anymore.
I am pro woman, and pro life.
[…] against women. Unfortunately, those natural assumptions would be incorrect. As I explained in “The Anti-Life Equation,” the PCRM is actually a fanatical vegan group that uses lies and exaggerations to scare people […]