An open warning

[fpb]

To anyone who might feel like defending abominations such as baby-murder and the State murder of the old and sick: be reminded that this blog is my space. I decide what goes in and out; and while I allow all my friends to say what they think or feel, I will not, on principle, leave in any defence of what I regard as crime. If you want to defend crime, do it in your own space and don't bother me; all you will get otherwise is deletion and banning.

Comments

[flickgc.livejournal.com]

Oh - sorry: I've just read some more comments that suggest that you aren't prepared to discuss this. If you feel unable to explain your stance then fair enough: completely understandable, under the circumstances.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Ho ho ho. No, I can assure you that I am not "unable to explain [my] stance." The implication that I am feeble of mind and feeling does not please me, but that is what I can expect on this sort of subject. Partial-birth abortion is a procedure, illegal in nearly every European country, by which a viable foetus of seven to nine months - a baby capable of being born alive, in other words - is artificially forced out of the womb. Its brains are then sucked out of its head and the rest of the body is disposed of. Nice "choice".

[flickgc.livejournal.com]

Oh: I'm sorry! I wasn't for a moment implying that you were 'feeble of mind'! I just meant that a lot of people with strong anti-choice views feel that they are unable to explain their views in any terms except circular ones that reference and reinforce their own beliefs. Obviously, that doesn't apply to you, as you feel that you *are* able to rationally discuss it!

As someone who doesn't know much about this topic, I'm afraid that your explanation didn't really tell me very much. Instead, I googled and found a lot of anti-choice rhetoric and spam on the subject, much of which was almost word-for-word what you said, but I did manage to find a BBC article (sorry: I'm a Brit, I do rather trust the BBC more than the websites of evangelical christian groups, and random spam on unrelated forums), which said that almost all D&X terminations (I believe that that is the medical term for what you are refering to, and there seem to be vanishingly few of them - maybe a thousand per year in the whole of the US) are for medical reasons, generally to save the life of the woman involved.

Do you object to that, or am I misunderstanding your terms? Do you object similarly to other forms of late-term abortion (I didn't realise that there were so many methods, I must confess! Isn't scientific research astounding)?

[fpb.livejournal.com]

That proves that the Brutish Broadcasting Creeperation is as mendacious in the matter of abortion as it is in, say, its notoriously Arabist reporting from the Middle East. YOu are welcome to believe their lies, since, as you said, your choice is not a matter of checking the facts but of believing the news source you find more flattering to your own beliefs. But please, stop bothering me.

[superversive.livejournal.com]

By the way, isn't it lovely how abortion apologists talk about their opponents being 'anti-choice'? It's an even more misleading label than 'pro-choice'. Every one of us, man, woman and child, makes choices every day, but to the pro-abortion zealots the only choice that matters is the choice to kill an unwanted child between conception and birth.

I, for instance, fully support a woman’s right to choose not to have children. The best time to exercise this choice is before conception, by keeping the legs together and refraining from sexual congress. The next best time is after birth, by putting the baby up for adoption (and there are, in most developed countries, long waiting lists of thoroughly vetted and highly desirable candidates waiting to adopt children). In third place (the Catholic Church, to which I belong, strongly disapproves, but I take no umbrage upon either side of the point) is the use of various forms of physical contraception, such as condoms and diaphragms — keeping in mind that they are not 100% effective. I believe anyone using them should be held responsible for the risk in case they fail. Fourth is the use of chemical contraceptives such as the Pill, which some view as abortifacients and others do not; here we are skirting very close to a definable line. The very worst way of exercising this choice is by waiting until one is already pregnant and then procuring an abortion. Yet I have known many an abortion apologist to positively deride the first two methods of making this choice, and subordinate absolutely every other ethical question to her (almost always her, rarely his) support for the last and worst. And since I believe that the choice should be made at an appropriate time — when it does not involve the killing of a living creature, a member of the human species, at a point when it is totally defenceless and therefore should have the greatest claim on our protection and compassion — I am labelled ‘anti-choice’ by zealots.

So I’m afraid flickgc can add me to the list of ‘anti-choicers’, since her rhetoric shows her to be one of those for whom the only ‘choice’ that matters is the ‘choice’ to have an abortion.

I was tempted, when I sat down to write this comment, to put on my Screwtape hat and defend abortion and euthanasia by ironical and diabolic arguments. But I find that my sense of visceral revulsion will not even allow me to do that, and so I have written this entirely earnest and unamusing screed instead. For which I cry you pardon.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

As you are unhappy at this being earnest and unamusing, I will add Steve Martin's advice for the perfect contraception. The perfect contraception is for the female partner to point at the thing between the male partner's legs and become convulsed with laughter.

[ani-bester.livejournal.com]

I've found this amazing technique which I think deserves more study.

I don't have sex when I don't want to have a baby.
I've found this to be 100% effective and at 25 years of age I've never once been afraid I was pregnant.

The scientific community should look into this more as it also works well against STDs.

[theswordmaiden.livejournal.com]

I will definitely try that one! But if men start to hunt you down and destroy you for spreading the info on this form of contraception, you have yourself to blame.

[seph-hazard.livejournal.com]

I know exactly what you mean by a 'sense of visceral revulsion', as it is exactly what I feel after reading the bigoted, ignorant, hurtful, ridiculous bile you have spewed in the above comment.

fpb, if you quite seriously cannot behave in a manner rational and intelligent enough to accept that there are views other than your own insensitive and outmoded beliefs, I would request that you remove me from your flist. Before you do, however, there's one thing I would like an answer to-how can you possibly be justified in writing this entry after everything you said to me and my friends here?

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I am speaking of partial-birth abortion. I am against all abortion, but abortion of what is in effect a live baby is a revolting procedure. And I am very surprised that you should find this surprising, since one thing I thought I had made clear was that I regarded abortion as wrong in itself. What, in the name of Heaven, did you think I meant?

[fpb.livejournal.com]

As for my belief being outmoded, you are only seventeen, so I will excuse your apparent belief that ideas of right and wrong depend on "mode" - that is, on fashion. But I suggest you ask yourself whether date has anything to do with morality. If you had been born in Germany in 1930, would that make killing people right for you? Because, you know, the fashion in Germany in the thirties was to kill Jews and Slavs any enemies of all kinds. And the fact that that was the up-to-date idea must have made it right. That is what you say when you say that moral ideas can be "outmoded".

That is not to say that you should not argue in favour of abortion if you really think it is just and right. If you want to defend a right to abortion, that is one thing; but you have to say that it is a right that exists at all times and for everyone, or else it is not a right at all. Fads and fashions, mode, do not have anything to do with it at all.

You also have to realize that this sort of argument simply robs you of the ability to argue. When superversive attacked this supposed right, you could say nothing in favour of it except that it is "outdated" to oppose it. You did not say anything that seriously threatened superversive's reasoning or pointed out weaknesses in his argument or stated alternative views: you simply thought that to impose this supposed chronological scheme, that opposition to abortion is "outdated", was enough to silence his points. That is both irrational and very poorly conceived. I would like you to try and set out an argument of your own on the matter, rather than to foolishly rely on dates.

[superversive.livejournal.com]

If you want to blame fpb for a comment I made, go right ahead; it proves that you are a fool. And if you feel a sense of visceral revulsion because you feel insulted, and none at a fully-formed human child having its brains sucked out through a tube and its body flung into a disposal, then I suggest you may need to have a competent neurologist examine the reactions of your viscera.

Tom, that goes too far.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Never judge a person before you have walked a mile in their shoes. You know nothing whatever about eyeliner297; I do, and I know that not only does she have a right to feel strongly in the matter - even if I think she feels wrongly - but that she has reason to feel angry about me in particular. This is not my story to discuss, but let me just say that other people would have de-friended me for one or two things I said on a certain occasion. That she is still speaking to me is more than I could have expected. And whether or not she did actually mistake you for me, she is right that I am responsible for whatever appears on my LJ. That is a principle I enforce. You are a friend and a person I hold in the highest esteem, but I ask you now to withdraw and apologize for the language you saw fit to use to her, or else I will do it for you.

Did you even notice, by the way, that I have already given her quite a firm reply without feeling the need to insult her?

Re: Tom, that goes too far.

[superversive.livejournal.com]

You’re quite right, my language was excessive and inappropriate, and I apologize for it. (And no, I didn’t see your own reply, because eyeliner297’s reply appeared in my email and I responded from there. I was stung and acted in haste, which makes me more culpable, rather than less.)

I still feel that there is a considerable disproportion between feeling visceral revulsion at the actual occurrence of a partial-birth abortion, and feeling it on account of a purely verbal insult. I cannot help suspecting a degree of hyperbole in drawing the equivalency.

[kjell-bjarne.livejournal.com]

to be fair, it's just as unreasonable to use the term "pro-life", as it's not life that "pro-choicers" (the vast majorlity of them, anyways) are against, but the restriction of the right to choose upon the subject.
I don't want to get in the middle of this argument as nothing good will come of it, I just wanted to point out that there will be mislabelling jargon used on both sides of any hot issue.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Well, no. The issue is, to us, when does life begin. And if we say that it begins from conception, then certainly anyone who advocates destroying it for any reason and at any point between conception and natural death can, from an opponent's point of view, be without distortion be labeled anti-life. Bear in mind that this is language I do not use: I speak of pro- and anti-abortion, period.

You might want to read this essay of mine: http://fpb.livejournal.com/69029.html.

[superversive.livejournal.com]

That’s quite true, and the dishonest rhetoric of the anti-abortion side disgusts me even more, because, frankly, it makes me ashamed to have some of these people agreeing with me. If you make a sufficiently fatuous argument for your position, you will eventually persuade people that your position itself is wrong, whether it is or not.

I think, though, that it speaks volumes about the fundamental nature of this issue that neither side wants to use the word ‘abortion’ when discussing it. There’s something deeply wrong when nobody wants to discuss the matter except in euphemisms, and yet one side claims it as a fundamental right.

[flickgc.livejournal.com]

But please, stop bothering me.

Ah, so you *do* feel that you are unable to explain your stance. Fair enough, then! I'll stop asking you to do so.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

As I pointed out, you listen to things that agree with you. Please go on doing so, AND PLEASE STOP BOTHERING ME. And sending your little helpers along, too. You are not wanted here and neither are they.

[superversive.livejournal.com]

Since there is no trace of logic in the rhetorical claim that anyone opposed to the particular choice of killing one’s offspring is therefore opposed to ‘choice’ in general, I’m not surprised that any rational explanation would fail to reach those who make that claim; and emotional explanations are worse than useless.