Saturday, March 13, 2010

Right Wing Consistency

Many progressives are baffled by the apparent inconsistency of right wingers who insist that every fertilized egg be carried to term, but then support killing actual living human beings, whether in war or with the death penalty.

But if you talk to them, it is all very consistent.

It's all about punishment. Women who don't "keep their legs closed", (which is the most common saying among "pro-lifers"), must have the baby. Don't bother pointing out that a child should not be a punishment, or that someone too irresponsible to use birth control is certainly too irresponsible to raise a child, or even that you can get pregnant with your legs closed.

Common sense is simply ignored, and they continue to repeat that if a woman is irresponsible, she can't have an abortion.

But when they talk about crime; (and it's rather creepy how they fantasize about their own children being raped, tortured and murdered); they are all about killing the imaginary murderer of their child.

Wouldn't it be better to make sure that every child born is wanted, and therefore has less chance of being abused and neglected, which is usually the background of actual real life murderers? No, right wingers seem to prefer salivating over fantasies of revenge, more than actually preventing harm to their children.

The same with supporting bombings, invasions, occupations and torture. Nothing is too violent to inflict upon other peoples, as long as right wingers are convinced that it is punishment for some dirty deed. Or maybe they were thinking about dirty deeds against Americans. Thought crimes are enough to make them guilty and deserving of mass punishment.

Right wingers are all about revenge and punishment. Ironically, the government that they hate is the one that they trust to mete out the punishments. So I suppose they aren't too consistent there. But in matters of life and death, it's all about innocent life (which can only be pre-birth) and accused guilty, worthy of death.


9 comments:

Daro said...

13% of serial killers are adopted children.

Got that off Discovery channel/ DirectTV - A Rupert Murdoch enterprise.

Anonymous said...

Women are handy scape-goats - from Eve to the woman relieved of command at abu-garib. The single issue voters such as paranoid gun nuts and anti-abortion zealots are kept enraged so they stay dutiful. When Bush had all three branches he could have easily outlawed abortion to please his core, but politicians want to keep the faithfull engaged, and/or keep their daughters away from the knitting needle crowd.

wagelaborer said...

Interesting, Daro, if true. But isn't the Discovery Channel the one that aired the 9-11 lie theory?

Yes, anonymous, I pointed out in a different post that the Republicans could have outlawed abortion, and the Democrats could have stopped the wars.

But the party faithful never seem to notice, do they? They just keep believing.

Andrew said...

You go an awfully long distance to make a simple distinction look wicked. Am I really supposed to equivocate an infant in a womb and a convicted murderer? Really?

I have been pro-life my entire life. I have never once considered a baby to be a punishment for a loose woman. Quite the contrary, in my experience it's the pro-choicers who regard an unplanned pregancy as the equivalent of a biblical plague. Rather, I regard children as the natural consequence of human sexuality, and responsible humans can be reasonably expected to accept the natural consequences of their actions. I fail to see anything monstrous in this.

But when I see the commonplace that "children should be wanted" turned to mean "therefore, the unwanted ones should be destroyed before they cause trouble," I find that, charitably, to be grotesque.

wagelaborer said...

Actually, Andrew, most women, not just pro-choicers, consider an unplanned pregnancy to be a tragedy.

And abortion is not destroying a "child". It is causing an event which happens naturally a big percentage of the time anyway - a therapeutic abortion as opposed to a spontaneous abortion (called miscarriage by non-medical people).

Damn right I support that. I think abortions should be free and freely available.

Andrew said...

"Actually, Andrew, most women, not just pro-choicers, consider an unplanned pregnancy to be a tragedy."

I suppose I am lucky that my own mother did not. But I rather think this supports my point of view that the "punishment for a loose woman" is not a tenable charge, but a caricature of pro-life talking points.

"And abortion is not destroying a "child". It is causing an event which happens naturally a big percentage of the time anyway - a therapeutic abortion as opposed to a spontaneous abortion (called miscarriage by non-medical people)."

So much to parse with this. So an abortion does not destroy a child, even though the argument that "someone too irresponsible to use birth control is too irresponsible to raise a child" is one of your self-evident arguments in favor of abortion. Also that "a child should not be a punishment." Well, since abortion doesn't destroy a child, this shouldn't be relevant, should it?

As to the argument that spontaneous abortions happen with great regularity: death happens naturally with great regularity. We don't sanction murder. Loss of property happens naturally with great regularity. We don't sanction theft. Loss of virginity happens naturally with great regularity. We don't sanction rape. Just because something occurs without human action does not make it just.

"Damn right I support that. I think abortions should be free and freely available."

Nothing is free, save the will. What you mean is that it should be provided at taxpayer expense.

wagelaborer said...

I guess I've just picked through too many blood clots trying to find tissue to put into formaldehyde and ship off to the lab, labeled "products of conception", not "could have been a future child", to have any belief that a mass of developing cells is a "child".

Not even the most crazy religious right wing doctors that I work with have any reverence to the products of conception that women regularly get us involved in, since some women believe that a spontaneous abortion is an emergency.

You're right, though, about the death/murder, etc., thing. If you call tissue a child, then it's wrong to scrape it from the uterine wall.

We'll never agree about that.

Or the tax paid abortions. You're right, someone pays. I think the government should, as an attempt to make society as a whole a better, more peaceful place to live.

Andrew said...

I've had to work in a medical lab putting labels on bags/cups of dead fetal tissue myself. It sickened me. Losing that job was a very good thing.

I can therefore take the point that an embryo is not a fully developed human, at least at some stage of development. My problem lies in the rather odd nomenclature we are forced to use as a result. To call it mere "tissue" seems to imply that it is but a part of the woman. But it a very real genetic sense, it isn't. It's something else.

As to the government issue, I don't see that abortion has made our society more peaceful, or event that it would if there were no issue to it. Eating the seed corn eventually takes its own costs.

But you're right, there's a vast area of disagreement that may never be bridged.

wagelaborer said...

We call it "products of conception".

That doesn't imply to me that it's part of the woman. It's DNA from 2 beings combined into a new cell, which has divided into a bunch of new cells.

Before we knew about DNA, religious belief was much more about human beings.

Some religions thought that it was life when the woman felt "quickening". Some thought that the baby had to be born and draw breath.

The Catholic Church has had different positions throughout history. It hasn't always been so hardline - http://faculty.cua.edu/Pennington/Law111/CatholicHistory.htm

In the US, abortion was first banned in 1820, but only AFTER the fourth month of pregnancy.

The total banning of all abortions was complete by 1900. But they were still available.

I know that my maternal grandmother had many abortions, and they were illegal at that time.

Maybe you're lucky that you've never had to face an unwanted pregnancy.

I personally know two women who were anti-abortion enough to give babies up for adoption.

Both of them had abortions with the next pregnancy.

That is real life. You can't just blithely recommend that women give birth and then give the baby away.

There is a real difference in most women's minds between an embryo and a baby. That is why abortion is so accepted by a majority of people.