Wednesday, July 21, 2010

The law of Unintended Consequences

I have created a new website to go along with my blog. I will use this site to post articles when needed, so I can easily refer to them when necessary.

The first article I would like to link to is Ken Epp's "The truth about Bill C-484: A compassionate and constitutionally valid remedy to current injustice in Canadian criminal law". It is a response to the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada which claimed that C-484 would "endanger abortion rights and women's rights by establishing fetal personhood". I have obtained permission from Mr. Epp to post his article here:
http://sites.google.com/site/runwithlifeblog/home/unborn-victims-of-crime

The fact that I have become a vocal advocate for the unborn started with the debate that ensued after Mr. Epp introduced "The Unborn Victims of Crime Act" (Bill C-484) in the fall of 2007.

There were very loud protests coming from those who claimed to be "pro-choice." It was obvious to anyone that actually read the bill that because it did not outlaw abortion, but rather the bill sought to: "amend the Criminal Code by making it an offence to injure, cause the death of or attempt to cause the death of a child before or during its birth while committing or attempting to commit an offence against the mother" it wasn't an anti-abortion bill at all. In fact, abortion was explicitly excluded from the bill "for greater certainty."

Because it did not tamper with a woman's so-called "right to choose" abortion whenever and wherever and for any reason or no reason at all, it was a pro-choice bill. I could only conclude that the vehement opposition to the bill was because those people opposing it weren't really pro-choice. They were, in fact, pro-abortion.

At the time I wrote a few letters to the newspapers (that were published) supporting the bill. As I followed the abortion debate that ensued since that time and up to the present, I am convinced many of these very loud vocal persons in the so-called "pro-choice" crowd are in fact pro-abortion. And so this year I started my pro-life blog.

I guess I should thank these pro-abortion people whose radical views are what egged me on in the first place.

Thursday, July 15, 2010

What would the Martians think--(Part 5...does the fetus matter?)

On page 29 of the 20 year abortion celebration anniversary, we come to the very heart of what abortion advocates are so deathly afraid of--the unborn child.

Out of 79 pages of text, only one presenter, Lawyer Shelley Gavigan speaks at any length of the human fetus.

The fetus always poses a problem for pro-abortion people. They believe if they deny its value, and convince others to do the same--the equivalent of sticking their fingers in their collective ears saying la-la-la I can't hear you--they will somehow alter reality.

When they do discuss the fetus, logic has a sort of Alice in Wonderland feel to it. Am I awake? Am I dreaming? Is anything real? Is life just an illusion?

The master of this technique is the radical abortion advocate, Joyce Arthur.

In all her many writings, and in particular in her Fetus Focus Fallacy and Personhood: Is a Fetus a Human Being? Arthur tells us that the moral status of the fetus is an "opinion" and that it is "subjective" and "emotional":
"We all have our own opinions about what the moral status of the fetus might be. Some people believe a fertilized egg is a full human being with an absolute right to life that supersedes any right of the woman. Others believe that a fetus attains moral value only after it becomes viable, or upon birth. But that's all these beliefs are - opinions. There's no way to decide between them, because they're entirely subjective and emotional. Therefore, the only opinion that counts is that of the pregnant woman. The status of her fetus and any moral value accorded to it is entirely her call. A fetus becomes a human being when the woman carrying it decides it does."

Arthur devotes over 20 pages in these two articles as she expounds on her theory that the value of the fetus is based on a woman's opinion. Unfortunately for Arthur, her weird reasonings don't alter the truth that the fetus has moral value.

In Gavigan's presentation: Better Never Than Late, But Why? The Contradictory Relationship Between Law and Abortion, she is dismissive of the unborn child. Talking from a historical perspective Gavigan talks about:
"...the demise of the relevance of quickening"
and
"I found the voices of women who said to doctors, “Nonsense, doctor, there is no life yet…” and “Doctor, I do not believe it is a crime.”

But pro-abortionists know they are on shaky ground. The Supreme Court ruled the state had an interest in the fetus because of its value. Gavigan says:
"It is now axiomatic to observe the Supreme Court’s 1988 decision resolved some questions but left many more dangling—tantalizing and inviting to the opponents of women’s right to choose. For instance, the precise nature and expression of what all judges of the Supreme Court characterized as the “state’s interest in the foetus” remained to be elaborated and tested."

The state's interest in protecting the fetus concerns pro-abortion people. As does what Gavigan calls the "Ideology of the unborn child":
"Their discourse of the unborn child has become a dominant ideology of our time. Their ability to present all pregnant women as risky, possibly irresponsible, always potentially hostile to their own pregnancies, has in my view become pervasive and I believe socially shared. So, rather than speak of maternal mortality, or of women’s inherent dignity, of the complexity of the abortion decision, never not a complex decision, never an easy choice, or of sexual coercion, they assert only a chorus of the unborn child in a selfimpregnated woman... I do struggle with how to engage with the dominant ideology of the unborn child."

Pro-abortion people know that those of us against abortion aren't going away. It frightens them.

Then Gavigan talks more on ideology; takes a stab at men; and is indignant at our non-acceptance of late-term abortions--all in a single breath:
"I do want to make the point that ideologues like David Frum attempt to cultivate in the national imagination that late trimester abortions are a ubiquitous menace, a direct legacy from Madam Justice Wilson’s courageous reminder of the limits of men to be able to respond—‘even imaginatively’—to something so out of his personal experience. It is difficult to discern even a kernel of truth in David Frum’s construction of the crisis– for the world is truly upside down through his lens. The image of the scourge of late trimester abortion could not be further from the truth, and yet it is asserted as truth."

Is Gavigan saying that late-term abortion don't happen? Or that they aren't a ubiquitous menace? Or both? Pro-abortion people get cranky with the late-term abortion topic. I wonder if late-term abortions bother them even a little bit.

Ms. Mary Martian ruminates at the back of the room: "How can these people place so little value on their unborn offspring?" She asks herself. "This doesn't make any sense. This human species doesn't make any sense". Then Mary answers her own question. She has an ah-ha experience. "The fetus does have value. It is only a strange subgroup of Earthlings that believe it doesn't."

Mary realizes that the moral value of unborn children is an objective reality. It's not a matter of some one's opinion at all. She gets it: abortion advocates can say, think, and argue all they want with their strange notions of the value of the unborn. She understands that their reasoning is illogical. She has learned that abortion is the intentional destruction of these unborn members of our species. She gets that the fetus has value.

Part 1...Women's "Rights"
Part 2...When the truth isn't the truth
Part 3...Translating Dr. Henry Morgentaler
Part 4...Why late-term abortions are not inconsequential