With obvious attempts by states to outright ban abortion, it’s time to review a rarely mentioned, but important point, about the debate.
The abortion debate is really about who gets to decide.
The individual is not a great option when it comes to abortion because, yes, it’s terrible when human life is extinguished, no matter how undeveloped, even though our bodies do it all the time from rejection of implantation to miscarriage. I’m not a big believer in the intentional mis-framing of the issue that relies on how common place thoughtless abortions are. Listening to anti-abortion advocates you would think every woman who decides on an abortion is being thoughtless, selfish. Instead it has to be a tough decision for almost all. I would never claim “thoughtless” never happens. Thoughtless happens, no matter what the topic. Stopping all thoughtlessness is a fool’s errand, no matter what the topic. By the way I find many ban abortion advocates to be at least as thoughtless, if not more.
People do all kinds of things that are thoughtless. They start businesses and abandon their clients and employees in thoughtless ways. They get divorced and abandon their children in thoughtless ways. They get pregnant or get a partner pregnant by being thoughtless then deny a child a father, a mother. Parents can be abusive in thoughtless ways that make innocents into little monsters, inspire them to commit suicide, walk into schools and murder children, teachers, kidnap kids and keep them in their cellars or, Dahmer reference noted, eat them. A thoughtless divorce, thoughtless lack of care, at least helped lead to Jeff’s gruesome diet.
How much should the state regulate? Have sex and parental permits? A law enforcement officer assigned to couples and be tested weekly, checked in on? All rooms of every home, business, abandoned building or alleyway monitored by the state? OK, I admit, given a fair and honest state I might find some of that tempting, but I think we can all agree when it comes to the state “fair and honest” is way too uncommon, and the intrusive nature of any of that way beyond problematic.
I think we all know anything that can be used for political advantage, especially these days, will be. So the state deciding abortion for us is not as one dimensional as anti-choicers would like us to believe.
Let’s drop the abortion framing for a few sentences. The state decides who can do “A.” As we all know the state will simply leave it at that and NEVER complicate the issue, never use that to serve politicians hidden agendas, never use that to actual do the opposite of the original intent, because the state deciding is the best, most pure, most perfect option.
Yes, that was sarcasm. You figured that out? How could you tell?
A state who takes unto itself the right to decide who can’t have an abortion can just as well decide on forced abortion too.
I can hear the cries, “We would NEVER allow that! That’s absurd!” Really? How long has abortion been legal? You think you have that much control over where we go as a society once banned? Fact being we always have less control than we think, including abortion, no matter who decides.
If you listen to the rhetoric of those advocating banning abortion it’s hardly worth telling them they will never end all abortions, or even most, unless society becomes very oppressive. And if you listen to a good portion of them their rhetoric also shows a belief in a caste system where liberals, blacks, immigrants, Hispanics, non-Christians are at the bottom. You may have noticed over the past few years memes they offer and their rhetoric suggesting violence and outright murder have multiplied almost as fast as their hypocrisy.
Donald Trump and his “Second Amendment solutions” if he loses is one out of many prime examples.
So what about forced abortion and sterilization for these lower castes? Those considered “inferior?” “Libtards?”
No, it is not that far distance from banning abortions to forced abortion when so many wear their hate proudly like a model strutting down a walkway. It’s quite close to judges forcing defendants to get sterilized, or claiming liberals raising children is child abuse. When those in power hold these beliefs we’re not far from the state mandating abortion for the inferior, defective, people, when some of us are considered of less worth than pets put down when they become inconvenient.
No, the state making the decision is a really, really, REALLY a bad idea.
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Inspection is a column that has been written by Ken Carman for over 40 years. Inspection is dedicated to looking at odd angles, under all the rocks, and into the unseen cracks and crevasses, that constitute the issues and philosophical constructs of our day: places few think, or even dare, to venture.
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