This is actually kind of offensive
Wow, I didn’t realize that anti-choicers had the cojones to compare abortion to slavery (via Reuters):
Raising the stakes, many religious conservatives cast the abortion debate in terms of the anti-slavery movement of the 18th and 19th centuries, saying abortion is the great moral question of today.
“We realized the errors of our ways on slavery and there is great hope that the nation will do the same for abortion,” said Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, a conservative lobby group with strong evangelical ties.
So, if I understand correctly, a woman terminating a small clump of cells incapable of cognition (the vast majority of abortions occur during the first trimester) –
- is roughly the same as the systematic enslavement, dehumanization and brutalization of millions of actual people over the course of almost three hundred years.
And that the brave crusaders standing tall women’s autonomy –
- are the spiritual successors to the thousands of individuals who fought to end the “peculiar institution” of oppression and human bondage:
I’m glad I have that all cleared up.
:Poking my head up very carefully:
Alright, I’ll go for it …
What makes the analogy work is two main points. The more important one is that both slavery and abortion deny the humanity of the victims. Just as slavers convinced themselves and others that people with dark skin weren’t really people, or at least not fully people, and rationalized these assertions by claiming that Africans hadn’t built a society like those of Europe or Asia, the abortion movement asserts that a fetus isn’t human and points to developmental reasons.
The other reason is more strategic. You’ll run into the partially-pro-life who argue that states should be allowed to decide the issue, which would be like accepting the various compromises in history that helped slavery thrive — the 3/5 Compromise, the Missouri Compromise, etc.. It’s hard to argue that one is really anti-slavery if his position is that it’s wrong in New York, but fine in Kentucky. The same holds true with abortion. That, though, is more of an internal argument within the pro-life movement. This is how pro-lifers argue differences between Fred Thompson, for example, and someone like Mike Huckabee.
The analogy has been used for quite a while, though it’s usually used in the second context, which I suppose makes it less likely that you, being a pro-choicer yourself, would come across it.
I still find the comparison a little offensive, but I do agree that it is far more consistent to argue for a federal abortion ban than an overturning of Roe v. Wade.
If you really think that a fetus is the moral equivalent of a fully grown human, than it doesn’t make sense to talk about rights on a state by state basis.
When you say that you find this offensive, it brings up two questions — first, why is it offensive?
Second, how do you feel about gay rights groups that equate their efforts with the African-American civil rights movement?
Obviously, I’m going somewhere with each of these questions, but I’d rather get the information from those answers, first.
It’s offensive (well I find it offensive) because I don’t see fetal life as being equal to that of a fully grown human. An abortion – even a late third trimester one – will never be as terrible and inhumane as the enslavement of an entire people. Making the comparison to score political points cheapens the horrors of slavery (and for those inclined to think so) the immorality of abortion.
As far as the gay rights movement is concerned though, I think the “we are the modern day civil rights movement” rhetoric is a little wrong, what is better is the, “we are situated within the same tradition as the civil rights movement” rhetoric, since it’s a lot more descriptive.
Well, I was one for two. I was pretty sure I knew why you were saying you were offended.
You disagree. I’m not sure that that’s grounds for taking offense. I disagree with a whole lot of things that I hear, but I refuse to take offense at something just because I disagree. I take offense at actual insults. Merely disagreeing strongly isn’t enough to be offensive.
That’s my point there.
After all, no one is trying to dehumanize African-Americans. Rather we’re trying to assert the humanity of another group. Obviously, you don’t have to agree, but I don’t see offense being warranted.
“After all, no one is trying to dehumanize African-Americans.”
Nor would I be offended if I were compared to a helpless clump of cells, and the struggle of my people for their own freedom compared to the struggle of religious fundamentalists to ban a medical procedure they dislike.
“The abortion movement asserts that a fetus isn’t human and points to developmental reasons.”
OK, buddy. Get some girl knocked up and just you try signing up the fetus for a bank account, a job interview, or a write-in candidacy in an election. Funny how those “developmental reasons” happen to include a slew of cultural practices pointing to the understanding that people are not people until they are born.
So your position is that anyone who cannot qualify for a bank account, interview for a job, or legally be allowed to run for office, is not a human being and it should be legal to kill them?
I think anyone under the age of 18 would not meet your definition of a human being, and thus it should be legal to kill them.
Mentally ill people wouldn’t fit this definition of “human”.
You started off saying it was ridiculous to compare abortion to slavery. But slaves could not have bank accounts, could not go on job interviews, and could not run for office. So by your defintion, they weren’t human and the anti-slavery movement was, apparently, ridiculous. And probably offensive to the “real humans”, you know, rich slave-owners.
Thanks for reading and understanding the thread. I was opposing the specious argument that either side can be pigeonholed as using only one kind of reasoning (be it moral, cultural, or as wickle suggested, biological). Specifically, I was pointing out that a non-developmental, cultural set of criteria is also operative in the common (i.e. yours as well as mine) understanding of what makes a human. In other words, if you were to look at indicators of belonging to human SOCIETY, you would see that a fetus is often no more and perhaps less integrated into society than a corpse, an animal, or a fictitious being.*
* What are the relevant indicators here? I’m thinking that the giving of names; direct beseeching; ascription of personality; expectation for reciprocity; and the expectation or giving of deference might be some valid axes of measurement.