Thinking Things Through
Speaking of abortion, Digby has linked to this amazing video from At Center Network of anti-abortion protesters being asked whether women who have abortions should go to jail. Since it’s only available in Real format and it’ll eat into their bandwidth, I’ve taken the liberty of uploading the vid to YouTube. You can view the interviews below, but make sure to swing by At Center Network and let them know they’re doing a great job :
Sorry folks. AtCenterNetwork asked me to remove
the video from YouTube and The Talent Show.
Assuming their site stays up, you can download it here.
Digby’s conclusion is, as usual, right on the mark :
So I think we need to have this discussion. Let’s debate it out in the open and “air both sides” because from where I sit it’s the “pro-lifers” who haven’t thought this thing through. Nobody says they can’t agitate against abortion and stand out there with their sickening pictures and try to dissuade women from doing it. I will defend their right to argue against abortion forever. But when they use the law to enforce their moral worldview they need to recognize that they can’t have it both ways. If fetuses are human and have the same rights as the women in whom they live, then a woman who has an abortion must logically be subject to the full force of the law. It would be a premeditated act of murder no different than if she hired a hit man to kill her five year old. The law will eventually be able to make no logical moral distinction. Is everybody ready for that?
This really plays into the previous “Opposite of Death” post too. The problem isn’t just that the anti-abortion forces haven’t thought out their stance, but that they’ve devoted so much energy to a half-assed bit of logic. They feel moral strength for taking the position that “Abortion is death and death is wrong. Period.”, but the practical implications of that view haven’t even been addressed. Does it make more sense to fight to overturn Roe vs. Wade or work towards the changes that will actually lower the abortion rate (like easy access to contraception, sex education, etc.)? If a woman has an abortion, does that make her a murderer? Is a petri dish of embryos more worthy of saving than a toddler? Pro-lifers like to pretend these are trick questions akin to “Where did Cain’s wife come from?”, but these are serious questions that are going to need to be answered in an America in which abortion is illegal. If you’re fighting for a political change, picking sides is the begining of the debate, not the end. It’s as if the President decided that he wanted to get rid of Saddam Hussein, but didn’t bother thinking about what a post-war Iraq would…oh shit.
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WOW. Thanks for hosting this, Greg.
Comment by jonnybutter — March 7, 2006 @ 6:01 pm
Where did Cain’s wife come from?
Comment by Schwag of Tulsa — March 7, 2006 @ 6:01 pm
Cain’s wife came from the village in the next valley over, more or less - in a world where the only people were Adam, Eve, Cain, and Abel. So the literalist interpretation of the Bible is just plain ignorant. Lazy thinking and lazy spirituality.
And when you consider even elementary, first chapter kind of questions, totally psychopathically insane.
The scripture is far from clear on abortion - the pro-life viewpoint is all based on Onan, really, and I see no one out there claiming that “masturbation is murder”. Nor do I see anyone holding funerals for miscarriages, or even bestowing names on their tampons from late periods.
In fact, when you review the attitudes towards children from 19th century America, it’s pretty obvious that even the most religious of that era would regard the current pro-life movement as voodoo. They barely accorded “human” status to any child who hadn’t reached the age of 2. Even up to the age of 5, if a child died, they would frequently bestow the same name on a subsequent child. Not anything like “this is a real complete moral human being”. The only thing that’s changed between now and then is lower infant and child mortality.
Comment by JT — March 7, 2006 @ 6:41 pm
Following the logic, when children live in poverty that is child abuse. Therefore,we should be prosecuting congress for policies which keep people poor. Tax cuts for the rich should be punishable by death.
Comment by Becky — March 8, 2006 @ 7:34 am
AtCenter reveals its true colors.
They wanted Greg to take the video down so they could charge people $4 to view it at their site.
Go take a look. You can’t see this video now unless you pay the troll (er, toll).
Is this the new model for blog finance? This SUCKS.
Comment by Mrs. Robinson — March 8, 2006 @ 11:07 am
And not only do you have to pay four bucks but you have to have *gak* real player to watch it.
Glad I caught it on youtube earlier.
Quite an eyeopener.
Comment by lou — March 8, 2006 @ 11:21 am
After I got the demand to remove the video, I tried to talk him out of it by explaining that there were hundreds of people who really want to see the video and that the AtCenterNetwork weren’t up to the task. If the goal is to get the video viewed by as many people as possible, YouTube is the best option because it’s free and doesn’t require an external media player. And it’s not like I was trying to take credit or something.
Oh well, if they want to put barriers between people and their work, that’s their right.
Comment by greg — March 8, 2006 @ 11:41 am
It looks like they’ve pulled it from their site too - likely cause they couldn’t handle the bandwidth.
Wow, what a missed opportunity to get their message out.
Comment by Michael — March 8, 2006 @ 4:28 pm
Jeesh, those idiots. Youtube.com would be perfect. I read leftie blogs ALL the time and have never heard of them. I’m at Youtube all the time, though. Instead of a few people getting to see it and then everyone else melting their servers, everyone and their sister would have had a chance to see it by now.
Idiots!!!
Comment by MJB — March 8, 2006 @ 4:35 pm
Right now their site links to a Coral cache of the movie, which means that it’s being served by a non-profit network based at NYU, not their web host.
DSL
I set this up when I posted the video on MetaFilter, and I’m very glad somebody let them know about this option.
Comment by Dan Hartung — March 9, 2006 @ 12:04 am
The “pro-life” position is certainly odd. As Atrios reminds us, if a woman, say, takes drugs during pregnancy, they want to charge her with “child abuse” - even if the drug’s effect on the fetus is mostly a figment of their imaginations (as turned out to be the case with crack/cocaine).
But if the woman (in their view) murders her fetus, they want to throw the doctor in jail, but let her off scot-free? What if she self-induces, or travels to another state/nation where abortion is legal, gets one there, and comes back, so no one except the woman could face legal punishment?
If the fetus is a person, then not prosecuting the woman is discrimination, as is setting a lower punishment than for murder. But if the fetus is not a person, then what’s the legal basis for overturning Roe? Even if the Supreme Court reverses Griswold, there’s still the matter of consent. How can a person be legally made subservient to a non-person?
But come to think of it, the courts make persons subservient to non-persons all the time, when the non-persons are corporations. So I guess they wouldn’t have any problem doing the same in the abortion context.
We’re just expecting too much of the other side if we expect their views to be logically consistent.
Comment by Mathwiz — March 9, 2006 @ 8:45 am
Can Crooks and Liars host it? Somehow?
Comment by timewarp — March 9, 2006 @ 9:24 am
As they get set to roll out their multi-state programs to outlaw abortion they are just more exposed as religious kooks. In the past few days I have had several conservatives tell me that contraception is the same as murder too and that is the next step.
Comment by Gary Denton — March 9, 2006 @ 10:58 pm