She's right...IF...

By Seth -
WARNING: The video below contains profanities (including the "F" word).




The disgruntled student in this video is quite clearly angered by the presence of the Genocide Awareness Project on her campus. It would be easy to dismiss her frustrations by the incessant ad hominem attacks or her lack of response to the pro-life arguments she references (such as her passing reference to the "size" argument followed up with the counter-argument that "it's all [insert obscenity]").

However, let's extend to her the benefit of the doubt and assume that the lack of clear argumentation in this video is simply a visceral response to the admittedly disturbing nature of the GAP display.

Actually, I'm going to go one step further and say that her response is entirely appropriate...IF. This outrage at the comparison of aborted fetuses to the the emaciated bodies of Jews, to the lives lost in Darfur or Rwanda is utterly appropriate and needs no carefully crafted explanation...IF.

If what?

IF the pre-born are not human.

The rant of this college student is born out of a very simple presupposition embedded in our culture---that those who are under nine months gestation simply are not as human as the rest of us.

Why should such myopia surprise us? Not so long ago, men were deemed less than human in our nation simply because of their skin color. Across the sea, bodies were being flipped into burners because of their cultural background. If we can callously kill a man standing before us, why should it surprise us that today we continue to kill the children we cannot see?

Given her presupposition, the response of the college student in this picture is appropriate (if profane). How would you react if pictures of raped women were placed next to chopped down trees to make a comparison?

Perhaps you'd respond with frustration, anger, too. Why? Because you believe there is a categorical difference between the raped woman and the tree. One is a human, the other is not.

This is the same source of the anger in the video, though the presupposition is different. The assumption here: the killed Jews were human, the pre-born are not.

This, then, is that critical question we must answer: what is the pre-born?

If they are not human, then the student in the video is right and those like me are committing a crime with their work.

But, if they are, then the butchering of the pre-born can be compared to the holocaust of the Jews---because in both cases humans are being denied their personhood status and cut down.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Meet a Baby Saved

By Seth -
Image
In the middle of high school, I began to spend Thursdays throughout summer on Webster Street in Fort Wayne, IN. Good friend and stalwart defender of life Pam Durdahl called Thursday “the best and worst day of the week.” It was the best because you were with like-minded people—indeed, this is where I met Aubrie! But, what brought us all together is why it was the worst: This was the day each week when Ulrich Klopfer would come to town to kill babies. Details continue to be released in the horrific discovery this month that Klopfer stored babies’ bodies in the garage at his Illinois residence. But one note which grabbed my attention is that these babies died in the years of 2000-2002, the latter half of my high school days. All of these babies came from Indiana. And now we know some of them died in Fort Wayne, meaning while I was on that sidewalk, Klopfer was killing babies and taking them home. It seems it was not enough for him to violate the victims once. I didn’t know the...
Read more

Deeper than Shared Conviction

By Seth -
Image
If you were to stumble into the Created Equal training center this summer, you would find an interesting sight: an Ivy League graduate seated next to a high school senior, a vegan student enjoying a salad next to another savoring a hamburger, and hands shooting into the air or sudden applause as all passionately defend their position on a range of philosophical matters. This eclectic scene is Created Equal’s internship. At the beginning of the summer, our latest band of interns arrived with the usual awkwardness felt at the beginning of a school term. But what has united them over the past couple of months is far greater than the happenstance of selecting the same college course. Indeed it is deeper than shared conviction. Over the past two months, they’ve celebrated victories both intimate and public—from hearing a mother outside Planned Parenthood say she has changed her mind to watching the Ohio Senate pass the Dismemberment Abortion Ban. They’ve grappled in our classroom...
Read more

Out of Focus?

By Seth -
The Columbus Dispatch today ran a story about the Personhood initiative's arrival in the land of the Buckeyes. The article also referenced other recent Ohio efforts against abortion, such as the Heartbeat Bill . What leaped off of my screen, though, was the first comment following the piece: It's unfortunate with 9% unemployment, children and adults starving in the street, people losing their homes, crime rates increasing, and corporations buying our politicians, these people are fighting to make abortion illegal. We have freedom of religion in this country, but they want to impose their religious ideology on us, in this secular nation. People can't find jobs, and children go without food. The most important thing on their mind is making abortion illegal. Jesus would be appalled at these people. Don't believe me? Read the Holy Bible. Jesus never spoke about abortion. But he did speak a lot about helping the poor and the homeless. - Toni Goodman Here's an experim...
Read more