[wagglebee]

We've heard them all, but it's always good to be reminded.

Thread by NYer.

"Personally Opposed, But..." Five Pro-Abortion Dodges

In that passage from Orthodoxy so familiar that it is almost now cliché, G. K. Chesterton wrote that there are a thousand angles at which a man may fall but only one at which he stands. By this he argued for the unique, enduring character of orthodox Church doctrine, of the one, true, upstanding strand of Right Teaching. Though the same tired heresies may reappear to contest it -- mutated, renamed, warmed-over -- the old, wild truth remains standing, "reeling but erect."

 

This well-worn lesson takes on a new freshness, I think, when applied to the culture war. The wild truths that inform Christian ethics -- our insistence on a moral universe, on a real human nature with its own teleology, on the transcendent significance of human acts and human relationships -- also reel but remain erect in the face of perennial challenges. We are not gods. Moral truth is something we discover, not invent. From the Garden of Eden to the Supreme Court of the United States, we have fought the same battle under different banners.

 

In what is probably the modern culture battle par excellence, the fight against abortion, we see displayed with perfect clarity the principle of a single upright truth (that directly killing an unborn child is an evil and a crime) being contested by a rotation of errors; taking turns or working in tandem, passing in and out of fashion, each seizing upon the vocabulary, events, and moods of the cultural moment until the next comes along to supplant it.

 

In some cases cultural developments render one of them obsolete. In the years shortly after Roe v. Wade, abortion debates inevitably featured three words the pro-abortion side considered a trump card: "blob of tissue." This factually empty but sound-bite-perfect catchphrase made a great impact with its implication that the fetus was roughly equivalent to a ball of snot. Which put abortion about on par with picking your nose: bad form, a messy affair that ought to be kept private, but nothing to get overly excited about.

 

Of course, advances in the study of human embryology, most notably the window to the womb afforded by the sonogram, all but pulled the teeth from the "blob of tissue" canard. The 1980 film The Silent Scream, an ultrasound depiction of an abortion at eleven weeks, provided a chilling, graphic look at abortion's inner workings. And today, expectant mothers keep pictures of their "blobs of tissue" on the refrigerator. They make copies and stuff them into Christmas cards.

 

So that particular line was no longer viable. But it wouldn't be the last. More would follow, and we who are engaged in the culture have surely heard most of them. However, even for those who have heard them all, I think it can be valuable to gather them up and define them; to identify their originators, exemplars, and champions; to understand their appeal; and to consider how to counter them. Let us now look, then, at five (a nice number, though by no means exhaustive) of history's most insidious pro-abortion arguments. . .

[wagglebee]

Young people know that a third of their generation has been murdered.

Two threads by me.

Hundreds of Thousands of Pro-Life Students to Stand in Solidarity on Abortion

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- Hundreds of thousands of pro-life students are ready to stand in solidarity on abortion as the Pro-life Day of Silent Solidarity takes place a week from Tuesday. Last year, from over 4,700 campuses in 25 countries participated in the event and sponsors expect even more this year.

The day sees the students at middle and high schools and on college campuses wear pro-life t-shirts, sport red tape on their mouths to show how the unborn can't speak up, and the distribution of fliers educating students and the public about abortion.

The event's man sponsor, Stand True Ministries, tells LifeNews.com, one of several groups supporting the event, that at least 58 young women canceled appointments for abortions after the special day took place last year.

Bryan Kemper, the pro-life group's president, says students are always excited every year to bring attention to the devastating travesty of abortion that is killing 4,000 unborn children and injuring women every day.

"The students are speaking loud and clear; they want an end to legalized child-killing," he said of the students and young adults involved in the effort. "We are getting thousands of e-mails, comments and Internet messages from students thanking us for giving them a peaceful way to stand up and be counted."

The students themselves notice the profound effect the event has each time.

"I got one girl to not get an abortion because I took a zero in class for this and she started crying," one student wrote. "She pulled me into the bathroom and told me she was pregnant and was going to have an abortion and she said because of how much this meant to me she didn't! We both sat in the bathroom and cried for a few minutes and she put the baby up for adoption!"

Another student talked about a friend's reaction.

"She's about a month or so pregnant. I have her for a couple of my classes. She kept glancing at my shirt all day and she took a flier. But she didn't say anything," the student related about last year's event.

"Then today in 6th I was getting up and she came up to me. And in front of the whole classroom she began weeping and fell into my arms. She said she didn't want to have an abortion anymore," the student said. . .

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Pennsylvania School Targets Student With "Abortion is Not Health Care" T-Shirt

Scranton, PA (LifeNews.com) -- Officials at a Pennsylvania school targeted a middle school student who came to class wearing a pro-life t-shirt with the message, "Abortion is Not Health Care." Officials at Crossroads Middle School in Lewisberry ordered the student to remove the shirt on the day of President Obama’s public address to students.

School officials deemed the shirt “inappropriate,” saying it might insult somebody -- even though the school routinely allows students to wear other shirts with other potentially offensive messages. . .