I was tagged in a post on Facebook to which I've decided to respond, though in my own way and place. I don't really feel like subjecting myself to the name-calling and verbal abuse the original poster and his or her fans are known for. So instead I will share here the original post, the comment in which I was tagged, and my response. First of all, here is the original claim: 10-20% of pregnancies spontaneously miscarry. Every single woman who suffers that will be liable for a possible charge of 'negligent homicide' and have to prove her innocence if the MAGA nuts get their way. This is what happens when you have one monomaniac goal and absolutely no plan for what happens after that. Under this, I was tagged, with the simple statment, Joe Grabowski, this sort of thing is happening. So, let's take a closer look, shall we?
I recently remarked on how people are talking about the other privacy rights that seem to depend upon Roe being at stake in this debate, but how they don't seem to be doing anything about them that would be pragmatic if this really were their concern. In short, I said that these concerns, when posed in conversations about Roe, seem to me to be a red herring. Well, I have a similar observation to make about another line of argumentation that is maybe less a red herring than a straw man, but is in any case another distraction from the real issue.
I saw this rather tiresome meme quoting Sister Joan Chittister. The quotation reads, "I think in many cases, your morality is deeply lacking if all you want is a child born but not a child fed, not a child educated, not a child housed. That's not pro-life. That's pro-birth." Now, I have just about had it with this very common and very fallacious argument, and so I'm going to respond at length, and hopefully show why it is not only a tedious distraction, but also employs question-begging logic with regard to what "birth" means (or doesn't mean) in this whole discussion... In the wake of the leak of a draft opinion by Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito which reveals that the Court is poised to overturn Roe v Wade and Planned Parenthood v Casey, various authors and pundits and politicians and public thinkers have begun warning of the dire cascade effects that will fall out from this. Roe, which has been called a "super precedent," has been seen as foundational in grounding all manner of privacy rights in other subsequent Court rulings and in legistlation. One particular author described a coming "privacy nightmare" if Roe really were overturned. And from all this, it would seem that the issue is really about more than abortion.
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