Paglia on abortion

[Dee Dee Warren]

Well she's honest. And she's right about what abortion is. Most pro-choicers are too cowardly to admit it.

Hence I have always frankly admitted that abortion is murder, the extermination of the powerless by the powerful. Liberals for the most part have shrunk from facing the ethical consequences of their embrace of abortion, which results in the annihilation of concrete individuals and not just clumps of insensate tissue. The state in my view has no authority whatever to intervene in the biological processes of any woman's body, which nature has implanted there before birth and hence before that woman's entrance into society and citizenship.

On the other hand, I support the death penalty for atrocious crimes (such as rape-murder or the murder of children). I have never understood the standard Democratic combo of support for abortion and yet opposition to the death penalty. Surely it is the guilty rather than the innocent who deserve execution?

What I am getting at here is that not until the Democratic Party stringently reexamines its own implicit assumptions and rhetorical formulas will it be able to deal effectively with the enduring and now escalating challenge from the pro-life right wing. Because pro-choice Democrats have been arguing from cold expedience, they have thus far been unable to make an effective ethical case for the right to abortion.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/paglia/2008/09/10/palin/index3.html

[rogue06]

"Hence I have always frankly admitted that abortion is murder...they have thus far been unable to make an effective ethical case for the right to abortion."

And how does she propose to bring these two things together?

[Dee Dee Warren]

she explains a bit in the article, though it is mostly a political article

I think Paglia is pure evil when it comes to that point btw, but at least she's an honest devil

[Dee Dee Warren]

bumpity bump

[Sparko]

well at least she is HONESTLY evil. :doh:

[Catholicity]

hey at least there isn't a lick of hypocrisy. She's admitting that she supports murder.

[Epoetker]

You can add Obama to the list: (http://covertrationingblog.com/medical-ethics/president-obama-and-drrich-agree-on-abortion-part-2)


.as I understand it, Sen. O’Malley, the testimony during the committee indicated that one of the key concerns was – - is that there was a method of abortion, and induced abortion, where the – - the fetus or child, as – - as some might describe it — is still temporarily alive outside the womb. And one of those concerns that came out in the testimony was the fact that they were not being properly cared for during that brief period of time that they were still living……Number one, whenever we define a pre-viable fetus as a person that is protected by the equal protection clause or the other elements in the Constitution, what we’re really saying is, in fact, that they are persons that are entitled to the kinds of protections that we would be provided to a – - a child, a nine-month-old – - child that was delivered to term. That determination then, essentially, if it was accepted by a court, would forbid abortions to take place. I mean, it – - it would essentially bar abortions, because the equal protection clause does not allow somebody to kill a child, and if this is a child, then this would be an anti-abortion statute.”

The rest of the commentary speaks for itself:


And this, dear reader, is the point upon which President Obama and I agree on abortion. It is the most important point of all, and really, is the only point that matters: Once we allow the Experts to define “human life,” then the definition can be changed arbitrarily, at any time, to any definition you want.

While we agree on this fundamental point, however, President Obama and I reach different conclusions about its implications. Given the clear (but suppressed) history of Progressivism, a history featuring the enthusiastic devaluation of various types of inconvenient human life, and given the fact that Progressives are now running our healthcare system and are in charge of deciding who gets what, when and how, I believe we should insist on the most conservative definition of human life possible – the point of fertilization of the egg. Anything else invites grave abuses.

President Obama, on the other hand, insists on a completely open definition of human life, one that allows a very expansive idea of what constitutes, for instance, non-viability. Pinning down the definition of human life, he is saying, will be too limiting. It will certainly limit abortion. As it happens, it will also limit other medical policies that will become necessary in the future as Obamacare rolls out.

I am arguing that any definition of human life that allows abortion will too easily also allow infanticide and other abuses. President Obama emphasizes the other side of this same argument: that disallowing infanticide (and by necessary extension, disallowing the termination of other forms of inconvenient human life) threatens to disallow abortion.

In any case, on the fundamental question, President Obama and I are brothers.

[Abelard]

The Paglia column seems to be gone, but the woman is well worth reading. I usually don't agree with her, but she is a good thinker and frames her arguments in some original ways.

As for abortion, it remains a Christian distinctive. The main problem in the criminalization of abortion in America is that Jews believe a life is only a potential human until it is half-emerged from the birth canal. The Mishna graphically describes a partial birth abortion and how it is required if the mother's life is in danger. The state of Israel and their political influence on American politics is the number one reason for the abject failure of right to life movements in the U.S.

[Epoetker]

The Paglia column seems to be gone, but the woman is well worth reading. I usually don't agree with her, but she is a good thinker and frames her arguments in some original ways.

As for abortion, it remains a Christian distinctive. The main problem in the criminalization of abortion in America is that Jews believe a life is only a potential human until it is half-emerged from the birth canal. The Mishna graphically describes a partial birth abortion and how it is required if the mother's life is in danger. The state of Israel and their political influence on American politics is the number one reason for the abject failure of right to life movements in the U.S.

Not really. The Jews who actually pushed abortion were mostly leftist, Marxist, atheist, American-born, internationalists, and Reform if they even bother to be religious. It's George Soros who founded Media Matters, Betty (Naomi Goldstein) Friedan who pushed for abortion, Gloria Steinem who heads NOW. These are not the type of Jews who tend to read much of anything not specifically related to their religion; their true religion is The Cause or The Revolution: (http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/books/0300781h.html)


"He isn't a miser," said Simon, "and if he's a millionaire, then my question is answered."

"Do you know him?" asked the King, speaking for the first time. "Why do you say he isn't a miser?"

"Because no Jew was ever a miser," answered the banker. "Avarice is not a Jewish vice; it's a peasant's vice, a vice of people who want to protect themselves with personal possessions in perpetuity. Greed is the Jewish vice: greed for luxury; greed for vulgarity; greed for gambling; greed for throwing away other people's money and their own on a harem or a theatre or a grand hotel or some harlotry--or possibly on a grand revolution. But not hoarding it. That is the madness of sane men; of men who have a soil."

"How do you know?" asked the King with mild curiosity. "How did you come to make a study of Jews?"

"Only by being one myself," replied the banker.

There was a short silence, and then the King went on with a reassuring smile: "And so you think he may be spending his millions on financing a revolution."



Whatever his faults, Benjamin Netanyahu and those Jews who live in Israel have an actual "soil", an actual country, to worry about.

Those in America do depend on various non-Torah or Talmudic sources for their philosophy, when they actually bother to keep to a philosophy at all. If you're going to blame the Jews, at least blame the ones who have made public statements on the record about how they support abortion, as well as every other left-wing cause under the sun. The State of Israel is not the Jews you're looking for.

However, there is a lesson in the fact that it isn't-the less connected you are to a certain place or a certain country, the more likely you are to support evil and foolish policies on a whim, because you yourself can go anywhere and are thus insulated from the results.

[Abelard]

Talk to some Israelis about how abortion is handled there. Their law has a formality of a hearing, but abortion is rarely disallowed. Acceptable reasons include psychological or financial stress on the mother. The state of Israel formally protects the right to abortion, and it is given special privilege in influencing American politics.

You are correct in not confusing Judaism with Zionism, but the formal position of both are intractably pro-abortion.

[Epoetker]

Talk to some Israelis about how abortion is handled there. Their law has a formality of a hearing, but abortion is rarely disallowed.

"Rarely" is far better than "never."


Acceptable reasons include psychological or financial stress on the mother. The state of Israel formally protects the right to abortion, and it is given special privilege in influencing American politics.

So they're at least honest about why they allow it.


You are correct in not confusing Judaism with Zionism, but the formal position of both are intractably pro-abortion.

Pro-abortion is the formal position of anyone who puts accumulation of material goods and career advancement over treating the innocent justly. But as far as Orthodox Judaism goes, the serious conservatives are against abortion.
(http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/culturebox/2000/08/what_do_orthodox_jews_think_about_abortion_and_why.html)

Which is pretty much the same lineup that we see in the current state of Christianity, with the 'historical scholars' and other various deconstructionist collegiate types interpreting exceptions to assuage their guilty consciences based on peripheral texts. I suspect they and the Talmudic sophists get along quite well.

Jews, especially the Ashkenazi Jew who form around 90% of those in America, have an outsized influence on the issue because they have an outsized influence on ANY national social issue thanks to their high intelligence, high argumentativeness, and established ethnic networks.

But I get the feeling you've read most of Kevin MacDonald already.

[Abelard]

Yes, it is the political influence of AIPAC and associated groups that has made progress in the criminalization of abortion move backwards in the US. I wasn't really trying to define Jewish theology, but suffice to say that Islam allows abortion during the first trimester (as noted in Epoetker's link, a view historically shared by the Roman church) and Hindus, Shinto and others don;t seem to have a problem at all.

A completely anti-abortion stance remains a Christian distinctive. As long as we have religious liberty, criminalization is a lost cause.

I find the natural law aspect of a right-to-life stance quite persuasive, and I think it is an excellent way of evangelizing the gospel. The legalistic approach is a proven loser, but using right-to-life as platform for evangelization has never been attempted.

[rogue06]

The Paglia column seems to be gone
It's still there and the link still works. Just click the "Continue Reading" to get to the part that's quoted.

[Catholicity]

Apparently some have never heard of the secular pro-life stance, a group of other religions, and non religious who are strictly pro-life for biological factors. it was started by non theistic Doctors.

[The Remonstrant]

Just for fun:

One can strive against infanticide (as in "abortion") and more or less promote antinatalism all the while.