Denial of Reality and of Womanhood

A week ago Andrew Klavan spent much of his weekly video talking about bodies, their importance in experiencing life and relationships. And there’s some good stuff there, for deep thinking, as he tends to do. In there he shows and talks about a short clip of a woman on TikTok. He admits that, of course, you can find crazy people out there. But the craziness of what she says is worth discussing.

Andrew Klavan, screenshot from here

As an intro, he mentions a piece in the Wall Street Journal by diagnostic radiologist Grazie Pozo Christie, talking, as Klavan says,

about how the science behind Roe v. Wade, which is about to come up, to be challenged before the Supreme Court—the science behind Roe v. Wade is out of date. With the tools that we now have, we can see that a baby at 15 weeks is a human being. It’s alive. It’s kicking, scratching himself. And it is in this mother’s body, being nurtured, being kept alive.

In the wake of that mounting scientific evidence, here’s what this crazy TikTok woman says:

screenshot from here

At no point ever has it mattered whether it’s just a clump of cells or a fully fledged person already accepted to Harvard University. It has never ever mattered when life begins. The point is that a person cannot use another person’s body without their permission. By forcing women to share their bodies with fetuses to keep them alive, you’re actually suggesting that fetuses should have more rights than any other person in the world, and that people with uteruses should have less rights. If you want a fetus to have the same rights as other people, I hate to break it to you, but you’d be pro-choice.

So, all those decades when the pro-abortion crowd claimed it was just a clump of cells, or that viability mattered—those were lies all along. But looking at this woman’s now bold claim, there’s a lot in there that seems obtusely unaware of how babies are made. I shouldn’t have to point out this biological fact, but, except in cases of rape, there’s a voluntary act that results in pregnancy. It isn’t, as Andrew Klavan points out, someone coming along and forcing a human being up inside of you. It’s a procreative act. We know what it is that results in pregnancy.

So the flaw in her argument is “a person cannot use another person’s body without their permission.” Engaging in the procreative act is granting permission. It’s more than that; it’s an invitation.

Metaphorically speaking, you can’t invite someone over to your house for dinner and then shoot them for trespassing on your property.

Even more metaphorically accurate, you can’t invite them—and hire the Uber driver to bring them to your house—and then kill them for trespassing on your property.

Except in the very rare instances when a pregnant mother’s life is on the line—which more than likely means the baby’s life is at risk as well—the baby’s presence in the womb is not a threat to the mother’s life. And in those rare cases, the medical community and doctors agree that you save both when possible; when that is not possible, you prioritize saving the mother.

So the castle doctrine doesn’t really apply here.

image found here

You don’t get to invite people to your house, bring them inside with the promise of feeding them dinner, and then kill them for trespassing because of the inconvenience of having to feed them when you failed to note the invitation on your calendar.

You don’t invite them inside and then kill them—and announce to the world that you had the right to do that—so they wouldn’t interfere with your career or travel plans. You don’t invite someone to your house for dinner and then get to indulge in resentment for their showing up. You don’t invite them unless you plan to provide. (This is why abstinence before marriage and complete fidelity within marriage has been such a good idea for so many millennia.)

If you invite the guest, and then, once they’ve arrived, you suddenly find your plumbing has gone out, or your stove doesn’t turn on, and it’s going to be a hardship—you still just do your best to get through dinner. You don’t at any point kill the invited guest for showing up at what isn’t a good time for you.

It’s not like you can tell the invited guest already in your living room that this isn’t a good evening for dinner after all, so they should leave and come again some other evening. Because “going,” in the case of pregnancy, involves snuffing out the life of the guest—so there cannot be a next time for that person.

The crazy TikTok woman speaks as though some cabal of cruel conservative humans is forcing her to host another person in her body. But that “cabal” is God, who made us in a way so that we can miraculously participate in procreating—in bringing new life into the world. If the woman doesn’t believe in God (and that’s a safe assumption), then it’s the nature that arranged for procreation to happen in similar manner in pretty much all mammalian species.

The pro-abortion opinion is premised on a denial of reality. The denial that women are different from men is the denial of nature. And the significant difference between men and women is the ability to get pregnant and bear a child. Denying that fact erases women as important for being women. Everything about the “right” to kill an unborn child says that bearing the child is unimportant—the unique difference about women is unimportant. But going to school, having a career, indulging in sex without consequence, or whatever other life pursuit—those are important. Everything supersedes womanhood. It says there is more fulfillment in having a career like a man. It says indulging in sex without worrying about getting pregnant—like a man in a decaying society—is what a woman should want. She “shouldn’t be punished with a baby” for being a woman; we should pretend she is more like a man and manipulate reality, even dispose of a baby, to make it seem so.

There is nothing about abortion that is empowering to women. Everything about it denies the unique value of being a woman.

The crazy TokTok woman might be evil. Or she might just be self-centered and duped. She did not come up with the argument she is giving here. She is parroting an argument fed to her by people more entrenched in evil.

In Michael Knowles book Speechless, he says, “No social relation influences the ‘human essence’ more than sex, which sits at the center of every creation account.” He lists a few such accounts to illustrate. And then adds,

Sex also plays a role in the construction and destruction of society’s fundamental institution: the family. Culture-minded Marxists have long understood that any successful “march through the institutions” must overcome the family.

The denial of family, favoring the individual, plays into the hands of those who devalue the individual and value only the collective. That’s why you don’t find pro-life Marxists, only pro-abortion Marxists.

There’s a selfishness that’s obvious. But refusing to become a family doesn’t lead to “being able to do whatever you want”; it actually leads to doing whatever the tyrannical ruler allows.

It’s a trap. It’s the same trap the adversary has used since the beginning: “I’ll take care of you; you just have to surrender your free will so I can make you do what I command.”

We’re getting down to the bottom of something here.

At the Spherical Model, we often point out that civilization requires two foundational things: a religious people who honor God, life, family, truth, and property ownership (that’s a summary of the Ten Commandments); and the family must be supported as the basic unit of civilization.

If you want to destroy civilization, you attack the foundation. Abortion dishonors God and His creations; it dishonors life; it dishonors truth; and most particularly it dishonors family.

And what do you get when you destroy civilization? Savagery. We rightly think it’s savage for a culture to sacrifice children to their idols. It’s pagan and horrifying. But that is what we’re looking at in our modern pro-abortion culture. People like this woman spouting off on a social media platform are trying to frame baby killing as the logical and right thing—calling evil good. She is so smug as she says, “I hate to break it to you,” as though we were too stupid to see the rightness of her position before, but now that she’s explained things to us, we should simply acquiesce—when she was too stupid to know how pregnancy happens.

Texas Heartbeat law illustration found here

The savage crowd are weeping and wailing and gnashing their teeth about the recent Texas abortion law, outlawing abortion after a heartbeat can be detected. During September and October, since the Heartbeat Bill took effect, abortions in the state dropped by 50%. That’s an estimated 2,149 babies not aborted. It’s hard to say whether women went elsewhere, or whether they rethought abortion and reconsidered giving birth. If that represents the 50% not aborted, that still leaves another 2,149 babies who were killed during that two months.

The separation between savagery and civilization is indicated by those who regret not getting another 2,149 babies killed (savagery) and those who regret that, even with the law, there were still 2,149 babies killed (on the way to civilization).

What kind of a person invites an innocent human being into their life and then kills them? A savage. What kind of a person convinces a woman that her ability to bring life into the world is a punishment put upon people with a uterus by an unfair society? An uglier savage. And probably a Marxist. Definitely an anti-free-will tyrant.

Logical Leaping Leprechauns

image from here

There’s no purpose in having Leprechauns in the title, except that it is St. Patrick’s Day, and they are dangerous tricksters, with the promise of unearned prosperity that you never get.

I was reading the Outlook (opinion) section of Sunday’s Houston Chronicle, and started reading a piece, by a local physician, that at first struck me as way more conservative than I usually find in that section. Here’s the beginning:

   In high school, I had to memorize the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution. I did not understand why then, but I do now. This is essentially the mission statement for the United States. When I served on the U.S. Senate staff during the initial months of the health care reform debate in 2009, I thought that the Preamble should serve as a touchstone for proposed legislation. Given that health care reform legislation would affect every American and about one-sixth of the economy, it seemed prudent to return to first principles to justify such action.

   The Preamble begins by saying who wrote it and why. The government derives its power from the people. That power should be used continuously to improve the country that the Founders fought to free from foreign control. Establishing and preserving justice, peace, safety, well-being and liberty were all part of the role of the federal government. Implicit in the singling out of “our posterity” is the idea that this was to be a timeless arrangement that would protect us collectively and individually.

This is almost exactly right on track. We want people to do this—read the Constitution, recognize that mission statement in the Preamble, and limit government to its proper role.

But there’s a change he makes, which I didn’t catch until I read further (because I had failed to read the article title). Notice when he’s listing the roles of the federal government, he uses the term “well-being” instead of “general welfare.” He could mean the same thing I do, which I think is what the founders meant. But he doesn’t. I believe it means the federal government is limited to making laws that affect the population as a whole, rather than specific special states or groups. And those laws, according to the enumerated powers of the federal government, are designed to protect life, liberty, and property (and the freedom to pursue property/happiness as one chooses, rather than having government choose one’s profession).

 

So I was surprised at this very next passage in the op-ed: “How does the Preamble support health care for every American?” Um, it doesn’t. Health care is a service that can be purchased. Government’s job is to get out of the way of informed legal transactions. This is an odd question to follow the correct claim that the Preamble is the US government mission statement.

The leap of logic is revealed in the next paragraph:

That there is such inequity in the provision, access, cost and quality of health care in America is inconsistent with a just country.

So, to him, a “just country” is one in which no one can purchase more care than anyone else; they can all purchase exactly the same services regardless of resources. Social justice. Code for socialism.

That bit about “I understand the Constitution” was just a cover for “I think government’s role is really supplying everything we as a majority decide everyone ought to have.” This is FDR’s “positive rights” argument/fallacy. Commodities and services might be nice to have, but they aren’t rights. God gives us rights.

We’re born here naked, impoverished, and inexperienced. We spend our lives working our way out of that condition. But the only “entitlement” involved is the requirement that parents provide their children’s needs, teach them, and prepare them for self-sufficiency.

The government can’t “give” you a commodity or service without requiring a taxpayer to pay for it. Government isn’t allowed by the Constitution to provide any commodity, only services—and only those services that fit in the category of protecting your life (not allowing others to harm you), liberty (not allowing others to enslave you), and property (not allowing others to steal your property).

There’s nothing in there about providing “health care.” If health care were a right, then why would we pay doctors for it? They would have to provide it because it’s our right. But that would be enslaving the doctors, who should be justly compensated for their skilled services. So, in order not to enslave doctors, the government would have to pay them—and the government only gets money by taking it from taxpayers. So the taxpayers would be enslaved (forced to work without being able to keep their income) in order to pay for the health care of someone they don’t even know. Including those who don’t take care of themselves the way that taxpayer has done. Is that fair?

In his piece this doctor does say some things I agree with:

The debate I witnessed in Washington in 2009 was never based on discussing how to fulfill the mission of the United States through a different form of health care delivery. Rather, a deal was concocted that preserved the basic aspects of the system we already had with third-party support of health care payments, despite the third parties (insurers) adding nothing to the health of anyone, but reaping huge profits for bookkeeping and risk management as a means to maximize shareholder value.

 

He’s right; Obamacare proponents have conflated health care with health insurance, even though insurance is simply one way to pay for health services (a way that has been enlarged mainly because of government interference). There are other ways. There are health savings accounts, and concierge medicine, and self-insuring, and paying cash.

He doesn’t look at the “less government interference options,” however; he thinks Obamacare simply doesn’t go far enough. My guess is what he wants is to have the federal government do a total takeover of health care, doling out care “equally.” He hates “inequity” (different outcomes) more than he loves freedom.

If the problem is separation of payer from service receiver, then why would adding government as an additional separator help? It just adds another layer of bureaucracy (the world’s biggest bureaucracy) between service receiver and payer—with all kinds of additional decisions being made by distant bureaucrats rather than patient and doctor.

People who see only the southern hemisphere—the portion on the Spherical Model where you go back and forth between the varied tyrannies of anarchy and government control—look the wrong direction. They have an unsupportable faith in government and its intellectual elites to “do it right the next time.” They never do it right. They can’t know what I and every individual buyer of health care services knows about our particular situations, preferences, and personal finances. But they’re unwilling to trust individuals to make decisions for themselves about what services to buy and how to pay for them.

Government’s lack of trust in individual citizens is an excuse for interference that always leads to further tyranny. We limit government because we know it can’t be trusted, and we trust ourselves with the rest. 

There’s another leap of logic story I came across over the weekend. It was handled well (as usual) by Matt Walsh (“I am afraid of this indisputable pro-choice argument” from March 4, 2014). The “frightening” “irrefutable” pro-choice (pro-abortion) argument is referred to as “bodily autonomy.” A reader calling herself “Rachel” says essentially that, if a person has bodily autonomy, then a woman has a right to stop that parasitic baby’s life at any point in pregnancy. She claims that a woman gestating her own child is equivalent to being forced to be tied up in a hospital bed next to a sick person, for nine months, sharing blood with the sick person, against one’s will.

It’s not a good analogy, and Matt Walsh covers the reasons. But I’m just going to point out the leap of logic from “we have control over our own bodies,” and “after consenting to the presence of a growing child by performing the procreative act, the mother should still be allowed to kill the growing baby at any point she chooses.” That’s quite a leap.

No one forced her (in cases that aren’t rape or incest) to invite the growing baby to grow in her womb. No one forced her to share her body with a stranger; the baby inside is her own offspring. No one forced her to stay confined in a hospital bed for nine months; pregnancy will cause varying levels of limitation, but most of the time the gestating mother just goes about her life as autonomously as ever.

The choice happens before conception. After that, another life is involved, growing where he/she was invited, and where he/she belongs. A closer analogy would be: after you invite someone into your home, at any time you can kill the visitor for breaking into your home. That would not go over well in a court of law.

We’re all pro-choice. But most of us think that choice was made when engaging in the behavior that has been known, for literally thousands of years, to lead to pregnancy—so ignorance can’t be the excuse. Maybe Rachel, like Obama, thinks God was wrong to have pregnancy follow that behavior, when she wants it without consequences. Whatever. She ought to take that up with God, rather than insisting that the rest of us are wrong for wanting to protect innocent human life.

Today's lesson: don't pretend it's logic when it's just a blind leap.