In 7 July interview published in the NY Times, Justice Ginsburg makes a stunning admission:
JUSTICE GINSBURG: Yes, the ruling about that surprised me. [Harris v. McRae — in 1980 the court upheld the Hyde Amendment, which forbids the use of Medicaid for abortions.] Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of. So that Roe was going to be then set up for Medicaid funding for abortion. Which some people felt would risk coercing women into having abortions when they didn’t really want them. But when the court decided McRae, the case came out the other way. And then I realized that my perception of it had been altogether wrong.
What is stunning about this admission is not that she later changed her mind (on what is not clear) but that, at the time, she viewed Roe as a means to eugenics. This is the dirty secret of the pro-abortion movement: that it has a nasty history grounded in eugenics, i.e. the movement to purify the human race of undesirables. The movement has often clothed itself in the rhetoric of choice and liberty (there is a difference between liberty and libertinism) but here Justice Ginsburg has disrobed part of the argument herself, without any prompting. Perhaps she thought that no one was looking?
Ginsberg’s admission is even more stunning when you remember that she is Jewish.
Was she asked which population group she did not want to have “too many of”? Maybe Blacks or people with low IQ’s. Eugenics has gone underground because it cannot survive openly in our P.C. world. Even Sanger herself had to infiltrate the black community by convincing some of it’s leader’s that abortions and sterilizations were actually going to be good for the overall health of the black community while at the same time hoping for the long term breeding out of the race.
Every moralistic movement has its dirty little secrets, odd presuppositions and disquieting implications. The pro-life movement has at least as many as the pro-choice movement.
But I’m with Bork. States’ rights have a way of navigating away from these things. Probably because its neither movement oriented nor morally driven.
Ginsburg is committed to defeating states’ rights.
It’s a good thing Obama’s new Science Czar is much more clinical in these matters than Justice Ginsberg. He only advocates (or advocated) forced abortions and mass sterilizations.
I don’t know about you guys, but I’m all for Obama aborting his version of Hope and sterilizing his idea of Change. That’s something I can believe in.
word
This post’s reading of Justice Ginsburg’s interview is incorrect. It twists what she said. In fact, your read of this quotation is exactly backwards.
She is looking back on a decision made more than a decade before she became a supreme court justice. What she expresses is that she had thought that an underlying current of the court’s previous decision in Roe v. Wade was the desire of this country to limit the population growth of certain minorities or other groups that society did not want having too many children. It is clear that she found (and still finds) this agenda reprehensible. That is why she was surprised by the decision of Harris v. McRae. She was surprised because this decision did not confirm her prior suspicion. She realized that the court was not pressing some selective population control program. And she was happy to realize that. She realized, as she said, that her “perception of it had been altogether wrong.”
You may insist that some pro-choicers have a eugenic agenda. But you cannot pin that on Ginsburg. She is saying precisely the opposite of what you insist that she says.
Tony.
If you’ll read my post a little more closely, you’ll see that I didn’t impute the eugenics pov to Ginsburg. What is amazing, however, is that she admits that the eugenicist assumption was at work at the time of Roe and underlies Roe. Yes, she’s more enlightened that they were way back in ’73 but her comments are telling.
How can she “admit” this? She is not the pro-choice movement. Pro-choicers do not constitute one unified enterprise all sharing the same arguments and the same history.
She was making an observation as a lawyer. She was speculating on possible cultural currents that she thought might have influenced the court’s decision. She was worrying about precisely the same thing as you.
How does the suspicion she held in the 1980s provide any evidence for your characterization of pro-choice people? You suspect it. She suspected it. Then she changed her mind. What is stunning about this, and what has she disrobed?
Let me put this another way: If her “admission” (actually, her suspicion) that there was a eugenic undercurrent to the court’s decision counts as evidence for your portrayal of the pro-choice movement, why doesn’t her change of mind also count as evidence?
Tony,
I think RSC’s commentary speaks in this way: When’s the last time a pro-abortionist like Ginsberg or anybody else from that camp “came clean” on the eugenics background of the abortion industry?
When’s the last time the efforts of Planned Parenthood’s founder Margaret Sanger to promote abortion-as-“ethnic cleansing” got much recent press from the PC (and pro-abort) crowd? Never? I thought so…
Please stop your grandstanding.
When’s the last time a pro-abortionist like Ginsberg or anybody else from that camp “came clean” on the eugenics background of the abortion industry?
Bruce, no doubt your question is a fair one. At the same time, though, I wonder when was the last time anybody in the pro-life movement took any responsibility for things like Tiller?
If Bork is right, and I think he is, these are the sorts of questions moral-movementism avoids. And to the extent that a moralized politics dominates this whole national legislative conversation one way or the other, it seems to me a rather doomed one.
Zrim,
Eugenics is at the heart of Margaret Sanger’s social vision. According to Ginsburg, it was inherent in the thinking of those who advocated and formulated the rationale for the Roe decision. This is a significant fact that should not be downplayed. Eugenics is a crime against nature (creation) and against the Creator. It is the intended mass destruction of whole groups!
I am not excusing those who’ve murdered abortionists. Murder is a sin and a civil crime and those convicted should face the appropriate civil and ecclesiastical penalties. I am, however, challenging the attempt to equate mass extermination with relatively rare and fairly random acts of murder. Considered socially or morally they are not the same thing.
RSC,
I really don’t have a stake in deciding which side has more bad guys and demerits. That’s a losing battle, it seems to me, and one I’m happy to leave to others who traffic in accusations of either “misogyny” or “genocide.”
But I do think that there are at least as many questions to ask the pro-life worldview as there are for the pro-choice worldview. And one of those questions really isn’t so much, “Don’t you think murdering people is wrong and should be punished?” as much as it is, “Don’t you think that when you casually equate those with different views as Nazi’s and slave-traders that it has at least some bearing on the less-than-stable?”
If the choice worldview should own its unsavory history, as I agree it should, I don’t know why the life worldview shouldn’t be expected to take responsibility for its stains.
Zrim,
As a civil matter (let’s distinguish the 2 kingdoms here) I’m not interested in getting along with Nazis whether they be Brownshirts or M. Sanger or the more polite Eugenicists who formed our abortion policies and laws in the early 70s.
If we can’t call Sanger and Planned Parenthood eugenicists, when in historical fact they are such, then we lose the ability to speak the truth. to correlate sign to thing signified.
Murder is wrong. Proposed murder on a mass scale because some are deemed inferior is a crime against humanity. How can it be wrong to say that?
Murder is wrong. Proposed murder on a mass scale because some are deemed inferior is a crime against humanity. How can it be wrong to say that?
RSC,
It’s not wrong to say that. But, first, I’m not convinced that choice views are summed up this way anymore than life views are about “the patriarchal and misogynistic oppression of women.” I realize it serves both fetus- and femme-politics to cast each other as the enemies of one set of western values or another, but I’m just not buying it. Second, my point is that everyone should be contrite enough to take the all the consequences of their views and rhetoric.
Chunck,
Maybe I’m just to mid-western in my outlook, but have you ever considered that the life view might be better served if its proponents would start taking more responsibility instead of letting up on the self-restraint and issuing yet more self-righteous incentives?
Quoth Bork:
“The abortion issue has produced divisions and bitterness in our politics that countries don’t have where abortion is decided by legislatures. And both sides go home, after a compromise, and attempt to try again next year. And as a result, it’s not nearly the explosive issue as it is here where the court has grabbed it and taken it away from the voters.”
Don’t look now, but he’s implicating your rhetoric as part of the problem Roe helped nurture.
“Don’t you think that when you casually equate those with different views as Nazi’s and slave-traders that it has at least some bearing on the less-than-stable?”
Zrim, you’re wrong for several reasons.
First, it’s less than accurate to classify people who advocate genocide, eugenics, and partial-birth abortion as “those with different views,” because that’s like saying Mahmoud Ahmadinejad just has a different view of Jews even though he’s a rabid anti-Semite who wants to see them wiped away from the face of the earth. If you want to see a “different view,” come look at the three pink flamingos in my next-door neighbor’s front yard (I wish we had a zoning law against that one).
Second, when a group of people see certain classes of their fellow-humans as sub-human, as the slave traders did, and when they advocate the mass extermination of this class of human beings, as the Nazis did, then it is neither wrong nor dishonest to make this simple historical observation.
Third, your concern about the unstable is irrelevant because the minute they determine what we can and cannot say, then no one will be able to say anything for fear of being misunderstood by the 1 in 10,000,000 Roeders out there. I cannot help it if someone sees this comment as a license to commit murder any more than you can help it if some sees your comment as a license to commit murder on the other side. Certain people will never understand anything no matter how careful you may be with your words.
Fourth, your question (above) seems to indicate that “People don’t kill people, rhetoric does,” which places too much blame on sloganeering and not enough blame on the doctors who use a suction device to remove a child’s brain from its skull during partial-birth abortion.
Finally, the pro-life movement has no responsibility to own Scott Roeder or any other cold-blooded assassin, because the actions of these men indicate that they have more in common with the pro-abortionists who destroy human life indiscriminately than it does with the pro-lifers who value life because it bears the image of God — even when that image is defaced in and by someone such as Tiller. Put another way, Scott Roeder is only pro-life in a Nazi slave-trader kind of way.
Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of.
This statement shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. Margaret Sanger started Planned Parenthood to wipe out black people. It is currently working as designed, as blacks have abortions at 5 times the rate as whites.
Ginsberg’s admission is even more stunning when you remember that she is Jewish.
The fact that Ginsburg is Jewish and can’t see the horrors of abortion with its origins in eugenics shouldn’t surprise anyone familiar with the history of Bolshevism.
Zrim,
Eugenics isn’t politics! That’s the point. I’m not just hurling accusations for the sake of rhetoric. I agree with Bork on States’ rights etc.
Its important, however, as we try to persuade (and that’s what I’m about here is persuasion, not force) it’s important for people to see that the original motive for Roe (etc) wasn’t merely absence of restraint but eugenics.
People must face the ugly truth as we did with German and Italian fascism and as we finally did with slavery (when we abolished the Jim Crow laws) or we will not get to grips with what is really happening.
Zrim,
I didn’t get the memo declaring Robert Bork the final authority on this issue. Could you please forward it to me? And while you’re at it, could you please show me where Bork implicated my rhetoric?
Actually, I saw his interview yesterday and understood him to mean exactly what he said, namely, that SCOTUS became politicized in the 1950s and no longer serves in a strictly judicial capacity, at least in highly politicized cases.
I’m sure his premise is correct but his conclusion, which you noted, does not follow, because both sides have framed the terms of this argument, going back to 1973, and it does not matter whether SCOTUS or the legislature makes the law — one side will always be incensed and will always define its case as explicitly as possible. The pro-aborts will argue privacy and reproductive liberty, accusing their opponents of all sorts of crazy stuff, and the pro-lifers will argue the sacredness of human life, calling abortion infanticide and comparing it to the holocaust. This is no different than Dems Borking every pro-life nominee coming down the pike and Bork calling the bench politicized.
But let’s Bork Bork for a minute and return to the argument. I believe that the vast majority of informed pro-lifers understand that there is very little difference between the acts committed every day in America’s abortatoriums and the acts that were committed every day in the Nazi death camps. However, I do not understand, and you have not demonstrated, how anyone who makes this obvious comparison is somehow responsible for driving the unstable to commit murder. Could you show me how the one leads to the other?
Lastly, I just saw Mychal Massie (head of the National Leadership Network of Conservative African-Americans) interviewed on FOX, and he said the number-one killer of African-Americans is not AIDS, contra President Obama’s assertion last night; it’s abortion, which fits perfectly with Margaret Sanger’s vision of women’s reproductive rights.
Chunck,
(Sorry, I missed this last comment when you first posted it.)
And while you’re at it, could you please show me where Bork implicated my rhetoric?…one side will always be incensed and will always define its case as explicitly as possible. The pro-aborts will argue privacy and reproductive liberty, accusing their opponents of all sorts of crazy stuff, and the pro-lifers will argue the sacredness of human life, calling abortion infanticide and comparing it to the holocaust.
I take it by this latter statement that you mean that to compare the present reality to “the holocaust” is to be as misguided as choicers accusing lifers of being “enemies of liberty and individual rights.” If so, I agree, and that is what I mean that Bork implies your rhetoric. Frankly, these sorts of charges one toward the other are quite uncharitable and reveal how hopeless and nasty the national conversation generally is, dominated by moralized politics.
But, I think you mean to contrast choicer arguments as stupid, stupid, stupid with lifer arguments as obvious to any moral mind. To my lights, though, one side champions the autonomous right to individual liberty, the other the autonomous right to life. Both are more American values which have premises I think conservative Calvinism seems to challenge quite vigorously.
However, I do not understand, and you have not demonstrated, how anyone who makes this obvious comparison is somehow responsible for driving the unstable to commit murder. Could you show me how the one leads to the other?
Actually, the point is that lifers should show more responsibility in their reckless rhetoric in light of reprehensible behavior than that they are “directly responsible for murder.” I realize most lifers don’t intend to nurture insanity or fuel murder. But I just think a better assessment of the rhetoric one uses is in order. I’d be quite happy with simply dropping all the desperate holocaust-speak. But I also understand it must feel good to think one is one the right side of righteousness, so it must be very difficult to comport oneself in speech. Even so, my point stands. More responsibility, less emoting please.
Zrim,
You have conceded so many points in this thread from your original concern that the way I see it, if we continue for another two weeks I’ll have you standing in front of your local abortion clinic screaming “NAZIS!” at the top of your lungs, if I’m not careful.
“I take it by this latter statement that you mean that to compare the present reality to ‘the holocaust’ is to be as misguided as choicers accusing lifers of being ‘enemies of liberty and individual rights.’”
I only meant that both sides are, and both sides will continue to be, completely polarized and that this was the worst rhetoric either side uses, but I did not mean to imply that the Holocaust comparison was wrong as an analogy or in its rhetorical use. However, upon giving this more thought, I believe that the Holocaust comparison is not completely accurate because the German death camps were state sponsored whereas American abortion clinics are, for the most part, private commercial enterprises.
“. . . these sorts of charges one toward the other are quite uncharitable and reveal how hopeless and nasty the national conversation generally is, dominated by moralized politics.”
You raise the issue of the appropriateness of certain rhetoric in the national conversation regarding abortion and you have called for an end to “desperate holocaust-speak,” describing it as uncharitable. However, you have not tipped your hand to let us know if you believe that the Holocaust comparison is accurate and truthful. Therefore, please show us your cards. Tell us if you believe it violates the Ninth or if in your opinion it’s just too much, and as a favor to me, could you please describe the what takes place during a partial-birth abortion, using only those words and phrases found in Zrim’s Lexicon of Acceptable Terms for Christians Participating in the National Conversation.
“To my lights, though, one side champions the autonomous right to individual liberty, the other the autonomous right to life. Both are more American values which have premises I think conservative Calvinism seems to challenge quite vigorously.”
I am not qualified to discuss the Calvinistic merits of my pro-life position, which is just fine by me because I really don’t care what John Calvin says on the subject any more than I care what Robert Bork says. I am quite satisfied with the testimony of God’s word. Furthermore, I have no idea what you mean by “American values” because our current president says that our “American values” obligate us to cease waterboarding terrorists while our previous president waterboarded terrorists because this harmless technique of intelligence-gathering was consistent with our American values since it involved no torture. I think we would all agree, however, that if we stuck a vacuum-like tube into a terrorist’s skull, without relieving his discomfort with painkillers or anesthesia, so that we could encourage him to spill the beans, as well as to suck out his brain matter from his head, we would be committing torture. This fact aside, can you imagine what the Hebrew midwives would have done if they had your understanding of Calvin as their only light? “This baby does not have an autonomous right to life. Kill it!” Moses hadn’t delivered the Decalogue yet so you could argue there would be no sin. Your comment, however, sends signals that you don’t believe abortion violates the Sixth Commandment. Can you please clarify this?
“But I also understand it must feel good to think one is one the right side of righteousness, so it must be very difficult to comport oneself in speech.”
Something in me says that there’s a little barb in this sentence — oh, that’s right — the snide words “it must feel good to think one is one the right side of righteousness.” Did it feel good to write that? Was it difficult to comport yourself because you feel you are on the right side of righteousness? Were you just emoting? Or are you conceding that your position is not righteous?
Zrim, abortion is an American holocaust where, instead of killing people deemed undesirable because of their DNA, we kill them simply because we don’t desire them. It’s a matter of convenience. And the problem with me stating this fact in no uncertain terms lies not with my rhetoric, because the words are the plain unvarnished truth. If the words are true, then what’s your problem?
Chunck,
However, you have not tipped your hand to let us know if you believe that the Holocaust comparison is accurate and truthful. Therefore, please show us your cards. Tell us if you believe it violates the Ninth or if in your opinion it’s just too much, and as a favor to me, could you please describe the what takes place during a partial-birth abortion.
I know it is a powerful tactic, thus tempting, to charge this sort of thing, but, honestly, I’m not sure if it violates the ninth. It might. But I think it violates the laws of wisdom for sure. It is not a “holocaust,” it is the way our legislation is ordered and it clearly isn’t the way many would like so they turn the decibels up to screed level. I think this also has the effect of robbing the rightful victims of the actual Third Reich their legacy. I’m not a medico, so I can’t describe what takes place during certain medical procedures.
I said: “To my lights, though, one side champions the autonomous right to individual liberty, the other the autonomous right to life. Both are more American values which have premises I think conservative Calvinism seems to challenge quite vigorously.”
To which you responded: I have no idea what you mean by “American values”… Your comment, however, sends signals that you don’t believe abortion violates the Sixth Commandment. Can you please clarify this?
What I mean by American values is “the right to life, liberty (and the pursuit of happiness).” The life worldview and the choice worldview are manifestations of these respectively. And I mean that conservative Calvinism is no friend to the idea that human beings have absolute and inalienable rights to life (life worldview) and liberty (choice worldview); those virtues are Greco-Roman. They make for a pretty superior statecraft, I concede, but they are finally traditions of men, thus are subject to the scrutiny of true religion. I’m not appealing to Calvinism to make law (as many Calvinist seem to), rather to confront the premises of certain traditions of men. If Calvinism may rightly challenge American notions of freewill and human ability, I don’t see why it can’t also confront American notions of life and death. If Jesus had the inalienable right to not be unlawfully murdered, I fail to see why certain sinners deserve to be left alone. I don’t think conservative Calvinism is friendly to the idea that certain sinners, by virtue of being in vitro, deserve a special, vigorous defense against and insulation from the pains and injuries of life (including death). That is to say, the pro-life worldview seems to believe that the unborn are in a special, hands-off category. But they aren’t. They are fully human, thus fully vulnerable to death. Sometimes babies die, due to disease or accident or by human policy. The pro-life worldview is thoroughly American insofar as Americans really do believe that children are entitled to better lives. In this way, it is also thoroughly modern in its veneration of youth and its idolizing of life itself. But Jesus said we must hate even life itself if we are to follow him. Not exactly a rallying teaching to prop up these American and modern virtues and values.
My political views on the abortion question are this: it is a state’s right to govern itself. The question isn’t “may she or mayn’t she?” rather it is “who gets to decide?” and then it’s “may she or mayn’t she?” So, when the correct first question is answered that states get to decide, I answer the next question by saying, “She mayn’t.” I disagree that any human being has the right, at will and whim, to decide the life and death of another human being simply because the latter house the former. But I demur of the worldview that any human beings has the “right to life.” I’d rather say that “one human being mayn’t kill another.” That’s actually the premise of our system of justice—it isn’t that I have the right to life and liberty, it’s that you don’t have the right to take it; the state is ordained to punish those who violate the latter, not nurture the former (unless one is over-realizing his conception of the state in the first place) . Also, I don’t make room for sexual assault, only life of mother. In this way, I consider my political view, from beginning to end, to be much more conservative than the typical pro-lifer.
Zrim,
Are you distinguishing between the two kingdoms? Is the civil kingdom a kingdom of grace or law/nature?
RSC,
I think so. The civil kingdom is ruled by law, the spiritual by grace. But I don’t see this discussion as being necessarily 2K. I think I see fellow 2Kers disagreeing over a civil policy, certain premises, etc.
Zrim,
Speaking of abortion, you write, “It is not a ‘holocaust,’ it is the way our legislation is ordered and it clearly isn’t the way many would like so they turn the decibels up to screed level.”
Turning my decibels down to flat-line level, you have me very confused. How can you call the Jewish Holocaust a holocaust if it was merely the enactment of German legislation?
And I don’t understand how when you avoid my question by answering, “I’m not a medico, so I can’t describe what takes place during certain medical procedures,” it is not unfair of me to conclude that since you’re not a historian you cannot describe what took place during the Holocaust, which disqualifies you from commenting on comparisons between the two subjects.
Finally, this paragraph is missing something, because your conclusion does not follow your point about the rights of Jesus:
“I’m not appealing to Calvinism to make law (as many Calvinist seem to), rather to confront the premises of certain traditions of men. If Calvinism may rightly challenge American notions of freewill and human ability, I don’t see why it can’t also confront American notions of life and death. If Jesus had the inalienable right to not be unlawfully murdered, I fail to see why certain sinners deserve to be left alone. I don’t think conservative Calvinism is friendly to the idea that certain sinners, by virtue of being in vitro, deserve a special, vigorous defense against and insulation from the pains and injuries of life (including death). That is to say, the pro-life worldview seems to believe that the unborn are in a special, hands-off category.”
Can you please clarify this?
How can you call the Jewish Holocaust a holocaust if it was merely the enactment of German legislation?
Chunck, to be frank, I’m going to have to put the brakes on this attempt to compare two phenomenon. I reject the premise that holocaust comparison and rhetoric is justified. It isn’t, it’s misguided and reckless to say the least—we have a fundamental disagreement. Forgive the implication, but the enticement to go down this path seems like when my kids claim my disciplining of them misunderstands their ill behavior. Bull-bleep. You can press it if you like, but I refuse to accept it and you likely won’t get very far with me here.
And I don’t understand how when you avoid my question by answering, “I’m not a medico, so I can’t describe what takes place during certain medical procedures,” it is not unfair of me to conclude that since you’re not a historian you cannot describe what took place during the Holocaust, which disqualifies you from commenting on comparisons between the two subjects.
Neither are you an historian, so what qualifies you to compare the two? But I disagree that just because neither of us are historical experts we can’t have our views of something. But maybe my mistake was in thinking you literally wanted a thing described that I am unqualified to do. Apparently, what you were after was more an interpretation that renders these procedures to be tantamount to ovens and gas chambers. Thus, I refer to my point above. I’m not having it.
Finally, this paragraph is missing something, because your conclusion does not follow your point about the rights of Jesus:
“I’m not appealing to Calvinism to make law (as many Calvinist seem to), rather to confront the premises of certain traditions of men. If Calvinism may rightly challenge American notions of freewill and human ability, I don’t see why it can’t also confront American notions of life and death. If Jesus had the inalienable right to not be unlawfully murdered, I fail to see why certain sinners deserve to be left alone. I don’t think conservative Calvinism is friendly to the idea that certain sinners, by virtue of being in vitro, deserve a special, vigorous defense against and insulation from the pains and injuries of life (including death). That is to say, the pro-life worldview seems to believe that the unborn are in a special, hands-off category.”
Can you please clarify this?
I’m not sure what’s unclear. But I’m suggesting that it is quite curious to me how Calvinists can accept the premise that certain (“innocent” or “semi-innocent”?) sinners have a special right to life when Jesus himself laid his down, when he said that to have life one must lose it. When we rightly criticize evangelicals for idolizing the family, why would Calvinists accept the idolizing of life?
You are totally (that is, 100%) misreading Justice Ginsburg’s comment! You are taking the quotation out of context and infusing it with a meaning that is DIAMETRICALLY OPPOSED to the meaning she was conveying in the interview.
Justice Ginsburg has for a long time been an outspoken critic of Roe. The reasons for this are twofold: (1) it removed the issue of abortion from the sphere of the political branches of government and from the states; and (2) because it was not written with the intention of furthering the cause of women’s ‘freedom to choose’, etc., but — rather — with the intention of ensuring the autonomy of doctors to conduct abortions.
I realize that you disagree w/ Ginsburg about the abortion issue, writ large, but with respect to this specific issue, you and she are IN AGREEMENT. In this sentence —
“Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of. ”
— Justice Ginsburg is NOT applauding the reasoning of eugenicists but CONDEMNING it. The fact is that the population control and eugenics have a long history of being associated primarily with the Right in the history of the 19th and 20th Centuries in the United States, and support for abortion was, for a long time, an integral part of that, as was Social Darwinism, etc.
It was not until Richard Nixon’s famous political formulation of the “silent majority” that the Right began to take up opposition to abortion as a cause to which to pay extensive lip service. In fact, although Reagan talked the talk, the evidence shows that he was all but indifferent to the issue. And George H. W. Bush was for a long time a committed supporter of “population control,” including birth control and abortion.
Again, I’m not expecting you to suddenly agree with Justice Ginsburg about everything, but at least give credit where credit is due. The history of these intellectual and political traditions is much more complicated than you’re making it out to be.
P,
You missed this:
http://heidelblog.wordpress.com/2009/07/15/the-return-of-eugenics/#comment-10416
Zrim,
Bulverisms aside, you are being inconsistent. The only argument you gave to defend your position that abortion should not be compared to the Holocaust was abortion “is not a ‘holocaust,’ it is the way our legislation is ordered.” You grounded your argument in the law of the land, as if the law is relevant to the point, which it is not because the Nazi government ordered (authorized, legalized) the systematic extermination of the Jews, just as our government has legalized abortion. Both were/are legally authorized procedures. Your argument is therefore inconsistent.
My point about doctors and historians was to hold you to your standard, not mine. You stated that you are not qualified to describe a partial-birth abortion because you are not a medico. Therefore, by your standard you are not qualified to address the Holocaust because you are not a historian. It’s a matter of consistency. Personally, I believe your medico answer was a disingenuous excuse to avoid the hard truth, just as your appeal to the law of the land as distinguishing abortion from the Holocaust was a weak attempt to make a distinction were none exists. Now, instead of owning your inconsistency, you are resorting to irresponsible implications, which is just an ad hominem argument.
“I’m not sure what’s unclear. But I’m suggesting that it is quite curious to me how Calvinists can accept the premise that certain (“innocent” or “semi-innocent”?) sinners have a special right to life when Jesus himself laid his down, when he said that to have life one must lose it. When we rightly criticize evangelicals for idolizing the family, why would Calvinists accept the idolizing of life?”
I thought this was your gist but I did not want to presume. The words “right to life” have become the pro-life slogan. They don’t bother me because I understand what they mean without idolizing anything. The import of these words, however, is not so much a “right to life” as it is a “right not to be murdered.”
When you grant that abortion is murder — a violation of the Sixth (which was a question that you did not answer) — then it behooves our society to keep the commandment and protect life (born and unborn) from murder, and if you think this makes an idol of life, then you seriously misunderstand the meaning of the word, which is no surprise given your ridiculous misinterpretation of the text above.
Chunck,
I’ve explained my political view on this issue, and, like I suggested, I think it’s pretty darn conservative. I think what’s eating you is that I refuse to jump on the outrage-express, which I think is just as conservative. (Choicers get equally ansty when one suggests that lifers aren’t “misogynists and oppressors.”)
I understand the refusal to grant that the life worldview is absolutely immune to idolatry. But I understand that anything created is vulnerable to being idolized. Life is created. We easily accuse the world of idolizing technology, sex, money, family, people, etc., etc. Yet it seems the rules are suspended when it comes to that most precious created thing, namely life. The powerful political correctness of the “culture of life” in religious circles doesn’t help either. But Jesus said we must hate our own lives if we want to live. If you ask me, that’s a ll order, so resistance is little wonder.
But f life is as precious as we all believe, don’t you think that it’s at least worth the consideration that the life worldview might be the most heinous form of idolatry on earth?
Zrim,
Nothing eating me here, not even your double standard. If you can live with it, I can live with it.
However, I cannot live with you using the gospel as an excuse to sentence an entire class of human beings to death (the unborn), arguing that they have no rights anyway; but when it comes to another class of human beings (the Jews), you argue that their deaths were undeserved and that I must honor their legacy. How odd that you accuse me of idolizing life after you condemned me for not idolizing their deaths.
And when you use the Lord Jesus’ command to die to ourselves, lose our lives, hate our lives, etc., as your proof text to justify abortion (funny, you don’t use these same texts to justify the Holocaust, as though the Jews deserved to live more than the unborn), then I must conclude that the problem is not pro-lifer’s comparison of abortion to the Holocaust — the problem is your hypocritical understanding of the gospel.
From now on I’ll call it Zrim’s List.
Chunck,
Especially after I have thumbnailed my political views on this legislative issue, I don’t see how I’ve used the gospel to “justify abortion.” What I am suggesting is that the gospel challenges the “philosophies of men.” Those are two different things. The former is a civil matter. The latter is spiritual matter. The gospel has no bearing or business on how a civil society orders itself, which means it has nothing to say to whether it should be a matter of states’ rights or one form or another of federal legislation (i.e. national criminalization or legalization). But it does have bearing on ideological assumptions, as in “taking every thought captive for Christ,” etc.
I think you may have ingested too much of your own product. I’m not “accusing” you of anything or “condemning” you; I’m asking you to seriously consider some of my points, which is to say, don’t you think our deepest held ideologies are challenged by our theology? If I have such a seriously misguided and hypocritical grasp of the gospel in my points here, what do you think Jesus meant by all that “cannot live unless you die” stuff? Did he mean my life may indeed be prized over my devotion to him? I mean, he also said he’s going to replace the sun and dissolve my marriage, two things I also really, really like. Did he really mean it, or was he just being exceptionally inspirational?
Besides, if it’s really a holocaust, shouldn’t you be doing a lot more than bashing my brains in here?
Zrim,
You’re talking all over yourself like a guy who got pulled over for a DUI and he doesn’t have his ID. “But occifer, I only had one drink.” Burp.
I’ll be glad to answer every single one of your questions after we finish this thread but I’m not going to let you shift the focus from the original point, which is the comparison of the mass extermination of unborn children in contemporary America with the mass extermination of European Jews during the Nazi era.
To recap: First, you claimed that since legislation in American has legalized abortion on demand, it is therefore not comparable to the Holocaust. Second, you claimed that the American unborn children have no right to life because the gospel (Zrim’s List) commands them to die to themselves, hate their lives, etc. And somewhere in between these two you argued for abortion because you believe the pro-life movement has made an idol of life, which is a pretty good argument to nullify the Sixth on the grounds that it violates the Second.
However, when I noted that German legislation authorized the Jewish Holocaust just as American legislation has authorized abortion, you ignored my point and got huffy. And when I explained that “right to life” really means “right not to be murdered,” you ignored my point. And when I called you on your misinterpretation and misapplication of the gospel commands, you carried on about your conservative politics, your irrelevant worldview, and other things that are not salient to the point. And when I noted your inconsistency in your misapplication of the gospel commands — viz. you believe that the gospel commands (Zrim’s List) confer no right to live on the unborn but you refuse to apply the same gospel commands to the Jews who died in the Holocaust — you ignored my point.
I think your worldview is much shallower than you can see and if I could, I would draw you a picture of a man who has painted himself into a corner where he scribbled the word “CONTRARIAN” in big bold letters on the wall but he has no way out of his corner except by applying a double standard or admitting he pushed his contrarianism too far.
For the sake of illustration, we’ll call that man “Zrim.”
Chunck,
We have a fundamental disagreement. As I have said repeatedly, the comparison to the holocaust is over-wrought, irresponsible and incendiary. You disagree; you think it’s perfectly legitimate. Because of our fundamental disagreement, I have said I won’t pursue this trail since it’s like trying to explain a color, but you this has not been acceptable to you. I am not asking you to justify your reach to the holocaust, just to recognize our disagreement.
When it comes to the question of law, I have not said that “children don’t have a right to life.” I have said some human beings don’t have the right to take the lives of others, at will and by whim, on the grounds that the former houses the latter; when the question is “may she or mayn’t she” I answer that she mayn’t. When it comes to the philosophical notion that anyone has a “right to life,” I have raised theological questions, which I don’t see as any different from when we theologically question philosophical notions of human freedom, autonomy, liberty, free will, etc.
You have interpreted these questions as a “justification for abortion.” I am unclear on how someone with my political perspective could possibly be interpreted this way. However, I will freely concede that my views certainly allow for the legalization of abortion to exist. But that is precisely what a states’ rights (or local legislature) view presupposes, so I don’t see how you can fault me. I am perfectly comfortable with state A criminalizing abortion and state B legalizing it. Those with fetus-politics and femme-politics alike cannot tolerate their morality being violated anywhere. I understand and appreciate the arguments of both the lifer and the choicer, but my view is that when it comes to autonomous rights these should be granted neither fetuses nor females but local legislatures.
You seem to be devolving into ad hominem. I think I’m quite near done. Feel free to have the last word.
Zrim,
I know you want it to be like trying to explain a color but it’s not — it’s like trying to explain the difference between the Jewish Holocaust and American abortion. In one instance a nation legalized genocide and in the other instance a nation has legalized infanticide. I think it’s a pretty simple concept to understand but I also think you tie yourself into knots trying to hold your contrarian positions.
When you complain that you don’t see how I could interpret your view as “justification for abortion,” it’s because you stated it as a Christian axiom (which I found ridiculous), not as “theological questions” as you claim above. This is another example of you talking all over yourself (I could cite others). I’m not sure if it’s sophistry or if you’re not a clear writer — e.g. you mistook “American values” for certain inalienable rights (at least “inalienable” as deemed by the founding fathers) in the Declaration of Independence. The two intersect but they are by no means the same and they are by no means “American” since their origin is attributed to Locke. Normally this wouldn’t matter to me, but since you place such a high premium on your politics it registered.
I’m not trying to nit pick or engage in ad homs, I’m merely pointing out some of your inconsistencies that have helped me form my opinion.
There are those who strain the gnat and swallow the camel.
Besides being a contrarian tied in knots, Chunck, Grim is a nominalist. It’s all just a game of words. It don’t mean a thing.
So somebody doesn’t like “right to life”, what’s wrong with pro life? Granted from God’s perspective, nobody has a so called “right to life”, we’re all sinners, but so what? That’s exactly not what we are talking about. Somebody is confusing categories. We’re talking about the civil realm and rights among men, while the objection is from somebody who supposedly champions the natural law and 2 kingdom theory.
Regardless abortion is to take human life without the benefit of a jury trial and a conviction of a capital crime. Parse it any way you will, being alive and inconvenient is not even a misdemeanor. Neither is abortion constitutional.
Like it or not, abortion is a violation of the 6th commandment, and if NPR, for instance, doesn’t like calling it a holocaust, let them find a better word, because we have already killed more babies than the Nazis killed Jews, in a comparable time. Likewise compromised Christians.