For the last couple of decades, I have noticed a shift in the paradigm of the pro-choice argument.
What the left would characterize as progress in rationale and intellect, the right would more accurately characterize as simply throwing the argument of the decade against the wall and hoping it sticks.
That is, until science and basic logic discredit it and the next argument becomes mainstream.
Pro-choice started initially with an overarching argument of women’s rights, then it evolved to abortions becoming too unsafe if made illegal, to the separation of church and state, to citing incredibly marginal statistics in order to justify widespread murder, to my body my choice, and the most recent concoction is summed up in the meme below much of which is an argument that has become widespread in social media and politics:
First off, focusing on the specifics of this misleading information for just a minute, there are three serious flaws with this argument.
– First, a baby’s heart starts beating just 21 or 22 days after conception and so to say “the so-called heartbeats” just dismisses science altogether.
– Second, stating “the cries of real children” then begs the question, what are the unborn children considered? Not real? Fake children?
– Third, regardless of what one’s position is on the immigration crisis, it’s quite the unbelievably gross stretch to claim that children in the southern border are being exterminated to the same degree that Jews were during the holocaust. This is just absurd.
This same logic however, has been used to attack pro-lifers while throwing into the picture homelessness, children living in poverty, lack of health coverage, burden on society, and now the border crisis.
So let us focus on what the real tactic of what is being done here. The tactic is to throw a blanket of perpetual injustices that humanity has suffered since our existence on this Earth over the pro-life position and make the claim that as long as these injustices still exist, then not only can we not claim the pro-life status but, taking it a step further, we should not even advocate for the unborn because each and every one of us will not take personal action in assuring that each and every child is born into a life of prosperity and unending bliss. So long as there is a single humanitarian crisis involving children literally anywhere on the planet and so long as we don’t personally adopt each and every one of them until every last remnant of every crisis is solved, we have no right to advocate for the unborn.
I made this analogy in a previous piece I wrote, but to further put the lunacy of this logic into perspective, let us imagine a homeless man who is living in a tent in a park. This man is obviously unemployed, contributes nothing to the productivity of society, and basically lives day by day in the hopes that he can make it to the next. This man is about to be murdered and I have knowledge of it and I have the ability to stop it. The pro-choice advocate, while processing this with the same logical fallacy mentioned before, would look at this situation with the mindset of “If you save this man, will you take him into your home, provide him with food and comfort, make sure he gains health insurance and personally assure us that he will become a productive member of society? No? Then you have no right to save his life.” While the pro-life mindset would look at this situation and think, “Ok, will I personally take him into my home and assure society that he will have a successful life moving forward? With a wife and child of my own, truthfully, probably not. But does this justify letting the man die? Absolutely not.”
Everyone, both born and unborn has a right to life and a protection of that life. Placing conditions and stipulations on pretecting that life, however, erases the very foundation of it being a right at all.
This is not to diminish the efforts made by several Catholic Christians across the globe who are impassioned with making the world a better place through each humanitarian effort of their own choosing. These people are called by God and I believe are the first in line into His kingdom. But to blanket cover the entire pro-life position by making the claim that all injustices need to be solved entirely before we can even begin to protect the unborn is absurd and a logical fallacy at its best. Make no mistake, this is not a pro-choice cry for a resolution of an injustice, this is a manipulation tactic to promote a political agenda with no basis in logic.