Read Letters to a Young Progressive: How to Avoid Wasting Your Life Protesting Things You Don't Understand for Free Online Page B
Authors: Mike S. Adams
that burglary rates will decrease when we have burned down everyone’s houses, but by now you get the point.
Finally, it is worth mentioning that abortion has not been an effective means of stopping child abuse (even if we exclude abortion from the definition of child abuse). In 1973, there were 167,000 reported instances of child abuse. By 1982, reported instances of child abuse had risen to 929,000. That is an increase of over 500 percent in less than a decade. When will liberals take responsibility for this unmitigated disaster?
4. “It is wrong for a woman to be forced to bring a handicapped baby into the world.”
It is frequently suggested that abortion is morally permissible when doctors discover, prior to birth, that a baby suffers from certain physical handicaps such as Down syndrome or cerebral palsy. My response usually goes something like this:
“I agree that there are far too many handicapped people in the world. Every summer I take busloads of people who are wheelchair-bound on a trip to the Grand Canyon. We enjoy the view for a few minutes before I roll them off the edge of the Canyon. They are usually dead long before they hit the bottom. That is a good thing for them and for society as a whole. It is better to be dead than to be handicapped. Whether they realize it or not, their lives are not worth living.”
This scenario provokes a strong reaction—as it should. Something about it makes advocates of aborting the handicapped look grossly insensitive. This is usually when they argue that they are not killing a handicapped person but rather preventing a handicapped person from ever being born. Please review argument #1.
The last time I spoke on this topic at Summit Ministries, a handsome, intelligent, and athletic 6’2” African American student approached me and told me, “I was misdiagnosed with cerebral palsy before I was born. The doctors were wrong. I am so glad my mother had me. Thank you for your speech.”
5. “It is wrong for a woman to be forced to give birth to a baby she cannot afford.”
This argument is also remarkably callous—so much so that it is difficult to understand how those who make it could describe themselves as “liberal.” Do we really need to start reassigning Jonathan Swift’s Modest Proposal to underline how profoundly sick and distasteful this argument really is? Swift wrote—satirically of course—a proposal that suggested people eat their babies in order to relieve their hunger and poverty. Serious arguments in favor of “choice” often sound chillingly similar.
For those who have never read Swift, I like to point to a more contemporary example. In the 80s, a punk rock band called The Dead Kennedys wrote a song called “Kill the Poor” in which they mockingly suggested that we kill poor people as a means of eliminating poverty. That would certainly eliminate poverty. But is it really an acceptable solution? Of course not. That was their point.
It’s a good idea to confront the advocates of legal abortion with the question of whether it is permissible to kill to eliminate poverty. In response, they typically say something like this: “No, I would never advocate killing the poor. I would advocate abortion to prevent them from becoming poor people in the first place.” They are trapped once again in the untenable position of denying the personhood of the unborn. Please review argument #1.
Of course, there is another aspect to the poverty-as-a-defense-of-abortion argument. It is the crass argument that the mother cannot “afford” the baby. This raises another fundamental question: “Is it permissible to kill a person in order to alleviate financial stress?” If so, I’d like to kill the banker who holds my mortgage. Just kidding. Of course, I cannot do that anyway since a) he is a middle-aged man and b) the Supreme Court does not authorize abortions in the 200th trimester—at least, they haven’t yet!
6. “It is wrong to force a
Finally, it is worth mentioning that abortion has not been an effective means of stopping child abuse (even if we exclude abortion from the definition of child abuse). In 1973, there were 167,000 reported instances of child abuse. By 1982, reported instances of child abuse had risen to 929,000. That is an increase of over 500 percent in less than a decade. When will liberals take responsibility for this unmitigated disaster?
4. “It is wrong for a woman to be forced to bring a handicapped baby into the world.”
It is frequently suggested that abortion is morally permissible when doctors discover, prior to birth, that a baby suffers from certain physical handicaps such as Down syndrome or cerebral palsy. My response usually goes something like this:
“I agree that there are far too many handicapped people in the world. Every summer I take busloads of people who are wheelchair-bound on a trip to the Grand Canyon. We enjoy the view for a few minutes before I roll them off the edge of the Canyon. They are usually dead long before they hit the bottom. That is a good thing for them and for society as a whole. It is better to be dead than to be handicapped. Whether they realize it or not, their lives are not worth living.”
This scenario provokes a strong reaction—as it should. Something about it makes advocates of aborting the handicapped look grossly insensitive. This is usually when they argue that they are not killing a handicapped person but rather preventing a handicapped person from ever being born. Please review argument #1.
The last time I spoke on this topic at Summit Ministries, a handsome, intelligent, and athletic 6’2” African American student approached me and told me, “I was misdiagnosed with cerebral palsy before I was born. The doctors were wrong. I am so glad my mother had me. Thank you for your speech.”
5. “It is wrong for a woman to be forced to give birth to a baby she cannot afford.”
This argument is also remarkably callous—so much so that it is difficult to understand how those who make it could describe themselves as “liberal.” Do we really need to start reassigning Jonathan Swift’s Modest Proposal to underline how profoundly sick and distasteful this argument really is? Swift wrote—satirically of course—a proposal that suggested people eat their babies in order to relieve their hunger and poverty. Serious arguments in favor of “choice” often sound chillingly similar.
For those who have never read Swift, I like to point to a more contemporary example. In the 80s, a punk rock band called The Dead Kennedys wrote a song called “Kill the Poor” in which they mockingly suggested that we kill poor people as a means of eliminating poverty. That would certainly eliminate poverty. But is it really an acceptable solution? Of course not. That was their point.
It’s a good idea to confront the advocates of legal abortion with the question of whether it is permissible to kill to eliminate poverty. In response, they typically say something like this: “No, I would never advocate killing the poor. I would advocate abortion to prevent them from becoming poor people in the first place.” They are trapped once again in the untenable position of denying the personhood of the unborn. Please review argument #1.
Of course, there is another aspect to the poverty-as-a-defense-of-abortion argument. It is the crass argument that the mother cannot “afford” the baby. This raises another fundamental question: “Is it permissible to kill a person in order to alleviate financial stress?” If so, I’d like to kill the banker who holds my mortgage. Just kidding. Of course, I cannot do that anyway since a) he is a middle-aged man and b) the Supreme Court does not authorize abortions in the 200th trimester—at least, they haven’t yet!
6. “It is wrong to force a
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