I was talking to a friend on the phone and she said she could never vote Republican because they want to take away abortion.”
I said “what’s so horrible about that?”
She said women should have the right to decide what happens to their own bodies.
ME: Did you feel that way when the government FORCED you to wear a mask and get the vaccine? HER: That was different, that was saving lives.
ME: Not killing unborn babies is saving lives too.
SILENCE.
Lavern Spicer is a Black woman running as a Republican for a House seat from Florida. She's what the Republicans love: someone from a traditionally Democratic demographic who is conservative and pushes pro-Trump, pro-conservative, politics. Of course no demographic is going to be a voting monolith. But it seems to me that the small number of Black conservatives someone how think that they speak for the masses who vote differently. But I didn't come here this morning to talk about Black Republicans, but the disingenuous argument many conservatives you to counter the pro-choice argument of "my body, my choice".
Keep in mind that the anti-abortion movement has never been concerned about a woman's right to control what happens to her own body. Most conservatives, until the rollout of the Covid vaccine, never had a problem with mandatory vaccination. In most school districts proof of vaccination for mumps, rubella and measles is required and the military has a longer list of required vaccinations. Other than a fringe movement of anti-vaxxers, most people had no problem with getting themselves or their children vaccinated. Most people trusted the medical consensus that universal, or near universal, vaccination against some diseases was in the public interest, and went along. Most people didn't demand to know what was in the MMR vaccine or refuse to get vaccinated because they didn't understand how it worked.
Any time an anti-abortion advocate brings up this argument, pro-choice people should refuse to engage. It's a rhetorical trap. They didn't care about anyone's bodily autonomy until masking became mandatory in public spaces, and the whole question of to-mask-or-not-to-mask became political and infected by the fringe conspiracy theorists. How would I respond to the following question?
Them: Did you feel that way when the government FORCED you to wear a mask and get the vaccine?
Me: That's a red herring. You're making a bad faith argument. You want to engage me in a discussion about abortion? If so, I'm not going to respond to goalpost moving and false equivalencies.
How about the follow up?
Them: Not killing unborn babies is saving lives too.
This is an anti-abortion cheerleader's go-to response to anything. Any Democratic Party supported program that purports to help people, especially children, is met with that response. We supposedly don't care about children because we support killing them. The anti-abortion folks count on this response shutting us up. Of course killing babies is wrong. How could anyone argue with that? They maintain that "science" has proved that a fetus is alive. But is that relevant? Sperm is alive, an ovum is alive, cancer cells are alive. The question is whether a fetus is a person. And the answer to that cannot be determined by science. It's an opinion, mostly driven by religious belief. Catholics and Protestant Evangelicals believe that a fetus is a person starting at conception. Other Christians, not to mention members of other faiths and people with no faith, believe differently. The position that a fetus is a person, or not a person, is a religiously-based opinion which those with different opinions should not be compelled to abide by.
So the response should be: whether or not a fetus is a "baby" is your opinion, likely based on your religious faith, which I am under no obligation to share. Whether a pregnant woman is a person is not disputed, so her opinion is the only one that should carry any weight.
Don't let them define the boundaries of the discussion.
No comments:
Post a Comment