The Early Death of Any Future Peace:

 

The biggest problem with the issue of abortion seems, at first, to be that no one wants to talk about it *as* a controversial issue. All the major arguments which either “side” reiterates have been around for roughly half a century at least, and we have made no progress in resolving them in the last forty years. This does not stop idealogues from acting like the matter’s settled and that *their* side won, however.

 

Yet beyond the moderate, “politically correct” and “civil” surface of the issue lies the deeper issue: Hardly anybody wants to talk about abortion *in itself*, and those who advocate for “choice” (and, by extension, for abortion, as it has to be a choice) are those least willing to discuss *the act itself* and whether it is good or evil to commit.

 

Instead, we hear from advocates for “choice” a slew of beautiful ideals, impassioned speeches, and redundant platitudes:

-   the value of one’s bodily autonomy,

-   the need for women to receive protection in a masculine society,

-   the value of a “basic human right”,

-   the need to keep the population number manageable, and

-   the consequences of allowing children to be born in broken homes.

 

Undoubtedly, all these ideals are noble in themselves, yet they have three key factors which they hold in common:

 

1.If any *one* of these ideals were valued as a sacred end, in the pursuit of which all lesser evils could be justified, the ends would justify the means, abortion, as a means, would be permissible in serving the ideal, and, if *all* these ideals could be exalted thus, the evidence for the “pro-choice” position would be overwhelming.

 

That is well and good, but then we come upon the second point:

 

2.*None* of these ideals is valued as a sacred end by those same people who profess it as an end:

-   The advocates for “bodily autonomy” are seldom “anti-vaxxers”, and they’ll rarely advocate for personal autonomy if the intent is to do harm to one’s own body;

-   the defenders of the health and safety needs of women do not tend to advocate for either gun rights or for gendered bathrooms which exclude transwomen;

-   advocates for “basic human rights” will wear their voices thin in shouting “Black Lives Matter”, “Trans Lives Matters”, so on and so forth, but they’ll assume they only “matter” past the fetal stage;

-   the advocates for stopping population growth tend to defy unnecessary warfare, slavery, elitist healthcare systems, ablism, abstinence, and “One Child” Laws, whilst advocating for a stronger welfare state;

-   the very people who’ll agree that children should be cared for and that one should have respect for one’s own “flesh and blood” may just as easily insist that one can treat “one’s body” as one pleases, though that body *is* one’s very flesh and blood.

 

At every step, the attitudes and platitudes of liberal society reveal an underlying contradiction in themselves and in between each other. “Hardly anyone believes,” as Zizek said. If anyone could truly elevate a petty thing like “human rights” to such a stature that it would be worth an act of murder, then that individual would be dismissed as an extremist, not a liberal.

 

There is no way around this problem, either, as these platitudes are so diverse and manifold that elevating even one of them as “sacred” would be to demean the rest of them, which often must be undermined in the pursuit of what is elevated. “Pro-choice” advocates don’t simply champion abortion, but they champion the right to choose the best excuse, in any given moment, for it.

 

“No one’s perfect” is another way of saying everyone’s a hypocrite, as anyone’s who’s *not* a hypocrite is an extremist, and that’s just a deeper form of inescapable hypocrisy, as if to say, “Yes, I’m a hypocrite, but at the least I’m no extremist!” Hardly anyone believes or cares; far fewer people truly *act*. The game is one of “acting like” you care, of giving the correct responses to these “issues” but not living them. (No wonder many liberals are college students nowadays!! Their whole curriculum, since birth, consists in just reiterating platitudes. If *that’s* not child abuse, what is?)

 

There will be those who try to mediate this conflict by insisting that it’s not a question of discerning just one sacred end to be pursued at the expense of others, but of balancing the many and pursuing them as peacefully as possible. To that end – that of being “civil” and “inclusive” – one might note that, in addition to the values I have listed, there are countless others which, already, I’ve alluded to and which conflict with those I’ve listed in a manner which explains the contradictions, contradictions which occur, inherently, in Life, for which no living being ought to bear the burden of the blame. So be it. Yet there is *one* factor all these platitudes *do* have in common:

 

3.All of their contradictions validate abortion not just as a means, in service to a higher end, but *as an end within itself*.

 

The advocates for vaccination, for example, will assume that any rational and healthy person *would* get vaccinated, just as pro-choice advocates assume that any rational and healthy woman *might* elect to have her child aborted. In both cases, whether it’s a virus or a fetus, killing it with the assistance of a doctor is considered “rational”, as though it were the *goal*.

 

If all of these ideals, such as autonomy, are sacred ends, abortion is a means, but what if those ideals were merely means to reach this end? We like to think “the road to Hell is paved with good intentions”, that “the lesser of two evils is the Greater Good”, “the ends will justify the means”, etc. Yet what if the entire purpose, from the outset, is to find a pretext to do Evil?

 

It should come as no surprise, then, that we’ve not resolved this issue.

 

**[({R.G.)}]**