Vox really pulled the gloves off in his recent post about abortion:
Let’s make it perfectly clear. If you are a doctor or a nurse who
performs abortions, you are every bit as bad, every bit as purely evil,
as the SS-Totenkopfverbänder who slaughtered people in the National
Socialists’ extermination camps. And if you are a woman who aborts her
child, you are every bit as bad, every bit as disgusting, as the SS
guards at those camps, who may not have bloodied their hands themselves,
butwere complicitcollaborated by making the killing possible.And if you simply support the so-called “right” to legal abortion, you
are no better than a card-carrying member of the National Socialist
German Workers Party. In fact, you are even worse. For all their many
flaws, the National Socialists at least had a substantive cause: the
preservation of a defeated and economically devastated German nation.
Your cause is mere female convenience, rendering you even more repellant
and abominable in the eyes of anyone who values human life. Their
symbol was the reversed Swastika, but yours should be a pyramid of
infant skulls.I understand you have your rationalizations and your justifications. I
am aware that you firmly believe that an unborn, or partially born, or
newly born, child is either not human or is for some reason or another
unworthy of the same right to life possessed by adult human beings who
hate racism, support sexual equality, and voted for Barack Obama. I
appreciate that you are absolutely convinced that acting to terminate
the life of a genetically unique individual who is dependent upon his
mother for his continued survival is no different than cutting one’s
hair or trimming one’s nails. I know you assert that because it is a
woman’s body, she can do whatever she wants with it, all the various
trespassing and drug and flasher laws notwithstanding. Or perhaps you
have a different reason, in which case feel free to make your case for
it here.But remember this: the Nazis had their justifications too. And those
justifications were considerably more soundly rooted in science,
history, and logic than yours are.
There are many who will be outraged at Vox’s portrayal of abortionists as being no better, and in many cases considerably worse, than Nazi eugenicists and war criminals.
I am not one of them.
Vox is absolutely correct.
Let’s take a step back for a moment and recognise that abortion is a massively divisive issue, even among libertarians. For libertarians, the issue of abortion is a very uncomfortable one, because it sits right smack bang in the middle of a massive dilemma for any conscientious libertarian. Many leaders of libertarian thought, such as Murray Rothbard, actively supported and still support abortion rights. Libertarianism is ultimately about letting people live their lives free of outside interference, as long as they do not commit aggression against others in the process. And there is the rub: how do you tell a woman who has every right to live her life as she pleases, as long as she accepts the consequences, what she can and cannot do with her body?
The answer is simple and obvious: a woman’s freedom to do what she wants with her body ends the moment new life is introduced into that body. To argue otherwise is to enter into the absurd situation where one is forced to state that a human foetus is not alive, or human. To deny this is to argue that human life is somehow not special or unique. To deny that is to argue that humans are themselves replaceable, useless, and unworthy of life.
The single most absolute principle of the libertarian position is the Non-Aggression Principle, the axiom that states without equivocation that no one may initiate aggression against another human being. Well, I ask you: what could possibly be constitute more blatant aggression than killing a life that is utterly innocent? That is precisely what abortion comes down to: the termination of a life that has done nothing whatsoever to merit that fate.
Vox has simply stated without hesitation or fear what most of us in this debate would not, for fear of public censure and ridicule. Abortion is fundamentally and morally wrong.
If you want to get an idea of just how wrong it is, check out the pictures from the Gosnell case that show you just what a house of horrors that abortion clinic was. Or, take the case of Norma L. McCorvey, whose desire to have an abortion resulted in the spectacularly awful Supreme Court decision that we know today as Roe v. Wade. What you probably don’t know about this woman is that she later repented deeply of her role in that awful judgement:
I was sitting in O.R.’s offices when I noticed a fetal development
poster. The progression was so obvious, the eyes were so sweet. It hurt
my heart, just looking at them. I ran outside and finally, it dawned on
me. ‘Norma’, I said to myself, ‘They’re right’. I had worked with
pregnant women for years. I had been through three pregnancies and
deliveries myself. I should have known. Yet something in that poster
made me lose my breath. I kept seeing the picture of that tiny,
10-week-old embryo,
and I said to myself, that’s a baby! It’s as if blinders just fell off
my eyes and I suddenly understood the truth — that’s a baby!I felt crushed under the truth of this realization. I had to face up to
the awful reality. Abortion wasn’t about ‘products of conception’. It
wasn’t about ‘missed periods’. It was about children being killed in
their mother’s wombs. All those years I was wrong. Signing that affidavit,
I was wrong. Working in an abortion clinic, I was wrong. No more of
this first trimester, second trimester, third trimester stuff. Abortion —
at any point — was wrong. It was so clear. Painfully clear.
You also probably do not know that Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, was a eugenicist who was an active proponent of efforts to reduce the population of “undesirables” (read: blacks, Hispanics, the genetically inferior, etc.). You may well not know that the legacy of abortion rights conforms precisely with Sanger’s vision, with blacks and Hispanics being far more likely than whites to have abortions.
The death toll from abortion far exceeds that of the barbarity of the Nazi regime. Vox is absolutely correct to note this. His final note in his post is pitch-perfect:
Stop all the endless rationalizations and justifications. Just stop.
They are pointless. You know, in your heart of hearts, they aren’t
convincing anyone. They aren’t even convincing you.
Amen, Vox.
1 Comment
Life is sacred, period. We have no right to tamper with it, at the beginning or the end. Or anywhere in between.