Rationality In The 21st Century

A centrist's take on a wildly partisan world.

[centristchick-blog]

Fetal tissue, euphemisms, and Planned Parenthood videos

The Planned Parenthood sting videos garnered a lot of attention initially, but as more have come out, I’m seeing less and less coverage. Let me start by addressing the videos themselves.

Are they edited? Almost certainly. Edited to only contain content the organization that shot them wants you to see? Likely, but to me, that’s beside the point. Organ harvesting is just a secondary stomach twist to the gut wrenching horror that goes on regularly in our country.

We love euphemisms in this country. Euphemisms mean we don’t have to think about what is actually going on. “Fetal tissue” is a much safer word than “baby”. “Evacuating the uterus” is much more comfortable than “sucking out the baby”. “Donating fetal tissue” is preferable to “cutting up the body for parts for scientific research”.

A straight up outlaw of abortions will not win the kind of victory needed here. A percentage of women will turn to back alley, unsanitary procedures which will endanger their own lives as well. That’s not what we should be going for.

We need to ask important questions. Why are women seeking abortions? Are they in abusive situations? Do they have access to contraceptives? How do we help women, and prevent them from getting to the point where they want an abortion?

We need straight talk. If a woman wants an abortion, she needs to know several things. How developed is her baby? Describe the abortion procedure step by step in real terms. Is the baby sucked out of the womb with a vacuum? Is the head crushed and then the body extracted? This is not going to be an easy conversation. Some women have been brought to this point by a trauma in their lives, and it may again be traumatic to discuss. But the choice she is making will be traumatic on the baby, and a life deserves at least an uncomfortable talk.

If, at the end, an abortion is still elected, then so be it. It would be my hope that these steps would dissuade some women from the procedure. But let’s be truthful. You may support abortion because you don’t think women should have to carry babies if they don’t want to. Fine. But don’t tell me it’s about a right to do whatever you want with your body. It’s about a right to kill babies if we don’t want them.

Pretending that some magical transition happens when a baby is born that transforms a “fetus” into a real person is absurd. As medical advances are made, babies are surviving outside the womb at much younger gestational ages than before. This is going to continue to eat away at the claim that a fetus is a body part of the mother. All body parts of a person have that person’s DNA in them. A fetus has its own DNA. It is its own living organism.

For some reason, killing babies after they are born is considered horrifying, when just a few months prior, it’s totally legal and done in clinics by doctors. We owe it to people to be real and honest about what is going on. We aren’t just “donating fetal tissue to research”, we are killing babies. Babies that couples looking to adopt would be so happy to have, and give so much love to. We need to educate women about what is actually happening, in hopes that, given the choice, women will stop choosing abortion.

[centristchick-blog]

Confederate Flag - a discussion 150 years late

I remember my first trip to South Carolina in 1999. I was with my family visiting my great-aunt. I was perplexed as we drove south of the Mason-Dixon Line. I asked my father why people would fly the Stars and Bars. Didn't the Confederacy lose? Wouldn't African-Americans be offended by that flag? He told me that some Southerners think very differently about that part of history. As a 14 year old from Ohio, I didn't get it. Now, I realize there's not much to get. I understand the argument. Your ancestors fought for their state's rights. You believe them to have been honorable people. You want to believe they fought and died for a just cause. The flag stands for those things. But it doesn't. The south at that time was built entirely on agriculture. That is to say, on the backs of slaves. The only state right the Confederacy was fighting for was the right to own slaves. The cotton plantations could not have run without the forced labor of African-Americans. We see movies set in that time period, and we see white gentlemen in mansions with white ladies in hoop skirts. We don't think about families torn apart at the auction block. Generation after generation beaten down. Now I'm not going to launch into a long white-guilt rant. But I will say that whether or not the Stars and Bars originally stood for black oppression might be debated, but the fact that the two are now inextricably intertwined cannot. That flag is synonymous with the Civil War and the institution of slavery. The fact that it could still fly at government buildings in the 21st century is flabbergasting. It shows a longing for a time in history that we don't want to repeat. Now I don't want the PC police going crazy. I expect to see the flag in museums. I expect to see it on top of the General Lee in "Dukes of Hazzard" reruns. I expect that a number of rednecks will continue to fly it at their homes. However, I don't believe it has a place of importance or relevance in today's world. We need to move forward, not look backward.