The putrid smell of opportunism

Abortion criminalizers have a stench about them. It is a curious mélange of sulfurous fire-and-brimstone, medieval dry rot, fear-soaked piety, and the acrid fumes of high arrogance. In order to mask this odour, they crouch under the cloak of self-righteousness by associating their cause with respectable human rights concerns.

Back in the 1970s and 1980s, the anti-choice organizations deliberately co-opted the words genocide and holocaust to lend the gloss of credibility to their propaganda. As you may remember, their exploitation of these terms was challenged by the survivors and descendants of groups who have been historically targeted and subjected to ethno-focused violence or religious persecution. Grudgingly, the abortion criminalizers had to stop mis-using these two words in their publications.

In recent years, they have slithered into the proximity of civil rights activists, hoping that the credibility and legitimacy of organizations that have worked hard to eradicate racism, such as the NAACP, would somehow deodorize their anti-choice rhetorical slime. See Abortion Is Slavery and Poverty .

Observe how smoothly those who would enforce compulsory pregnancy divert criticism away from their goal of controlling women’s reproductive capacity, by proclaiming they are as pure in their thoughts and actions as those white folks who championed civil rights. Fetus fetishizers are draping themselves in the flag of the modern martyr and demanding the same respect as white civil rights workers who were excoriated for the assistance they gave to Martin Luther King and to the descendants of enslaved Black people.Quite the sleight of hand, is it not? Those who supported the civil rights movement did not set off bombs nor assassinate anyone. Given that the murderous strategies used by the extremist fringe within the anti-choice, abortion-criminalizing organizations are the same as those used by the extremist fringe within the anti-civil rights groups, the logical and correct analogy would be that “Fetus-fetishizers are the 21st century’s Jim Crow segregationists”.

If one wanted to draw a parallel between two distinctive social justice movements that are fuelled by similar motives, these are the ones who share a common vision of civil rights.

First posted at Birth Pangs.