Monday 26 January 2009

'Culture of Life': Ur Doin It Rong

The Dallas Morning News tips us to a 'Catholic author and "pro-life American"' Sean Michael Winters, writing at a blog of a Jesuit magazine who has seemingly come to a sensible conclusion about the March for Life, the annual anti-abortion bunfest.

It has failed utterly to make a difference in this nation’s abortion policy. So, on the one hand, is it really newsworthy that the pro-life movement is still banging its head against the wall?. . .

That said, there is a different reason why I do not participate in the annual March. I think it probably alienates the very people we should be trying to reach: women facing crisis pregnancies. The rhetoric on the signs tend to equate abortion with murder which may be objectively true but also lacks the empathy with the desperate circumstance of many women that is the necessary precursor to an effective evangelization of the Gospel of Life. And, finally, the March perpetuates the false belief that if Roe were overturned the abortion rate would plummet. In fact, most states would codify Roe. A legal strategy must be replaced by a cultural strategy if we are to make a real dent in the abortion rate in this country.


Oh, and what's that 'cultural strategy'?

*sigh* More Crisis Pregnancy Centres. Thousands more.

There are tens of thousands of parishes in America. Each one of them must become a sympathetic crisis pregnancy center, a place of sanctuary and solidarity for women who find themselves with an unplanned pregnancy and few practical options for raising the child as they would want. The vast array of social services and hospitals that the Church dispenses must be put at the disposal of women in this situation.


A vast array of services, eh? Well, that's something practical at least.

Unlike BLOB BLOGGING WHINER moaning about the lack of fetus fetishist pro-life 'culture'.

[The Democrats in the US] talked amongst themselves. They were creative. They produce art and other cultural products.

We have pro-lifers have no culture.


Bingo, SUZY!

On the other hand, as everyone knows, we on the left have a culture of death and a lot more fun it is too.

12 comments:

Mike said...

"The vast array of social services and hospitals that the Church dispenses must be put at the disposal of women in this situation."

Funny, that's exactly how Hamas gets its support. And Hezbollah. What do all these things have in common with the Catholic Church?

Ah yes, religious wingnut misogynists who want women to be baby machines and domestic servants.

I guess that stuff is only bad when the other side does it eh?

deBeauxOs said...

A one-note shrieeekkkfest does not a culture make. Blob Blogging Whiner is suffering as usual from delusions of grandeur.

Anonymous said...

The comments there are an interesting read:

"When I see media coverage of the marchers each year, I am curious how many of the marchers would be willing to take a needy pregnant woman into their own homes"

What a trite argument. Why should they, they did not make the choice to get pregnant in the first place. Where is personal responsibility here?


This is kind of the mirror image of the complaint that pro-lifers do not care for the fetus after it is born as much as they do before it is born. Here it is presupposed that it is obvious that they shouldn't have to!

The writer of the comment furthermore claims to have had an abortion but that the choice should not have been made available to her. I would have liked her to have gone further and explained how it would have been made unavailable to her.

deBeauxOs said...

Presumably being kept under lock and key without access to health care providers or any opportunity to subvert products or implements that could be used to abort herself, would that have worked for her?

Mike said...

"What a trite argument. Why should they, they did not make the choice to get pregnant in the first place. Where is personal responsibility here?"

Perfect evidence that the "pro-life" movement is not about saving a "baby" but punishing the mother for doing something sexual and possibly "immoral"

Its not pro-life, its anti-woman, as our late lamented George Carlin is wont to say.

Anonymous said...

Well, to be fair, this person was responding to the author and other commenters who favor assistance to pregnant women and/or participate in it.

The BBW comments are very interesting too, by the way. The feeling is that society condones abortion because it doesn't love babies enough. Consequently, positive action against abortion in the cultural domain would involve public celebrations of babies as such. They later reminisce about a time in which they feel that such was assumed to be the case, until the 70s came along and people with selfish agendas hijacked a simple, happy (but materially poorer) culture.

deBeauxOs said...

The implication is that anyone 'conceived in sin' should be made to suffer for the actions of the woman. This ideological imperative and/or religious dogma provides the basis for enforcing pregnancy and it turns the crank on the abortion-criminalizing industry.

fern hill said...

Mike: Good point about Hamas and Hezbollah.

dBO: Yeah, 'conceived in sin' = bastard = deserves anything shitty that happens to him or her. When I was a kid, my parents were divorced. I didn't meet another child of divorced parents until I was in high school. I was labelled a 'child of a broken home'. My taste of bastardhood. Anything bad happened, I was blamed. Fire in a vacant field? Must have been that fatherless fern hill. Probably turned me into the rabble-rouser I am.

Hiya, Mandos: Weird isn't it? We don't lurve baybees enough. Yeah, all over telly and ads in general, we see those demonized yet fat, happy, gurgly baybees. I ask you: What planet do these people come from?

Anonymous said...

Well, I mean, they have evidence, don't they? I mean, if we really loved babies as a society, every woman would be continuously pregnant. Right? Right?

deBeauxOs said...

Just imagine - if the extraordinary arrival of a baby as a sacred gift from [deity of your choice] ensured that motherhood were recognized by all society as an exalted and powerful holy office held by women, men would be demanding - DEMANDING!!! - the right to become pregnant too.

Oh wait. Not in the Pope's Catholic Church.

Anonymous said...

Sure it is.

(Another favorite web site of mine. I didn't realize they were still updating it. It's fascinating.)

Alison said...

Bunfest! Love that word!
Sanctuary. I remember sanctuary. Girls who got pregnant in high school and whose parents had no money or other rellies to send them to kept them indoors with no visitors for the whole pregnancy.
Yeah, let's build an institution around that.

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