The Actual Lame Abortion Analogy Hall of Fame (With BONUS Parrot-in-a-cage)

November 8, 2012: I started this blogpost back in April. But today I am INSPIRED! By this piece of batshit lunacy by none other than Stephen Woodworth, he of Woodworth's Wank, aka M312 or The Motion to Reopen the Abortion Debate That Was Thumped in Parliament Six Weeks Ago But That Certain Fetus Fetishists Won't Shut the Fuck Up About.

Now, back to April, 2012:

In the comments here, Ruaidhr said:

I've never been able to figure out why people can't understand how irrelevant "when life begins" is to the discussion.


You could implant Mahatma Ghandi in me, and it wouldn't take away my right to say "get him out of there!"

Which, of course, is a variant on Ye Olde 'What If [insert esteemed person's name]'s Mother Had Aborted Him' schtick. (It's almost invariably a 'Him', BTW.) Ruaidhr is original though. I've never seen Gandhi implanted before, only aborted.

Commenter Godel Noodle gives one of the standard rejoinders to that one. HIs specific is 'horrible abortion doctor', but Hitler, Stalin, Stephen Harper, etc., can also be inserted depending on audience.

Sensing we had a newbie to the Abortion Debate®, I sent GN to the Lame Abortion Analogies Hall of Fame.

But, gotcha! It isn't actually LAAHF. GN thought such a thing would be a grande idée.

I got googling. But to give GN a taste of the wished-for hell a-coming', I linked to JJ's Way Back Machine for Justice for Unborn TV Sets.

Here we have cars and eagle's nests. (And to answer any newbie's question at this point: No. There is nowhere they won't go.)

Unwanted automobile passengers is a standard. Another fave is body functions or body parts.

This one involves a party, unconsciousness, and surprise at being connected to someone who is using your kidney for nine months.

There are many variants on that one, Thomson's Violinist being the classic.

More on kidneys, specifically selling them, from deBeauxOs and JJ.

Slavery is often conjured up but as Ms Magazine observes, it works better for pro-choice.

The problem here is that the slavery analogy only makes sense if you believe having an abortion is somehow equivalent to owning a human being. (It isn’t.)
. . .
The slavery analogy makes much more sense as an argument for choice, not against it. Slavery is about losing one’s freedom and personal autonomy over one’s body and life. As Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, so eloquently put it: “No woman can call herself free who does not own and control her body. No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother.”

Then there's the Hitler-holocaust SHRIEEEEEK and its associated genocide SHRIEEEEEK.

Big Nurse Stanek magicks population control, China's one-child policy, eco-Nazis, death panels, and what-not.

And then there's the ever-popular unpopular house guest analogy.

They all rely on migraine-inducing pretzel logic and wildly absurd 'what-ifs'. They all FAIL.

Now here's someone who knows a thing or two about both analogies and pregnancy.

Having sat through too many evangelical sermons in my younger life, I’ve developed a strong resistance to arguments that draw on analogy. Most of the sermons I endured as a teenager and young adult were heavy-laden with analogies; now I can’t help seeing them as a recourse for lazy-mindedness (not always deliberate) and tendentiousness (usually deliberate). They’re useful for when you want others to believe something for which you don’t have concrete evidence, or which may contain many different truths that are unendingly complex, and the analogy helps you to focus on a single one.
. . .
Pregnancy is not much like organ donation; and it is certainly nothing even potentially akin to being a slave-owner or a (female supremacist) Nazi. (Seriously: those two last ones are central arguments of the anti-abortion movement’s desire to enshrine fetal rights. Anti-abortion advocates imagine that pro-choice women see fetuses as “subhuman”; therefore, much like Nazis and slave owners, they allow them to be eliminated at will. That leap of (ana)logic leads directly into the abyss of manipulativeness and dishonesty.) I’ve always seen the abortion-is-murder analogy as a shocking distortion of the reality of an unwanted pregnancy and the maternal-fetal relationship.

Actually in my googles, I found one that does work. Oddly, it's pro-choice.

Let's return to the tendentiousness that Woody rolled out in
M312, Fixed-Wing Technology and Ballooning. (See? There really is nowhere they won't go.)

Here's the last patronizing sentence:

Now do you understand the relationship between Motion 312 and abortion?

Indeed, we do, Woody. And did right from the start, despite your relentless duplicitousness.


BONUS! I found the elusive parrot-in-a-cage analogy. It was in the comments, now sadly memory-holed, at SUZYALLCAPSLOCK's place, but preserved for eternity by Canadian Cynic.

EXTRA BONUS: JJ explains the fetus = polaroid picture analogy I mention in the comments. Definitely one for the Hall of Fame!

Lame Abortion Analogy Hall of Fame

After a fetus fetishizing commenter uses the old 'woman as car, fetus as passenger' abortion analogy on a post at Unrepentant Old Hippie, I commented that it was lame and that my all-time fave analogy was SUZY ALLCAPS's parrot-in-a-cage, though I confess I can't remember exactly how the pretzel-twisty logic went in that one.

JJ responded that someone should start a Hall of Fame for such thingies.

Serendipity strikes! Right now on ProgBlogs (!!!!!), there's a post titled 'Abortion' by a blogger I've never noticed before at 264MHz.

His or her kick at the abortion analogy can is a knee-slapper.

Let’s say a protester attached them self to the leg of a politician using an unbreakable chain and a lock that won’t open for nine months. The politician has two choices, walk around for the next nine months lugging the protester around on her leg or have the protester removed by cutting him open, killing him in the process. Would the politician’s right to control her body give her the right to kill the protester?

After I stopped giggling, I wondered 'why a politician?' Why not a heart surgeon? Or a fireman? Or some occupation of some actual worth to society?

So, let the games begin. What's your fave abortion analogy? For me, parrot-in-a-cage is still slightly ahead of protester-chained-to-politican. But the protester-chained-to-politician may grow on me.

(And we feminazis will be keeping an eye on 264MHz, who fits right in with the abortion-debating boyos at ProgBlogs.)