MIRROR of Judge William Adams beats daughter for using the internet

(trigger warning for anyone who’s been beaten as a child)

Just so you don’t think I’ve gone soft on parents with my last entry, here are two parents I wouldn’t mind putting down like rabid dogs. I have also been told that the girl in question has cerebral palsy, so this is a double-whammy of evil: willfully having a compromised child, and then beating her.

Secret Confessions: How great is it to have a child?

This is an entry in the Pro-Abortion series.
Please follow the commenting rule.

From Childfreedom.

There is a web site called Secret Confessions, where people send in their anonymous stories (or reply to said stories) on various topics. The particular topic I want to talk about is called “I hate being a mom.“

While I admit this is not an argument against the pro-choice position or the anti-abortion position per se, I think no discussion of the abortion issue can ignore the regrets that women (and men) can get from having children. We hear a great deal about regrets that women get from aborting; we hear a great deal about how wonderful it is to have children; we hear a great deal about how selfish we are for not having children (as if there are any reasons for having children that are not completely and utterly selfish); we hear little about the other side, and when we do, it’s always accompanied by a mandatory “but it’s all worth it!”. Because this is a taboo topic in our societies, the only way we can get such confessions is through the anonymity of the Internet. This is why pages of this nature as so useful.

Here are some of the confessions for you to peruse.

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I’m so happy to have found this site too! Isn’t it nice to know you’re not the only one? Sometimes when I’m walking around with my daughter at the zoo and see all the other mothers with their stair-stepper kids, like 3 or 4 kids right in a row and a baby on the way I think “what’s wrong with me? why can’t I do it like her?” I wonder why I feel so sad and depressed all the time. My daughter is beautiful and wonderful, smart and fun…but she’s the ONLY thing in my life. I’m a single mom and I won’t complain about that, actually I’d rather do this by myself than also have to handle her biological father and all of his baggage. He’s not involved with us at all, haven’t even gotten a phone call from him since her first birthday and my feeling is “with a father like that who needs a father?” I’m all she needs and more than enough. I’m a great mom and super patient and she’s a VERY involved child. Not much independent play or anything like that…it’s pretty much complete interface from her waking moment until I have to rock her to sleep every night for an hour! Then she’s awake during the night too, like every 90 minutes she comes to get me. I, too, feel like I can’t handle it. I feel like I’m being completely suffocated and there’s no way out. I understand loving your children but hating this motherhood gig! It’s incredible. I feel terrified when I realize how much of myself is left to me…none, absolutely none at all. It’s crazy! I get up with her in the morning and struggle with her over eating a good breakfast, I play with her and then struggle with her to get dressed, then we battle to get into the carseat, and I drop her off to daycare, where we struggle with one another there! I go to work and pick her up and battle over eating dinner (and it’s completely mystifying when the daycare lady tells me what a total delight she was, how she ate her lunch, cleaned up her toys and went down for her nap without so much as a sneeze!), then the bedtime (the most completely horrifying moments of my day) begins…and goes on for 2 1/2 hours sometimes. I cry and ask God to help me. I feel like I’m losing my mind. Then I have to go to bed because I know I’ll need the energy for the next day…because she’ll be waking me up all night long too. When she puts her little arms around me and tells me how much she loves me I’m dying inside because I think about what a horrible person I am for hating this. How can I hate it when she’s so beautiful and sweet? I feel like going to work is my only break and I can’t imagine if I was a stay-at-home mom (which I was for her first year and a half so I know what that’s like, too). I’m so sorry for all the tears you shed and your feelings of helplessness. I know what it’s like. Hang in there!
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I have battled with feeling like I do not want my children from the moment my first daughter was born. Every single day is a massive struggle for me. I find myself unable to cope with my girls and I manage by booking them into expensive child care settings / and offloading them to family whenever possible. The very minute I get them back I want them gone again and I am contemplating putting myself into a clinic of some sort whilst I get my head right. I want the kids to be taken into Foster Care until I feel like I can actually enjoy them and not dread having to look after them. I have absolutely no maternal instincts what so ever and even when the kids are hurt I find myself going through the motions without actually caring about them much. I have to remind myself to kiss them good night because this is not natural to me. I find interaction with them virtually impossible and I will take them out all of the time to avoid it. That way they can amuse themselves. I am seeing a therapist about this because I also have 2 step children and I have come to absolutely hate my step son and my marriage is dangling on by a thread. I have been told that I have suffered post natal depression that was undiagnosed. My oldest daughter also had autism and fed into my pre existing issues. Have been feeling really angry and suicidal as I don’t want to loose my husband but my behaviour is pushing him away. Feel like I am beyond help.
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Wow I’m glad I found this site. Sometimes, well always, I want to run from being a mother. I’d rather be at work than home with my daughter who is 9. I’m glad I didn’t have more children.

I have a loving husband, I have an extended family support system who live near by, I have a good job.

I regret most days that I became pregnant. I thought it was what I wanted. I’ve had and been through postpartum depression including hospitalization.

She is different to other kids, but they can’t find anything wrong. We’ve had assessment after assessment. She doesn’t do too well at school but at the same time is fairly bright. I have trouble understanding her, she is very strong willed, as I am too.

Some people ask why I have only one child, and I answer that’s all that was right for me. I don’t have any more love for another child, but the truth is I don’t have much love to give for this child.

I’m glad my daughter has others in her life that can provide her with the love that I can’t – Her dad, both her grandmothers, and aunts.

I’ve never told her or anyone else my true feelings. My father told me he wish he didn’t have me on more than one occasion which crushed me. Despite my feelings I never want her to know that I feel anything like that.

Thanks for listening. I’m glad to have this secret off my chest.
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Wow, I’m not alone! I used to love being a mom. I have 4 girls and couldn’t have asked for a better life. However, 4 years ago, my 4 year old (2nd child) was diagnosed with terminal cancer and wasn’t expected to make it another 7 months. She proved everyone wrong and knocked the socks off the docs. She still is fighting and is going to attempt 1/2 days at school this week. However, this battle has been so hard on all of us. I feel so guilty to complain, but I regret bringing these children into this world to have to witness such pain and an unstable mom. So many people will tell me I am so strong, but the truth is I have only become numb. I refuse to allow myself to get close to anyone including my husband and children. I just couldn’t handle the pain of loss any longer and now I feel I have failed them of there needs. I am so angry I was chosen for this job and hate it everyday. I’m tired and deliberately sleep so I may dream of a different life. I want to run away, but know I would never forgive myself. Actually, I struggle with forgiving myself now for wishing I never had children. Being a mom, stuck behind closed doors, and shut off from the world is no picnic for anyone, whether you care for a child, the ill, or elderly. Eventually, it catches up with us all. Guess, we’ll continue to pray for better days, just wonder if I’ll ever see it here on earth.
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I love my kids – I ache for them every time I snap at them, every time I neglect their needs, turn them away because I know they deserve so much more. But I am done. I cannot make myself volunteer for one more bake sale, eat lunch at the school, go to Mcdonalds or play outside when I hate being outdoors. I’m constantly being pulled in several different directions, especially with children of such varying ages, and after almost 17 years of being called “momma” I am desperate to rediscover who I used to be before being buried under the tons and tons of mommy debris. I have tons of regrets, but I already know that my biggest one at the end of my life will be not loving what I do. I told my husband it was like living in a Communist country – being forced to work at a job you hate for your entire life. There are no easy escapes – how can one abandon their children and not feel the weight of guilt everyday? How can one continue the mind numbing endless chores of motherhood and not want to run away? All I can do is accept this is the life I have – but accepting isn’t the same as enjoying and I can honestly say everyday I hate what I do without a ton of guilt (there is still some residual guilt). Because I, like most of the mothers here, am still doing it. Still wiping butts, still cleaning up spills, still reading, helping with homework. And I resent no one, I just ache for something more. I do know there are many women who would love the life that has been handed to me – but that doesn’t make me feel better because there are many women’s lives that I would love to have. At this point of my life, I’m ok with the fact that my kids are uninjured, sane, and loved. My house is a mess, chicken nuggets are a food group, and if my husband wants a perfect wife/mother, he more than welcome to go find one.
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I constantly feel that if only someone had told me the truth, I would have spared myself and my husband this miserable life, and could have spared two beautiful children this disgusting world.
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I think that, especially at a social event, parents and everyone else is going to be on their best behavior. I KNOW that some other moms I have personally talked to, shared struggles with, put on a happy mom face in public.

Also, I really do not want my kids to get hurt or sick at such a large event. I keep a watchful eye on what they are doing. And, I think kids are an easy, cop-out thing to talk about, without getting too personal…if that makes sense.

Out in “public”, people can act really different. No one wants to embarass themsleves.
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I don’t know why, but it’s gotten worse these last few months…to the point where my misery is so encompassing it’s all I can think about. Sometimes the sadness weighs so heavily on me it’s physically challenging to do simple day to day things. It’s all I can do to get through my work day (I have a full time job) followed by picking the kids up at the sitters, feeding them dinner, giving them baths (my least favorite time of the day!! Ugh, bathtime = torture), going through the bedtime rituals and then, enjoying an hour to myself during which I eat junk food and watch crap TV before passing out on the couch and having to force myself to go upstairs to bed. Such quality me time.

I’ve always had suicidal thoughts, but it seems like more and more lately my suicidal fantasies take up so much of my time. One night last month I went home and put the kids to bed and thought, “tonight is the night.” And obviously I didn’t do it…but I was so consumed by my own depression that I couldn’t see going on another day. It’s the only thing I can think of doing that will put an end to my pain.
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I empathize with every mother here who believed what the media portrayed and others told them about how amazing it was to be a mom. I too fell for it. I am now hating life and everything that comes with being a mom. I understand I became a mother for all the wrong reasons and I OWN my decision and the consequences. I will say that I have written off all those so called “friends” who made me feel like I was missing out on the best experience in life and how much I would regret not having kids. These were not my friends, these were miserable women who wanted miserable company. Not to say that every women is miserable, but I KNOW some of these so called “friends” defiantly lied. I feel these are the same women who sit on this site and say how the Childfree women on here are just trying to rub it in the rest of our faces and that they have other social issues/deformities and to get off the forum (just an FYI if you are socially incompetent you are socially incompetent regardless of your kid status). The women who say this crap are just jealous of the childfree’s lifestyle (I’m sure I’ll get some defensive mothers writing back to counteract that statement), but I understand you ladies aren’t here for that reason, you have people around you telling you how great it is and are on the fence about having a child and are just trying to see all sides of the spectrum. I understand and am here to tell you it isn’t as great as some of your friends and family are telling you. Of course it is up to you, but know that it is 100 times harder then what society makes it out to be.
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For some biological reason I really really wanted a baby. I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I was the best parent before I had a child. My 6 year old sucks the life blood out of me. When I complain about her people look at me like I’m nuts – like we are all supposed to paste a smile on and pretend motherhood is the best thing on earth. I had a perfect baby, a nightmare toddler, and it’s only getting worse.
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I am so sick and tired of being sick and tired of my sad life at home. It’s been 15 years of the same mess and I just can’t take it any more. Somehow over the years, I have managed to cope and change my attitude. But, why should I? As a mom, I’m cooking, cleaning, working, nursing, helping with homework, going to doctor’s visits and school visits and my husband seems to do nothing but just pay the bills. I have three kids, all stair step in age, 11, 12 and 14. The attitudes are killing me and my husband not setting ground rules or telling the kids the opposite of what I tell them to do is driving me nuts. The house is a total mess unless I clean it up and I am not doing it anymore. I hate coming home and I sometimes hate being around them. Sometimes, I just wish I could just be alone with none of this to contend with. It’s a constant battle every day with homework, chores and overall respect. I need some peace of mind.
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Do keep in mind that these women made the wrong choice, insofar as they did not choose to abort, and they are paying the consequences of their moral failure. I am not on their side. Their children can also be devastated by being told that they were unwanted, and that is a burden imposed on them by these parents. I post these stories not out of sympathy, but so that the fact that many women do hate being mothers but are too afraid to “come out” can come to the forefront of this discussion and take its place as valuable evidence. Procreation is a trap used by the patriarchy to keep women in line.

Of course the pro-choice contingent is going to try to refute these stories by saying that they are not typical or that having children is still “worth it.” To which I would simply reply, how do you know? Even if you had children and never regretted it, your experience may not be typical. Because this is a taboo topic, we just can’t know except through personal testimonies such as these.

Furthermore, here are some female postpartum bodies. Click on the links if you wish to see them.

Anber
Amy
Tabitha
Triplet mom

Unless you go to The Shape of a Mother, you may never have seen the (sometimes horrific) consequences of pregnancy on a woman. You sure don’t see those advertised anywhere. They need to be seen by any woman who thinks of becoming pregnant. If the woman doesn’t find anything wrong with it, then that’s fine, but those who don’t want their bodies to become deformed in like manner will know the truth. This is much more important for “informed consent” than pictures of a dang fetus.

Children!

How not to argue with the childfree…

EDIT: The link on the image was incorrect. I have changed it so that when you click on the image, you actually do get the bigger version. Sorry about that.

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(click on image to see bigger)

From Childfreedom.

Anti-abortion Q&A [part 3]

This is an entry in the Pro-Abortion series.
Please follow the commenting rule.

In this part, I am starting, and ending, the second half of the Q&A. This half is a lot weaker than the first half, so my answers here are a lot shorter. Some of these points have already been rehashed in previous questions, too. Pakulak really should have stopped at ten.

Question 11

There is another argument against abortion, analogous to an argument of Lincoln. Lincoln said, famously, that “as I would not be a slave; so I would not be a master”. He also remarked that, although he had heard many people defend slavery as a good thing, he had never yet met a man who wanted to become a slave himself. So we can ask: Does anyone wish that his mother had chosen abortion for him?

This is another area where my strong disagreements with pro-choice people entail a completely different answer than Pakaluk expects, thus defeating his strategy. As an antinatalist, I consider potential people to be better off than actual people. Starting a human life is a harm. Therefore, I believe that I would be better off if my life had not started.

This is not to say that I want to kill myself, an oft-repeated objection (see my entry on the topic). Obviously I now have vested interests in continuing to live. But the question here is not, would I kill myself (i.e. should my life be continued), but rather, should I, or any other fetus, have been aborted (i.e. should my life have not been started). Clearly the answer to such a question is yes.

Besides the fact that his expected answer is the wrong one in my case, Pakaluk’s argument is also invalid. It would be a valid argument if we were comparing two persons’ situations. We can validly demand that a slaveowner put himself in the situation of a slave, as they both have a similar form of consciousness and the same general capacities. But this is not what we are doing. Instead, Pakaluk demands that we compare the situation of an actual person (ourselves) with the situation of a potential person (the fetus). How can an actual person decide whether they’d want to be aborted if they were a fetus? We have no idea what it might be like to be a fetus, any more than we have any idea what it is like to be a bat or a snail. So the argument cannot even get off the ground.

Note also that Lincoln’s statement is a fine example of hypocrisy, given his actual opinions on slavery and his dismal track record on human rights.

Question 12

Developing the analogy with slavery, we might wonder how abortion is at all compatible with the idea that all human beings are equal. After all, it is inconsistent with equality that one person have his fundamental rights conferred upon him by someone else…

Similarly, as we saw, in our current practice of legal abortion, the unborn child has rights only if they are granted by the mother. For if the mother wishes to have an abortion, then the child has no rights, and its death is considered inconsequential; but if the mother wishes to continue her pregnancy, then an attack on the child is considered unlawful and even murderous. Hence the child–and presumably also the adult who grows from the child–has rights only because they have been originally granted by the mother. But this, as we have seen, is incompatible with the fundamental equality of all human beings.

Pakaluk’s question is contradictory. On one hand, he seems to agree with me that rights cannot be granted by any person or group, that the mother cannot grant a child rights any more than the State or God can. But then he speaks as if the actual act of abortion entailed that the mother grants or does not grant rights to the fetus, and that this is incompatible with the view that rights are not granted. But reality cannot contradict reality. If my reading of the question is the valid one, then the question is plainly incoherent and there is no way to answer it. Either Pakaluk is wrong when he says that rights cannot be granted, or he is wrong when he says that the mother actually has the power to grant rights to the fetus.

Now, my reading of the question may be the wrong one. Perhaps Pakaluk actually means, in his careless manner of writing, that the supposed granting or not granting of rights by the mother is a legal fiction or a delusion, that the act of abortion assumes that this granting of rights is actual, and that this disproves abortion. This reading is not obviously incoherent like the straightforward one, so I should be generous and answer this as well.

So the question becomes: does the fact that an act against some victim is legally allowed logically entail that the victim has no rights? Clearly the answer is no. Black slaves were obviously persons endowed with rights, as we know today, even though those rights were not recognized by the courts at that time. Likewise, innocent people shot by policemen without legal repercussions still clearly have rights, even legally, as proven by the fact that if they had been killed by anyone else, the courts would have found this to be within their jurisdiction. So there is no logical link between the act of abortion being legal and some kind of lack of rights.

The argument is not helped by introducing subjectivity, either. Suppose that, irritated by his homophobia, I punch Pakaluk in the face. I do not have to hold to the belief that Pakaluk doesn’t have a right not to be assaulted in order to punch him. Indeed, the fact that I would not be surprised or outraged at being arrested for punching him would tend to prove that I did indeed think that he had a right not to be assaulted. So there seems to be no logical connection here. I would be wiling to wager that most criminals do indeed recognize the rights of their victims, they just are not overly preoccupied by them, or have other reasons that they think override the rights.

This is also a useless argument, insofar as its basic premise, that fetuses have “fundamental rights” and that the right to life is included as one of those rights, remains unsupported. Why ask a question founded on an unproven premise?

I can see one obvious counter to my line of reasoning. Since I have stated that fetuses only have rights outside of the framework of abortion, then I must really believe that the woman grants rights by not aborting a baby, the legal aspect notwithstanding. With the abortion, the fetus has no rights; without the abortion, the fetus has rights. Surely, then, the woman’s decision is the determining factor in whether a fetus has rights or not, and this is the same thing as the woman granting or not granting those rights.

My response to this would be twofold. First, I would question the semantics of saying that a person who never existed could be granted or not granted anything. While we can attribute properties to non-existing persons, those properties are negative in nature (e.g. a potential person cannot feel pain, a potential person cannot be deprived, etc). “A potential person has the capacity to have rights or not have rights,” on the other hand, doesn’t seem to be a negative property, but rather a positive one.

Second, my position on fetuses’ rights does not infringe on the principle of equality, insofar as it maintains the principle that all persons are equals. Fetuses’ rights are an extension of that principle only insofar as the possibility of a future person implies rights in the present. But in the case of abortion, this possibility does not exist. I will discuss this argument further in the entry “The humbug of the fetal right to life…”

Of course, Pakaluk wants to reduce the issue again to the quality of being a “human being,” not the quality of being a “person,” but that rhetoric was refuted in question 9 and I don’t need to address it again.

Question 13

Developing the analogy with slavery even more, we can ask: Why isn’t legal abortion outright discrimination?…

By legal abortion, one class of human beings–born human beings–deny human rights and the protection of the law to another class of human beings–unborn children–because of a feature inessential to our humanity, viz. whether one is living inside or outside one’s mother’s womb. The difference between being unborn and being born seems just as accidental to a human being as the difference between having white and having black skin…

Again, this is basically the same question as question 9. We are again talking about “humanity” as the only acceptable standard, a humbug which I already refuted in my answer to question 9. So there is no point in repeating myself.

Question 14

[W]ouldn’t legal abortion be contrary to responsible principles of decision under uncertainty? If it were true that we “don’t know when human life begins,” it would follow, of course, that we don’t know that the fetus is not a living human being; that is, we don’t know that abortion is not morally equivalent to murder. But isn’t that precisely what we ought to know, before allowing abortion?

I agree with Pakaluk that uncertainty is not a valid argument for anything. Much like Christians who illogically use uncertainties about our knowledge to try to argue for God’s existence, using uncertainty to argue for abortion reflects a lack of logic. But furthermore, we do know when human life begins. Embryonic development is no secret. We know that consciousness arises in fetuses around 28 to 30 weeks, in a progressive manner.

But Pakaluk’s argument fails insofar as, even if a given act of abortion is murder, this does not mean that it is unjustified, for the reasons I discussed in my answer to question 1. The murder is ethically wrong, but so is starting a new life. Given that fact, we have to balance consequences, and on that basis I believe that abortion always comes up on top, or at least has a near-total advantage.

Question 15

In every abortion the fetus is cut into pieces, ripped or torn apart, or poisoned. No one would want to treat a small kitten or puppy in that manner, nor does the law allow to do so, so why should we allow anyone to treat immature human beings in that way? Imagine that, instead of paying money for an abortion, the price was to take a newly born puppy, the size of a peanut, and put it in a meat grinder. This an action quite comparable to what takes place in an abortion. How many people would pay that price? Then is it only the hidden character of abortion that makes it seem acceptable?

I don’t know what the point of this question is. Are we supposed to wrinkle our noses in disgust and say “ew”? Is that the entire argument here? Because I don’t know of anyone who would compare a kitten with a fetus. What is the comparison here? For one, a kitten or a puppy has vested interests in remaining alive. As far as I understand, a fetus does not have such interests.

Is it because they are both alive? Then we should be squeamish about killing or shredding plants as well, or insects, or fish. Why does the “ew” argument not come into play in those cases too? The answer is clear: Pakaluk used kittens and puppies as examples because they are cute animals. That’s the entire intellectual content of this question. So that’s a waste of time.

Question 16

Why is an abortion traumatic, but an appendectomy is not? If the fetus really is just a clump of tissue, why should there be any fuss about abortion? Indeed, if an abortion were in reality just like an appendectomy, how would it be possible for pro-life people to get others agitated about it? The very fact that there is a dispute at all about abortion seems to show that the pro-life view is correct and that abortions should not be performed.

I have already explained this phenomenon. Christianity is a faggot ideology, meaning that it is based on the active self-repression of homosexuality. This is proven by the fact that Christians constantly project their own flaws on their opponents, hate the body, sexuality, and female sexuality in particular, vehemently hate homosexuality, believe in salvation as their only recourse, and, of course, hate abortions. To the faggots (i.e. the self-repressed homosexual), children are proof of heterosexuality and normality, and their greatest tool of validation. Abortion is an attack against that tool.

The reason why Christian fanatics attack abortion and not appendectomies is because the appendix is not a faggot tool of validation, while babies are.

I understand that Pakaluk is expecting us to answer as if the Christian fanatics (a category in which he is included) are basically honest, and that therefore there must be a rational reason as to why abortion is under attack. But the fact is that there is no rational reason to be against abortion, and Christian fanatics have presented no such rational reason in their attacks. So I stick to my conclusion that they are re-enacting the neuroses written down by faggots.

Question 17

Why is it that doctors are allowed to do abortions? Even if abortions should be legal, shouldn’t they be performed by some other sort of agent? Just as we do not allow doctors to administer injections for capital punishment, shouldn’t we also bar doctors from doing abortions? The reason for this is that doctors should not engage in actions that are contrary to the aims of the practice of medicine, and these are to heal and relive (sic) pain.

Abortion is a surgery. Surgeries are performed by doctors. I don’t see what the issue is here. Abortion does “relieve pain.” In fact, it is the most pain-relieving procedure in existence. The more abortions that are performed, the less pain there will be in the world. And that’s a fact.

Abortion is a surgical operation, not a political issue. As the previous question implies when we answer it correctly, there’s no more reason for people to be politically against abortions than there are reasons for people to be politically against appendectomies, biopsies, or medically necessary amputations; a random person’s opinion (or Pakaluk’s, who as far as I know has never studied any medicine) on whether these are “contrary to the aims of the practice of medicine” is not evidence.

Question 18

Suppose a genetic marker for homosexuality is found, and a test is devised for this, and couples begin to abort fetuses with this marker. Should this practice be made illegal? If so, then why not sex-selection abortions also? And why not abortions for handicaps?

Again Pakaluk misses the mark, as his follow-up makes clear that he expects us to answer that such practices should be made illegal. But I have no such qualms.

I am pro-abortion. I support all abortions, for whatever reason. Every single abortion is a lessening of the potential harm on this planet, no matter what motives were used to come to that decision. Yes to abortions based on homosexuality, yes to abortions based on sex, yes to abortion based on handicaps, for every single abortion means one less life that will come to suffer.

This is the difference between people like me and people like Pakaluk. Pakaluk claims to care about suffering, but really doesn’t. His use of fetus pain is a misdirection so we don’t look at the enormous amounts of pain generated by natalism, his underlying ideology. It is really just a parlor trick. There is nothing substantial to Pakaluk’s position beyond his unwavering, fanatical adherence to natalism.

Question 19

And now, the last question:

Suppose the Supreme Court had decided in Roe v. Wade that the Constitution states that abortion must be illegal, that any law which allowed abortion was unconstitutional. What would your reaction have been? But the constitutional basis for a decision of that sort would have been just as strong as the constitutional basis for the actual holding of Roe., that any law which restricts or prohibits abortion is unconstitutional.

I suppose it’s fitting that we end on a question which is just as subjective as many of the other questions in the second half. Who cares what the Supreme Court decides? What bearing does people’s political agenda have on the facts? And what does the founding document of a country basically started in order to perpetrate genocide, a document which was engineered to separate 90% of the population from their rights, have to do with justice?

By any reasonable standard, the fact that the US Constitution has been judged as allowing abortion is a negative for abortion, not a positive. Likewise, if abortion had been outlawed, it should rightly be seen as a positive for abortion. My reaction to abortion being outlawed would have been sadness, anger, but also the bitter joy of having been proven right. Fittingly enough, my reaction to Pokaluk’s questions is exactly the same, minus the sadness.

Anti-abortion Q&A [part 2]

This is an entry in the Pro-Abortion series.
Please follow the commenting rule.

Question 6

How should we regard a forced abortion of a pro-life woman’s fetus? This happens, of course, in China every day. It also happens occasionally in the United States–there have been several cases reported of husbands or boyfriends who in effect force a woman to have an abortion, either by coercing her to go to the clinic (these cases are perhaps not so rare), or by attacking her directly.
…
If the law concerning abortion should be designed so that “everyone can act in accordance with one’s own beliefs”, then presumably just as the law lets some people procure an abortion, because their beliefs allow it, so it should let the women in these cases, if they are pro-life, bring charges of murder, because their beliefs require it. So our view ought to be that, if a man were to force a pro- life woman to have an abortion, the man should be liable to prosecution for murder.

Again, this is a purely subjective argument, relying on beliefs to trump facts. Whether someone is pro-life or not has no relevance to evaluating an action as murder or not. The former is a belief and the latter is a fact. As an Anarchist, I am opposed to all laws, but if they are to exist, they should be held to the facts, not to beliefs about facts. So this question is a complete philosophical failure.

As such, I don’t know how Pakaluk leaps from “everyone can act in accordance with one’s own beliefs” to “one’s own beliefs determine the fact of whether an action is a crime or not.” Maybe this is a slippery slope argument and he’s trying to say that individualism inevitably leads to subjectivism. But if there is any evidence for that position, he does not provide it.

Question 7

It is often claimed that the right to an abortion is a part of the right to control one’s own reproductive life. But then it seems that the decision to abort should be made jointly, by both the father and mother. If we say that the mother alone can decide to have an abortion, then we ought equally to grant that the husband alone can decide that the pregnancy should end in abortion — at least he should be able to decide that he “aborts” the child, in the sense that he would have chosen abortion (if the woman had agreed), and so he has no responsibility to care for the child.

So it seems that either we grant the father an equal role in the abortion decision, or we must conclude that fathers cannot be held responsible for their offspring. If total responsibility for abortion rests with the mother, then total responsibility for birth should rest with her also. (This question points to the connection between the practice of abortion and paternal irresponsibility.)

Again Pakaluk commits the error of asking a question to which he thinks he knows the answer. He assumes that we will necessarily be against paternal irresponsibility, and that therefore this is a dilemma. But there’s no reason why we must be against paternal irresponsibility. The case he makes here is a logical case. If we accept it, then we must support paternal irresponsibility (personally I am against paternal irresponsibility on the whole, because I think children’s rights have primacy over “parental rights”).

So what? What does this have to do with the validity of abortion? Does he seriously think that people who reject paternal irresponsibility must therefore logically be against abortion? But that’s absurd. There are plenty of justifications for such a combination. At any rate, I do not have to defend it, because I am not held to any view regarding paternal irresponsibility, so the question does not apply to me at all.

In fact, I don’t want to talk about parenting at all, because it is an absurd institution. The idea that only one or two people should be entirely responsible and in near-total control of another human life because they had PIV is an open insult to rationality. Furthermore, reliance on one or two people is criminally dangerous (one being much more dangerous than two, but both being dangerous) because the livelihood of the child depends critically on the health, available time, wages and good will of only one or two people.

Question 8

Suppose a woman who wanted an abortion were first to observe her unborn child through ultrasound technology. In such images, the hands and feet of the child are typically discernible, and even within the first trimester, it is common to see the unborn child sucking his or her thumb. I ask the pro-choice person: why aren’t such images shown to woman, as part of informed consent preceding abortion?

You might respond that the images are not relevant, but how do you know whether they are relevant to her or not? I think, rather, your view is that such images are too relevant, that very few women who saw them would choose to have an abortion…

In general it is deceitful to withhold information from someone, if you know that, if you released it, the other person would act very differently.

Pakaluk here asks yet another question which is predicated upon subjectivity. How does the impact of the images on a woman’s views make it part of informed consent or not? Pakaluk has failed to present the case that it is. He has merely asserted that it is, based on some subjective criterion. So what? This is not an argument.

Pakaluk seems to believe that anything whatsoever that could influence a person’s decision-making process is part of informed consent. But this encompasses so many things that it is impossible to even imagine the scope of what informed consent would mean under Pakaluk’s laws. The woman’s entire genetic profile as well as her partner’s, with full explanations and images for every single gene, the personality of the doctor, testimonies from people who have had successful abortions and did or did not regret it, what her parents and friends think about abortion, all the different kinds of harm that could come about to the future person, with images and video testimonies from all sorts of people who have gone through them, all of these things may profoundly influence a person’s decision-making process as regards to having an abortion. So why not mandate these by law, too? Why not mandate omniscience to the people whose job it is to provide this “informed consent”? Because that’s what you’ll need when you’re done.

West’s Encyclopedia of American Law defines informed consent as:

Assent to permit an occurrence, such as surgery, that is based on a complete disclosure of facts needed to make the decision intelligently, such as knowledge of the risks entailed or alternatives.

The name for a fundamental principle of law that a physician has a duty to reveal what a reasonably prudent physician in the medical community employing reasonable care would reveal to a patient as to whatever reasonably foreseeable risks of harm might result from a proposed course of treatment. This disclosure must be afforded so that a patient—exercising ordinary care for his or her own welfare and confronted with a choice of undergoing the proposed treatment, alternative treatment, or none at all—can intelligently exercise judgment by reasonably balancing the probable risks against the probable benefits.

What part of this has anything to do with seeing an ultrasound of your fetus? Pakaluk can’t make any argument about it, so you tell me…

Question 9

If you think abortion should be allowed, can you consistently maintain that there any human rights at all? Human rights are presumably rights that belong to us in virtue of our being human–that is why they are called “human” rights. They are prior to decision or convention, precisely because they depend upon our nature. We have them simply because we are human beings, not because of an acquired characteristic or accomplishment. But if the fetus has no rights, then there are no human rights, because the fetus is clearly a human being, and if there were rights that followed from simply being human, the fetus would have them.

And yet, at least in our society, this is clearly false, because the standard argument for jailing people is that they “surrender their rights” by committing a crime. It is absolute nonsense, as I’ve argued before, but if Pakaluk accepts throwing people in jail (to be fair, I do not know if he does or not, although he is a Christian and anti-abortion, so it seems safe to assume that he is a right-winger like most Americans), he must accept that rights are not innate.

It is also equally obvious, again in our society, that children have very few rights. Same goes for workers and work contracts. Since they are all human, why don’t they have the same rights as everyone else? Again, if Pakaluk accepts the common view, then his argument makes no sense.

Now that my first point is made, let me put it aside, since it is all based on assumptions, and continue to a more important point. From my perspective, rights are a construct that we use to make sense of the issue of which actions are justifiable and which are not. If person A punches person B, and person B punches person A in response, which action is justifiable and which isn’t? This is what rights are about. It doesn’t make sense to talk about the rights of a being that can’t act, that doesn’t participate in the greater society, such as a person in a coma, a fetus, or a person living in another distinct society. This is not to say that we should treat such beings badly (obviously we are bound to follow all other ethical rules regardless), but simply that they are not included within the framework of rights.

Now, as I have addressed when I talked about the Non-Identity Problem, it makes sense to speak of a fetus embodying rights, despite the fact that a fetus does not participate in society, as long as that fetus will develop into a human being that does have rights. We can say meaningfully that a pregnant woman who takes cocaine is attacking someone’s rights, even if that person is a future person. But abortion clearly is not part of this category. Since by definition an aborted fetus will not develop into a rights-bearing person, it does not embody any rights. So rights never enter the picture.

Question 10

This is the question where Pakaluk really starts going off the deep end and starts comparing abortion with slavery.

“It is for women to decide … the moral and religious right of the abortion question for themselves within their own limits…. I repeat that the principle is the right of each woman to decide this abortion question for herself, to have an abortion or not, as she chooses, and it does not become a pro-lifer, or anybody else, to tell the her she has no conscience, that she is living in a state of iniquity… We have enough objects of charity at home, and it is our duty to take care of our own poor, and our own suffering, before we go abroad to intermeddle with other people’s business.”

I arrived at that quotation by taking one of Stephen Douglas’s defenses of slavery, and substituting “abortion” for “slavery”; “woman” for “state”; and “a pro-lifer” for “Mr. Lincoln.”

Again, same answer I’ve given before: what people believe or decide has nothing to do with the reality of the action itself. So this is not an adequate defense of abortion or of any other position. It is, at best, a defense of tolerating abortion (or in the original text, slavery).

But here the anti-abortionist has it all backwards, as is usual for Christians when they try to dip their toe into ethical waters. Slavery is an imposition of harm. Starting new lives is also an imposition of harm. Abortion means ending a possible imposition of harm. Therefore the analogy, at a basic level, should be between slavery and anti-abortionism, not between slavery and abortion. Furthermore, I have discussed in the past how natalism (the ideology that drives anti-abortionism) and slavery are connected. Both are about treating human beings as means to an end, as objectified tools, instead of treating them as human beings.

The argument Pakaluk uses in his analogy is basically a voluntaryist argument (although voluntaryists would recoil at the implications, mainly because they are ideological hypocrites). Voluntaryism is invalid. But since the pro-abortion case does not rely on voluntaryism, the accusation is irrelevant.

Does it raise in your mind any suspicions at all that you might just be on the wrong side?

What, because a comparison has been made between a purely subjectivist defense of slavery and a purely subjectivist defense of abortion? Why? You can use that tactic to compare slavery to any other logically voluntaryist position. So what? Voluntaryism is still bunk.

Go to part 3.