Or, is that actually the point? Is abortion the new crucifixion? The fetus paraphernalia popping up everywhere says "YES" . . . it's becoming as fetishized as the cross.
According to the logic of the of the anti-abortionist, abortion is actually worse than crucifixion, since the dead babies are completely innocent, and even the Lord Jesus talked sass to some pharisees, killed a fig tree in the desert, and kicked some moneylender ass in the temple.
Actually, someone can clear this up for me: a child is born into original sin, but has the stain of sin removed by baptism, right? So, it stands to reason that the unborn child, having begun his/her life at conception, was actually stained by sin at that very point. The unborn child is not innocent. I have heard the concept, rarely articulated, that there are unborn babies stacking up in purgatory . . .
See here, too, the stain of life . . . Christianity as the anti-human. Anyway, back to the topic . . .
Of course, like most religion, this discussion of original sin is convoluted and ridiculous, mixing seeds of ideas, facts, and concepts with distortion and nonsense. And so, Chuck Norris:
[ . . . ]
I'm not going to quote him. He's a fucking idiot.
The general idea is that baby Jesus, returning to today's America complete with Obamacare, would be aborted before he had a chance to save the world.
Uh, let's see . . .
First, that assumes that Jesus would return to America, and not to his old haunts in the holy land. Of course, any American Christian knows that God will come to the new holy land, America, not Israel, where all those non-believing Jews and Muslims hang out (I'm not kidding, or even exaggerating, about this - go ahead and google it). All those retorts about Israel's healthcare system being more socialist than ours (isn't everybody's?) are beside the point, because he ain't showing up there, he's showing up here.
Second, there's the thing about responsibility. I'm expected by Christians to know that a life of sin will lead me to hell, but all I have on this is their word. Jesus, on the other hand, gets his ass aborted, and we're not blaming him? Sorry, I don't mean to dwell on this.
Let's say that the modern day VM doesn't have quite the emotional support network she needs, but she does have the Chuck Norris-approved pre-Obamacare capitalist healthcare network. So, without Obamacare, there's less of an incentive to abort, right? Well, I'm not sure about that, given the fact that an abortion paid for completely out-of-pocket is still much cheaper than a pregnancy with normal insurance. Add to that the fact that normal insurance doesn't cover any type of counseling that might build our putative VM's confidence to the point that she would have the esteem and support to bring her child to term.
And there's this thing about abortion being fueled by shame. Looks like I gotta go to Chuck after all:
What if that young, poor and uninsured teenage woman had been provided the federal funds (via Obamacare) and facilities (via Planned Parenthood, etc.) to avoid the ridicule, ostracizing, persecution and possible stoning because of her out-of-wedlock pregnancy?
"Ridicule, ostracizing, persecution"? Just where in the HELL do you think this comes from? I don't see the pinko commie hippies out on the street dissing pregnant women (okay, maybe a few Maoists). The revulsion toward out-of-wedlock pregnancy in this culture is DIRECTLY attributable to the religious cultural establishment and their horror triggered by anything sexual. I let that Nietzsche reference hang earlier, but the mainstream of Christianity seems, to me, anti-human. Not anti-humanist (as in, against the idea that humanity is the center of the universe), but anti-human (as in, against the human, life-denying). Though every fiber of my upbringing has resisted it, I have come to the conclusion that Christianity is about the flagellation of the self and others. Christianity is about destruction. Not all Christianity . . . but the positive has yet to triumph over the negative. It's a lot closer than the average cocktail-party liberal will admit, but the negative is still in the ascendancy.
It's tempting to try to refute this in healthcare terms but, again, this isn't about healthcare. It's about a bunch of idiots and their relationship to culture, which they define in completely defective terms. I tried to swear off this kind of false discourse earlier, but it seems that I've been sucked back in (Norris = Palin). I apologize, and I promise to do better in the future. But, at the core of all this, is one final point:
There is a logical and reasonable point of view that claims abortion is the destruction of life. It is not a view which can be called either liberal or conservative, Republican or Democrat. The reason the debate is faulty is that we let people like Chuck Norris and Sarah Palin stand in for the anti-abortion argument, and we let it get accelerated into a cultural discussion in the basest of terms. There are "liberals", "progressives", and even "feminists" who are anti-abortion, and even more who believe that abortion is wrong but should not be subject to the laws of the federal government. These are the true lost souls of this increasingly meaningless debate.
And here we are, with Chuck Norris and Obamacare. Once again, I feel the need to simultaneously apologize and point out that it's not my fault. But, we know it is. Sorry about that. I'll do better next time.
