Wednesday, December 20, 2006

"Feminism Is the Real Pro-Life Stance"

At least, according to Amanda at Pandagon.

It always intrigues me when the pro-abortion crowd starts slinging around terms like "pro-life" because usually it means they are either outright lying or misusing the term. This time was no exception.

Amanda starts out with a report that states women and children are better off in households where women are equal decision-makers. Sounds like a "Duh!" moment to me. But I was still looking for that "pro-life" angle, the one that included the children before they are born. No mention here. But Amanda does make this strawman argument:

But the official story from conservatives is still that women’s rights and equality have to squashed [sic] to preserve the abstract quality of “life”, an abstract quality that apparently doesn’t have much to do with actual humans with lives.

I keep looking for this statement in all that material they give you when you become part of the vast right-wing conspiracy, but I still can't find it. Conservatives really want to "squash women's rights"? Really? That would certainly be news to all those women who are conservatives!

Of course, this is just the usual Amanda smokescreen for "conservatives don't want us sticking a fork in our children's heads before they're born." That's the "pro-life" stance she's really advocating.

But wait! There's more! In fact, this is where it gets good. This one was about the International Criminal Court and whether forced pregnancy is a crime against humanity. The actual posts, of course, are direct attacks against Catholicism, but here's the language from the Center for Reproductive Rights (surely they are objective, right? Right?):
At every UN international conference, even at the last one, which was held in Johannesburg in 2002, the same influential groups still try to return, although in a different way, to the issue of abortion. This was the case during the Conference, which aimed at creating the International Criminal Court. Then there was an attempt to declare the so-called ‘forced pregnancy’ a crime against humanity. If such a general formulation had been accepted, the spouse’s objection to terminate a pregnancy could have been a punishable act - crime against humanity.

Bold and highlights mine.

This is the statement Amanda makes directly following this:
God forbid that a man forcing his wife to bear a child against her will be considered a crime against humanity. I suppose from the church’s point of view, it’s silly to consider use of your own property a crime against humanity. Next we’ll be telling them that women are human.


Notice how the language changed from "a spouse's objection" to "a man forcing." It's this sort of intellectual dishonesty that mars any attempt by pro-abortion supporters to claim that they are, in fact, pro-life.

If a man objecting to his wife killing his child in utero is a "crime against humanity," why would he see her as equal? It seems to me that she becomes de facto the superior in terms of rights. But then again, to feminists, that should be the state of things and to declare this turn of events as being just as unequal as female subjugation is to worship the patriarchy.