April 27, 2004

Bad abortion rights rhetoric, part 2

From yesterday's New York Times:

Daniela Taveras could never have an abortion. Fabiola Peña believes it is morally wrong. Estrella Flores shakes her head at the thought. They were raised to view abortion as sin, in Latin American countries where it is illegal.

Just after dawn Sunday, these women boarded a bus with 32 other immigrants in Bushwick, Brooklyn, and left the New York area, many of them for the first time since coming to the United States. They headed to the march in Washington. But they did not go as anti-abortion protesters; they went to march for abortion rights.

"One has to respect a person's freedom and rights," said Ms. Taveras, 40, who immigrated from the Dominican Republic two years ago.

"I think abortion is killing a life," said Ms. Flores, who left Ecuador 11 years ago. But, she added, "The person who is pregnant should decide whether to do it or not."

[Full Story]

Speaking only for myself, I am opposed to killing Hispanic immigrants with stupid opinions, but I think that's something everyone has to decide for himself whether he wants to do.

Update: No less a personage than First Lady wannabe Teresa Heinz Kerry has used this exact argument in the May 3, 2004 edition of Newsweek, saying, "I don't view abortion as just a nothing. It is stopping the process of life." She then goes on to say that if she has to commit herself to one position or another, she is pro-choice.

This seems to be a relatively new tactic in the pro-abort camp: acknowledge that a fetus is indeed "a life," but without committing oneself to what kind of life it actually is. That, of course, would force them to admit that it is, and indeed cannot be other than, human life that they advocate destroying. In reality it's just a new way of repackaging the same old circular assumption that the unborn are not human and can be exterminated at will.