It couldn’t be that it’s trying to drum up more abortion business, could it? Nah, that would be…unethical. Unless, of course, one likes abortions.
Watch, if you have the stomach for it, that video above, which Planned Parenthood promoted this way:
abortion
It Appears That SCOTUS’s Dobbs Decision Saved 30,000 Lives So Far
How does one make an ethics case that this is a bad thing?
A new study by economists at Georgia Tech and Middlebury College, published by the nonprofit Institute of Labor Economic, indicates that in states with significant limits on abortions or outright bans, births have increased. One of the study’s researchers, Caitlin Myers, went on NPR’s “All Things Considered” to discuss the results as if they were describing the Johnstown flood.
I found this genuinely mind-boggling. The exchange demonstrates how ethics rot can set in so decisively that even the most hard-wired and socially beneficial ethics alarms don’t work at all. Abortion supporters are so vehement in their love of the [procedure that prematurely ends nascent life in the womb that they are apparently willing to ignore all other issues in order to (try to follow, now…) punish Republicans who were responsible for getting a President elected who appointed Justices to the Supreme Court who were finally willing to over-rule a decision, Roe v. Wade, that most legal scholars, even those who defend abortion, conceded was poorly reasoned and wrongly decided.
Myers says at the end of the interview,
Today’s Unethical NYT Headline: “Democrats, No Longer Squeamish on Abortion, Lean Into Searing Personal Ads”
What an infuriating, despicable headline, though the story is equally bad. If abortion supporters—yes, it’s the Democratic Party exploiting the issue—weren’t “squeamish” about what they so indignantly and self-righteously support they wouldn’t have spent the past 70 years trying to figure out ways to avoid directly admitting what they are advocating. “Baby? What baby?”
The argument for abortion, that is, terminating a developing unique human life distinct from that of its mother before it can grow to be born and go on to experience life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, has been, and still is, deliberately clouded by misleadng rhetoric about “choice” and “reproductive care,” the current dodge. Wait, how is that other human life in the equation assisted with his or her “reproduction”? Is it “care” to have that life’s own chances of reproducing taken away from it?
And what choice does the victim of an abortion have?
If Democrats weren’t “squeamish” about having to deal with those questions, they wouldn’t be trying (and, tragically, thanks to the abysmal level of attention, critical thought and ethical competence of the average American, largely succeeding) to avoid them.
Regarding The Ohio Right To Abortion Amendment
Last night, Ohio voters approved a constitutional amendment that guarantees the right to abortion. The tally wasn’t close: 2,186, 962 favored the measure, or 56.6%, while only 1,675, 72, or 43%, opposed putting a right to abortions in the state constitution.
The first point to understand is that this is not a rejection of the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs over-ruling Roe v. Wade, but the exact result the Supreme Court ruled the Constitution intended. It is and always whould have been the states’ call: abortion is not a federal issue, and the national Constitution is silent on it, despite the political and ideological dishonesty of Roe. What Ohio did is exactly what the Supreme Court ruled it should do: let voters, not courts, decide the issue.
Logically, this decision should take abortion out of the 2024 election in Ohio, and if Republicans are smart <cough> that’s what they should say. “It’s in the constitution now, and we’ll follow the law. I still believe abortion is wrong in most cases, and I will work toward making that clear enough that Ohioans change the law, but right now, the decision has been made.”
So: When Does The Supreme Court Get Its Apology From The Dobbs Hysterics?
Statistics based on research by the Guttmacher Institute seem to indicate that legal abortions increased slightly in the United States in the first six months of 2023 compared with 2020. The assumption is that states with more permissive abortion laws absorbed patients traveling from states with more restrictive laws, and access to abortion pills increased.
Thus the feminist and progressive narrative that Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision last year created a “Handmaiden’s Tale” hellscape where women were compelled to give birth to children they did not want was, as those inclined to be rational realized, inflammatory propaganda designed to support unhinged attacks on the six Justices in the Dobbs majority. The lie also proved to be a useful Democratic Party election weapon.
As Justice Alito stated clearly in his opinion, the ruling over-turning Roe v. Wade was not a pro- or anti-abortion ruling, but a necessary decision to uphold core Constitutional principles while striking down a badly reasoned precedent. The Constitution does not include a right to abortion, and the Founders would have been horrified at the very thought. Nor is abortion a proper matter for a national law, other than a Constitutional amendment.
Comment Of The Day: “Abortion Confusion Ethics: What Should We Call This?”
This story, which I was hoping would spark more discussion here than it has so far, would be an excellent starting point for a question in a presidential candidates debate, or indeed any debate regarding the proper status of abortion in the law and our societal ethics. Right now, the negligent killing of two fertilized eggs that a married couple regarded, with considerable justification, as “their babies” is treated with less seriousness than if someone had murdered the family’s puppy. What is a fertilized egg, a zygote, a fetus, an embryo, and a newborn baby? It can’t possibly be that their true nature as human beings (or not) with the right to be protected (or not) under the law is magically altered according to what the mother chooses to believe, or what a legislature decrees…can it?
Here is James Hodgson’s Comment of the Day on the post, “Abortion Confusion Ethics: What Should We Call This?”:
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Negligent homicide by the staff, and strict financial liability for the corporation, are evident here, in my view. I know this sounds harsh to some, but so is the killing of an unborn child.
Over the past decade, my wife and I caught several errors in prescription fulfillment in our own meager regimes of pharmaceuticals. This happened at three of our previous insurance-preferred pharmacies. It is also reported anecdotally by a number of people I know.
Fortunately for us, we detected the errors before taking any wrongly prescribed drugs, and we learned to double-check everything, every time. (These errors also gave us more motivation to improve our nutrition and fitness in order to escape prescription drugs altogether.)
Abortion Confusion Ethics: What Should We Call This?
“According to a report by 8 News Now, Las Vegas resident Timika Thomas in 2019 wanted to add one more to her family of four….In her 30s, Thomas said she struggled getting pregnant…. Even though [she and her husband] were not insured for the costs they would endure, they decided to pay for invitro fertilization (IVF). …doctors sedated Thomas, inserted two eggs inside her body and sent her home with prescriptions, one of which would trick her body into producing enough hormones to kickstart her pregnancy. “You have to make yourself think it’s pregnant,” Thomas told the 8 News Now Investigators.Thomas went to her CVS branch pharmacy… took two of her required doses and knew something was wrong. “I started cramping really bad,” Thomas said. … “It was extreme. It was painful.” Thomas checked the prescription bottle and looked up the name of the drug. “The first thing I read is it’s used for abortions,” Thomas said…
[T]wo technicians and two pharmacists made a series of errors that led to Thomas being given the wrong medication, which essentially terminated her budding pregnancy on the spot. “They just killed my baby,” she said to herself at the time. “Both my babies, because I transferred two embryos.”
[The] technician – incorrectly believing she knew the generic name for the brand prescribed by the doctor – entered the wrong name into the prescription. One pharmacist did not catch the error, and another pharmacist failed to counsel Thomas when she came to pick up her medication…”
That’s the CVS near my house in Alexandria. The CVS culprit in this ugly story was in Las Vegas, but it shows the same level of competence and care I’ve experienced.
Here’s the account from Fox Business:
“According to a report by 8 News Now, Las Vegas resident Timika Thomas in 2019 wanted to add one more to her family of four….In her 30s, Thomas said she struggled getting pregnant…. Even though [she and her husband] were not insured for the costs they would endure, they decided to pay for invitro fertilization (IVF). …doctors sedated Thomas, inserted two eggs inside her body and sent her home with prescriptions, one of which would trick her body into producing enough hormones to kickstart her pregnancy. “You have to make yourself think it’s pregnant,” Thomas told the 8 News Now Investigators.Thomas went to her CVS branch pharmacy… took two of her required doses and knew something was wrong. “I started cramping really bad,” Thomas said. … “It was extreme. It was painful.” Thomas checked the prescription bottle and looked up the name of the drug. “The first thing I read is it’s used for abortions,” Thomas said…
[T]wo technicians and two pharmacists made a series of errors that led to Thomas being given the wrong medication, which essentially terminated her budding pregnancy on the spot. “They just killed my baby,” she said to herself at the time. “Both my babies, because I transferred two embryos.”
[The] technician – incorrectly believing she knew the generic name for the brand prescribed by the doctor – entered the wrong name into the prescription. One pharmacist did not catch the error, and another pharmacist failed to counsel Thomas when she came to pick up her medication…”
An Ethics Estoppel Classic: This Op-Ed Heads Straight To The “Pot Calling The Kettle Black” Hall Of Fame…
How incapable of self-awareness must an extreme abortion advocate be to accuse abortion opponents of manipulating the language to mislead the public about what they are really talking about? The entire pro-abortion movement has been built on linguistic deceit of the most flagrant kind for decades, with abortion being referred to as “choice.” This is deliberate deception, as if proposals to prevent the killing of nascent living human beings have as their objective a broad rejection of autonomy, rather than an ethical respect for human life, no matter how early in that life an individual may be.
The Nation’s Moral, Legal And Ethical Incoherence On Abortion, In Two Articles
In the first, “In Post-Roe America, Nikki Haley Seeks a New Path on Abortion for G.O.P.,” we learn that
“We need to stop demonizing this issue,” Haley said at the first Republican debate. “It’s personal for every woman and man. Now, it’s been put in the hands of the people. That’s great.”
No, it’s not just “personal.” It is societal. Moral and ethical principles exist, and they aren’t principles if any individual can reject or ignore them as everyone shrugs and says, “OK! Different strokes for different folks!” That’s how we end up with mobs shoplifting at Walmart with no consequences. Is theft right, fair, acceptable and ethical, or is it wrong and damaging to society and humanity? Is that a hard question? No?
Great! Now lets do killing growing human beings.
The Times, naturally, quickly establishes itself as a flack for “choice,” writing about Haley’s search for “an anti-abortion message that doesn’t alienate moderate Republicans and swing voters,” because, presumably, anyone who isn’t a radical, extremist Republican will be alienated by advocating anti-abortion policies that treat abortions as they should be treated: legalized killings of human beings. Those who won’t recognize abortions as what abortions are—the word “kill” doesn’t appear anywhere in the Times news story, nor is there any reference to ending a life or lives—either haven’t thought very deeply about the matter, don’t want to, or won’t admit to themselves what the issue is. For example,
Molly Murphy, a Democratic pollster, doubted whether Ms. Haley could square her “respectful and middle-ground, compromise approach” with a decade-long record of “actually not doing that when in office.” Republicans, she said, have far to go before voters will give them the benefit of the doubt on the issue. “Those candidates trying to walk back their previous positions on abortion look incredibly political and non-trustworthy,” Ms. Murphy said. “Their credibility is so low on this issue that voters just fundamentally believe Republicans want to ban abortion.”
Ethically and morally, how is legalizing abortions when the birth doesn’t genuinely imperil the life of the mother a “respectful and middle-ground” or “compromise” approach that can pass any ethical system without setting off sirens? Kant held that using another’s life as a means to an end was per se unethical. “Reciprocity” fails, obviously: would abortion advocates be supportive of their own mothers aborting them because their births would be inconvenient and a career handicap? Or are a half-million aborted babies every year in the U.S. just the price of equal opportunity? The ends justifies the means: brutal utilitarianism.
From The News Media And Democrats, Another “It Isn’t What It Is” Orgy [Expanded]
There is no excuse for this, but apparently it works because the American people are generally as gullible as puppies, as lazy as Homer Simpson, and as irresponsible as eight-year olds with firecrackers. Democrats and their news media henchmen and henchwomen once again decided that it was prudent to gaslight the American people on the topic of abortion, where they have no logical or ethical legs to stand on, but never mind, it’s only about “choice,” after all.
During the first GOP candidates debate in Wisconsin, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Senator Tim Scott and former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson all agreed that, in DeSantis’s words,”the Democrats are trying to….allow abortion all the way up to the moment of birth.” That is unquestionably true, but most Americans don’t like the idea of killing viable babies in the womb—if that’s okay, why not wait until after a birth and decide then if you want to kill the little bugger?—so the troops were called out to deny reality. (This is the current Rationalization of the Century in Woke World: #64. Yoo’s Rationalization or “It isn’t what it is”)
Ethics Alarms 