The Essence of “Pro-Choice” Rhetoric: Misdirection (Part 2)

by Mick Hunt

In Part I, I wrote about how abortion clinic escorts use misdirection and distraction, which are among the tools of stage illusionists as a way of controlling the audience’s attention.  These same tools are also at the heart of “pro-choice” rhetoric.

Ad-hominem attacks against pro-lifers are obvious, and a trained debater won’t be sidetracked by them, but virtually every women-centered question or statement is also misdirection.  The real issue is not whether we should care about women.  Everyone knows we should.  The real issue is about caring for pre-natal children.

My answer to many questions is, “We should treat pre-natal children the same as we should treat born children.”  Or, “Whatever problem you pose with a pregnancy and a pre-natal child, we should find a solution that is, in principle, no different than if the child were born.”

To a large extent, even the scientific debate over when human life begins is misdirection and distraction.  My philosopher-carpenter friend, John S., wrote recently in a letter to a state official, “Questions like ‘when does life begin’ or ‘what is a person’ are exercises in playing dumb.  We know when life begins—it begins at conception (fertilization).  We know what a person is—it’s a human being.”

The answer then is not so much in talking about abortion, but in acting as if abortion is murder.  The Genocide Awareness Project (GAP) is a powerful appropriate indirect response to the gravity of abortion.  It’s really not debate, but a presentation of facts through imagery.  GAP is a statement of the obvious to people who are distracted.  Any contribution to debate we make has more to do with interpreting the images for people who are confused.
GAP creates problems for abortion-choice supporters. In the face of evidence of the gruesome violence, “pro-choice” rhetorical engagement is a losing proposition.  GAP compels either acquiescence, active resistance, or a dilution of our effort.  Since the activists don’t intend to quit, they must issue propaganda and organize protests.  They spread propaganda through social media and campus publications.

We see resistance in most schools, but I’d like to focus for now on the campus of the University of North Carolina (UNC), Chapel Hill, and at North Carolina State University (NCSU) in Raleigh.

At Chapel Hill, abortion supporting students lined up in front of the GAP display with signs and helium balloons.  A couple of masked male students tapped on snare drums for endless hours.  A Planned Parenthood representative stood on a wall overlooking the scene and shouted meaningless patter about condoms and filing complaints with the Dean of Students.  At NC State, the abortion “counter protest” took a further step by attempting to block the view of the GAP display and form a complete wall of bodies and signs.

The portrayal of the victims of abortion through GAP helps distracted and misdirected people attend to the real issue of abortion.  And if GAP is so effective that abortion supporters must turn out in force to distract people from seeing the images, then shouldn’t we do GAP even more often?

My Reply (rejected/unpublished)

Letter to the Daily Tar Heel

submitted about 3/22/14

A more representative title for my March 18, 2014 letter to the editor would be “Abortion could be considered genocide.”  Perhaps the Daily Tar Heel’s imperative, “should,” prompted misunderstanding contained in the March 19 reply, “Abortion letter was ignorant and hateful.”
 
But if abortion is genocide (or if it’s murder) how are we to regard women who participate in taking the lives of their pre-natal children?

Every genocide has aspects in common with other genocides, but every one is different. Women have been deceived into believing abortion is good for them.  The reality of abortion being a violent act that will destroy their child is suppressed or withheld.  They’ve grown up in a culture that believes sexuality can be separated from reproduction, and it is legal and okay to destroy their offspring.  If a comparison can be made, it would be like German young people who grew up in the 1930s. They bear a degree of responsibility for their actions, but they are also victims of those who allowed the killing to be legitimized.

The UN and other definitions of genocide do not refer to hatred. Impassive calculation is enough, because the definitions turn on intent “to destroy in whole or in part.” There are groups, national and international, campaigning to destroy all unwanted children.  Planned Parenthood with its slogan “Every child a wanted child” is an example.  And often people involved in genocide are motivated only by self-interest.

With genocide, and in any widespread killing, dehumanizing language makes it easier.  “Fetus,” commonly used by abortion-choice advocates, refers to any mammal, when the human-specific term is “child.”

For perspective, watch the introductory video at www.abortionNo.org.  How can such violence be healthy for women?  Abortion is anti-women.  Not only does it harm mothers, half of the pre-natal children killed by abortion are girls.

I would encourage readers to examine the facts (including gruesome images of the victims of abortion), ignore the petty insults and personal attacks, consider the arguments, and come to the best conclusion.  What word describes abortion better than “genocide”?

by Meredith Hunt

The photo is a GAP brochure that we handed out on 4/1 2014 on the campus of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.  Someone lit it on fire.  Not only was my reply rejected, the Daily Tar Heel did not allow me to post any online comments.

Abortion letter was ignorant and hateful

Published in the Daily Tar Heel, 03/18/14 11:24pm

TO THE EDITOR:

Yesterday’s letter to the editor titled “Abortion should be considered genocide” is ignorant, hateful and dangerous. The author, Meredith Hunt, runs an anti-choice blog that publishes names, cars and photos of pro-choice advocates in Asheville, NC.

There is no reasonable, informed argument linking abortion to genocide. First, the comparison implicitly says that women who choose to terminate a pregnancy are equivalent to Young Turks, Nazi soldiers and Hutu extremists. This assertion is ludicrous and prejudiced toward women.

Second, the comparison is factually absurd. Hunt’s clumsy primer invoking Raphael Lemkin and Samantha Power is nothing more than a poorly written Wikipedia paragraph. In order for abortion to be considered genocide, there would need to a group of mothers campaigning to kill all unborn children and each abortion would have to be carried out because of hatred toward the fetus. In reality, there is a network of compassionate advocates and supportive medical professionals solely looking out for the health of women.

Anti-choice advocates are free to make whatever claims they would like, but it’s worth noting their implications. Creating an anti-choice narrative involving genocide means creating an anti-woman narrative. It bolsters a right-wing policy agenda to which our governor and Republican legislators subscribe.

This summer’s “Motorcycle Safety” bill proves that people like Meredith Hunt, Pat McCrory and Thom Tillis will stop at nothing to curb women’s’ rights, even if it means comparing smart, reasonable women to a bloodthirsty killer.

Reject Meredith Hunt’s argument by supporting women, facts, and history.

Sean Langberg ’14
Global Studies
Geography

Here is a link to the original article.

The photograph is of "protestors" of our 3/31-4/1 2014 GAP display at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, home of the Tar Heels.  Note my reply, not published by the Daily Tar Heel, in a following post.

"Abortion COULD Be Considered Genocide"

The Daily Tar Heel of the University of North Carolina published the following letter to the editor of mine on March 18, 2014.

Abortion Should be Considered Genocide

Genocide is a powerful word.

In her Pulitzer winning book “A Problem from Hell” Samantha Power suggested the word would “chill listeners and invite immediate condemnation” and “carry in it society’s revulsion and indignation.”

Human rights activists are warning that present violence and chaos in two areas of the world, Central African Republic and Myanmar, put certain peoples there at risk of genocide.

The UN defined genocide in 1948 as specific “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group...”

Those acts are:

• Killing;
• Causing serious bodily or mental harm;
• Deliberately inflicting conditions calculated to bring about physical destruction;
• Imposing measures to prevent births;
• Forcibly transferring children.

Some individual nations expand the definition of genocide to include groups classified by age, sexual orientation, gender, political “condition”, health, or, as with France, “any other arbitrary criterion.”

And while the UN Convention limits prosecutable genocide, UN Resolution 96, passed in 1946, describes genocide as, “a denial of the right of existence of entire human groups”, “when racial, religious, political or other groups have been destroyed in whole or in part”, and whether committed by “private individuals, public officials or statesmen, and whether the crime is committed on religious, racial, political, or any other grounds…”

When Raphael Lemkin coined the word genocide in the mid 1940s, he focused on one shade of meaning of the roots gen and genos, one with the suggestion of race. But there are other shades attached to them as seen in the English words genesis, engender, genetics, generate, generation, and genius, which imply “beginnings” and “family.” Progeny means “offspring.”

So, given the power and potential breadth of the word “genocide”, and given that every person’s life begins at fertilization, the violent, widespread, government-protected abortion of pre-natal children could be considered genocide based on age. No other existing single word captures the full reality of what abortion is.

Link to the original story.

A slightly longer version was published on March 21 in NC State's student newspaper, The Technician.