Why Are Democrats Anti-Science When It Comes To Abortion?
This election cycle Democrats are trying to use social issues to divide Republicans. And, admittedly, social issues can be pretty divisive on the right. A growing number of conservatives are agnostic, at best, about gay marriage, and some of the social conservative views on things like contraception come off as downright silly to the librertarian/fiscal conservative wing of the party.
And Democrats know that. Which is why they’re pushing this “war on women” stuff. Which is why they’re busy trying to cast the pro-life position as being extremist. Witness this article in which Fargo Forum reporter Helmut Schmid carries on as though a pro-life plank in the GOP platform, one that has been there for years, is somehow something new and provocative and harangues Senator John Hoeven (who was on the GOP’s national platform committee) about it.
But being pro-life is hardly an extremist position. I’m not even sure it’s a religious position. I’m an atheist, and I didn’t come to my pro-life stance through any spiritual revelation or interpretation of scripture. To me, it’s just science.
Life is a continuum of growth and development which begins at conception and continues until death, whether it be from old age or from an abortion. Picking a point within that continuum to represent the point at which “life” and personhood is obtained is ridiculous and illogical.
Liberals seem to think it’s ok to interrupt the continuum of life as long as the interruption occurs in the womb, but speaking from a scientific standpoint, we could just as well pick a point outside a womb. Perhaps we could define abortion as ok as long as it occurs before the child learns to walk. Or says his/her first word.
What irks me is this pompous parade of political talking points which hold that being pro-life is somehow anti-woman, and anti-intellectual when in reality the exact opposite is true. We are currently using a political definition for life, established by the court system and not science, and created to rationalize the desire of some to be rid of the responsibility of the children they created.
That, my friends, is anti-intellectual. That’s anti-woman. That’s anti-science.
I don’t harbor any moral objections to contraception. In fact, I’m all for contraception, and I’m all for adults being able to make their own decisions about their sexual lives. But none of that changes the facts of conception, the continuum of life or abortion.
Tags: Abortion, election 2012, todd akin
