Post-Pro-Life Reflections

Let me live
Let me walk into the sunshine
Let me live
Feel my mother's arms around me
Feel my father's love surround me
Be a part of God's creation
Let me live
 -Pat Boone, "Let Me Live"

Pro-Life propaganda is pretty effective on a little kid. Songs like the above, books such as Tilly, a plethora of miscellaneous bumper-sticker slogans, Last Days Newsletter articles, and Pro-Life magazines, combined with the traumatizing Pro-Life trump card of dismembered-fetus pictures, had me convinced that abortion was the number-one atrocity facing America. Perhaps it was even the worst atrocity of all time. These materials were peppered with blame: Feminists, Democrats, and money-hungry abortion "doctors" (always in quotes) were frequent targets. Interestingly, the most blame was assigned to Christians who didn't care enough: you had better vote Pro-Life, picket, lay down in front of abortion clinics. If you don't, abortion is your fault.

What was a child to do, now convinced that babies were being ripped apart, in agonizing pain, and that she was to blame? I wasn't entirely sure. I went out of my comfort zone a time or two for picketing, or candlelight vigils in sub-zero January. I made myself look at the aborted fetus pictures on a regular basis, and when I wasn't doing that, I would lose myself in nightmarish daydreams in which bloody aborted fetus parts would be dumped over my body as punishment for my inaction. Mostly I just cried.

It was only this past year that I realized, really realized, that the hullabaloo was all for nothing. At long last it has sunk in for me that a fetus doesn't care if it's being aborted. And for someone who had been taught that fetuses writhe in agony and make silent screams when they're aborted, that changes everything.

Abortion is not really cruel

Although there is scientific uncertainty as to when a fetus starts to feel pain response, the ages in dispute are between 20 and 35 weeks gestational age. Additionally, it's worth considering that a fetus's brain is awash in chemicals that basically keep it in a state of sleepiness/drowsiness. It's "knocked out," so to speak. Meanwhile, in the U.S., only 1.5 percent of all abortions performed are in this 21+ week range when a fetus's pain response starts to develop in a significant way. Generally, third-trimester abortions are only performed in cases of medical necessity such as when the life of the mother is threatened or the fetus has a severe deformity. You know, the reasons Pro-Lifers are most likely to make exceptions for?

Therefore, in the vast majority of, if not all, cases, abortion cannot be considered "cruel" no matter what method is used to end the fetus's life.

If, as some would point out, the point of the Pro-Life movement is to oppose abortion because of an ethic of preserving human life for the sake of it, irrelevant of cruelty issues, what was the point of brainwashing me into thinking that abortion is barbaric?

I'll tell you why.

The first reason, I suppose, must be simple misunderstanding. A pro-lifer reads "Embryonic brain development begins at 3 weeks" and hears "At 3 weeks, an embryo can think." A Pro-Lifer looks at a dismembered embryo or fetus and thinks "That looks like a miniature infant. It must be able to hurt like an infant can." This kind of skewed thinking borders on dishonesty when Pro-Lifers distribute fetus models that make an embryo look a lot more like an infant than it actually does, or when they attribute the characteristics of infants, or even toddlers or teenagers to a fetus (more on that later).

Second, I believe that for some Pro-Lifers, aborted fetus pictures are a type of torture porn. It was for me in some ways. While traumatizing, looking at pictures of dismembered fetuses also came with a kind of visceral thrill and fascination, much the same way a child might enjoy dissecting a dead squirrel. Christians, who helm the Pro-Life movement, have long had an affinity for the grisly; why do you think Foxe's Book of Martyrs was so popular, or why The Passion of the Christ was such a hit? Certainly not for the spiritual enrichment. The Pro-Life articles I read often seemed to take a certain relish in describing how atrociously horrible abortion is. I don't think this reveals an unusually twisted psyche in the Pro-Lifers, it's just human psychology.

Third, it stokes ordinary Pro-Life self-righteousness into a frenzy. The more you play up how evil you think the position of Pro-Choice people is, the better you get to feel about yourself. It inoculates you against considering other positions. They're evil baby killers who like to cruelly rip apart little ones. We're the ones who want to protect babies.

The fetus as a tool

The lines at the top of this post are from a song called "Let Me Live" by Pat Boone, a Christian singer who is surely aware that fetuses are incapable of communicating with their mothers, but apparently found the notion compelling enough to write a song about. This song is the perfect emblem of a manipulative tactic in the Pro-Life arsenal: giving a voice to the fetus.

Putting aside the fact that there's no way a fetus can have anything resembling an actual thought until the cerebral cortex is developed (about 20 weeks), it's interesting that Pro-Lifers feel comfortable putting their opinions into the mouth of an embryo. It's not surprising, though; for the often-religious Pro-Lifers, God is a sockpuppet, so why not add fetuses to the show?

The typical fetus narrative goes something like this: "Mommy, let me live. I want to be part of the world and run and play on a swingset. I have fingernails and bones and all I want is the chance to live."
But why not a different viewpoint?
"Wow, Mom, my existence seems to be causing you a predicament. If you had me, you'd have trouble paying rent and taking care of my brother and sister. It's really unfair of me to demand that you go through the miseries of pregnancy and childbirth to have me; you are not my slave. Since I won't be able to feel it anyway, you can go ahead and abort me."
If you're going to anthropomorphize a fetus into an adult, why not a selfless one who cares more about its mother's well-being than its own eventual life? Pro-Lifers assume fetuses are theirs to speak for, when they can't even be assed to accurately understand or portray the cognitive capacity of the thing they're trying to defend. And they peddle a simplistic view of motherhood, too.

This sympathy with the fetus comes up a lot in the mind games and supposedly unanswerable questions Pro-lifers come up with, like that old chestnut, What if you had been aborted? The simple answer to that is that I wouldn't be "me." I would have no concept of self. I wouldn't care. If my mom had rolled over and gone to sleep instead of having sex with my dad, I also wouldn't be around, but I don't consider it some kind of moral threat for people not to have sex. My being aborted would be no different from non-existence, except that my developing presence would have been a slight inconvenience to my mother in the former case. What happened to me before I had the ability to think is of no concern to me.

An embryo or fetus does not care if it's aborted because it's physically unable to "care" about anything.

If you want to have some personal ethic of the sanctity of life, fine. Be my guest. You can be a vegetarian if you wish. You can oppose killing shrimp, or cutting down trees. You can be a Jain and avoid eating root vegetables, and carry a little broom to sweep away bugs from your path so you don't step on them. I don't care. Just quit trying to guilt-trip children, quit worshiping fetuses to puff up your own sense of self-righteousness, and stop trying to legislate protections for something that is less sentient than a fish. Doing those things, at the expense of women's liberty and the truth, causes more harm than a fetus has ever cared about. I'm so glad to be rid of your bullshit.