“Unless one lives and loves in the trenches, it is difficult to remember that the war against dehumanization is ceaseless.” ― Audre Lorde
“The sadism of treating human beings like vermin lies precisely in the recognition that they are not.” ― David Livingston Smith
“Groups targeted based on their identity—gender, ideology, skin color, ethnicity, religion, age—are depicted as “less than” or criminal or even evil. The targeted group eventually falls out of the scope of who is naturally protected by our moral code. This is moral exclusion, and dehumanization is at its core.” ― Brene Brown, Dehumanizing Always Starts with Language
I normally don't write on subjects such as abortion. There's never been a time that I've felt the urge to write on this subject, being tone deaf to the rhetoric being pumped out about the issue and never finding a large enough fault with it worth my attention. However, that changed after New York legalized abortions up to the time of birth and I watched the rhetoric being dumped into the public areas once more. This time, instead of seeing a 'woman's rights' issue, I seen new age sacrifices being made to money gods as I realized a couple things...
The first thing I realized while watching the renewed vigor of people promoting the killing of babies is that the entire abortion argument is based on dehumanization. That's right. The same thing that led to the slaughter of Native Americans, European minorities, Africans, and Asians in the last 150 years alone. Or put another way, the one thing that's caused nearly all the woes in the world. See, you can't just kill someone. Oh, no. First, you have to say it's not a 'person', which the abortion argument does to fetuses. Then you have to have to convince others that the thing that isn't a 'person' should be killed, which the abortion argument also does. Only then, do you get to kill the thing, which is where the abortion argument ends. And the rhetoric surrounding the abortion issue does all these things well, so well in fact, that it took until New York started bragging about their plan to allow fully developed humans to be killed for people other than pro-lifers to have an opinion. The Nazi's pulled a similar trick when they convinced others to help them feed the cremation fires, and no one took note of that either until the body count was huge. This dehumanization process also shows its face in other places: identity politics (the term 'deplorables' is eerily similar to the Nazi's term 'Untermensch' or 'subhuman'), family matters (lots of kids are being killed by their parents and parents killed by kids), and disregard for children in general (adults shooting up and threatening to shoot up schools). Dehumanization kills everything it touches since that's its sole purpose and comes in many disguises, often sold to people as a 'right' they buy like a first time car owner nabbing a lemon because of not knowing enough to check under the hood.
The second thing I realized was that the only differences between an 'abortion at birth' and an old school baby sacrifice are the lack of a pagan priest in animal skins with a flint knife and a stone altar. But it's not happening to bring rain to crops. Nor to bring victory in battle. Nor to coax the sun into making one more passage through the zodiac. Nor to create a strong society. No. It's done for money. The almighty dollar. Which can be even more unpredictable than any of the other things a person could be sacrificed for. Every argument for abortion that doesn't involve rape, incest, or medical issues comes down to money. This means that that the primary argument to kill babies is for the possibility of more money or not spending as much money. Either way, it's a dead human with money as the most likely reason.
Dehumanization creates self-dehumanization. That makes all this a type of social perpetual motion machine if it's allowed to continue with this rhetoric that is dehumanizing children. And it clearly is rhetoric since the same moldy lines are being shouted in support of abortion until birth as they did for abortion at any other point and don't seem to realize pushback like in Alabama is a result of them pushing. This is a perfect social example of the scientific principle of 'equal but opposite reactions'.
I'm one to see the joke in contained everything. Even within a subject as thoroughly horrid as this one. And the joke is an ironic joke. The joke is that everyone killing a baby 'for a career' can't see the future, has no clue at all if they'll actually have the career or money they dream of, and could have killed the only thing that would've brought some meaning to their existence. Not only that, but if they were on a bad path, having a kid could have helped them immensely, as it did me and others I've known. But they'll never know if they killed it because there aren't any do overs on a one way street.
You may be appalled by all this. And I don't care because I'm appalled that I felt the need to write such a thing. And I'm appalled that systematic dehumanization is being committed against people that have no way of defending themselves. At the end of the day, no one is any more right for calling for the death of a fully developed human so they can possibly make more money then they'd be right by calling for their workplace to be shot up so they can go on unemployment, because both are rooted in dehumanization.
I almost didn't finish this horrid...rant. But then I decided I had to. And I had to because of Jim Carrey's artwork showing the governor of Alabama being aborted. It couldn't sum up what I'm talking about here any better unless I had personally directed every stroke of his pen and brush. Dehumanization and child sacrifice are the stars of that picture and of these words. Dehumanization is perfectly depicted by showing an adult as a baby that is being killed in an dehumanizing manner and child sacrifice is also put front and center by showing a fetus/baby being killed. And then Carrey all but shouts child sacrifice through a loudspeaker with his words 'I think if you’re going to terminate a pregnancy, it should be done sometime before the fetus becomes Governor of Alabama' which is basically telling people to kill their babies before they grow up, or while during the period of time they'd be considered a 'child'. Ergo, child sacrifice.
I'm not 'pro-lifer' or 'pro-choice'. I'm 'pro-do your thing until it becomes a public health crisis and don't cry about the consequences'. Much like with the opiate/script crisis. And anything that looks like child sacrifice looks like a public health crisis. Now, I'm not saying to stop abortions. I'm saying that 'abortion' at a certain stage is something other than abortion and should be called as such. Since 90%+ of babies born prematurely in week 27+ survive, the definition of 'abortion' seems to stop there at the latest since it's described as 'the termination of pregnancy by various methods, including medical surgery, before the fetus is able to sustain independent life'. Fetuses born at at least week 34 have as much a chance as full term babies and the age of 'viability' is considered to be week 24 which is when doctors will try to save it. The small human beings can clearly survive outside the womb far before week 40, including the whole third trimester, and killing one in that stage is a gray area between what is clearly 'abortion' and what is clearly 'child sacrifice' marked at each end. The closer to the 40th week, the more it looks like child sacrifice because it becomes harder to argue it's not a human being. The demarcation between those definitions for a fetus killed in the third trimester also depends on where it is killed. Inside the body or outside. The first could be construe d as 'abortion' since it is the death of a 'fetus' inside the body, the second can be argued as 'child sacrifice' because a viable human was brought into the world and then killed.
Having people publicly call for the killing of anything remotely human is poison to society, no different than calling for the death of any other group, no matter their age, race, or creed. We can see this poison most recently in the dehumanization that is being regularly presented as some sort of 'argument' or 'point' such as Carrey's picture of Kay Ivey that isn't a point about, but an example of, what is really going on under the surface of rhetoric. We see it in how human fetuses are being called 'parasites' by some abortionists. We see it in how abortionists argue their case by saying those aborted would just be a burden. Abortion is one thing, promoting it in ways that cause dehumanization is another. Not only that, but because of the risk of dehumanizing ourselves, I have to wonder if some rights were better left alone in the dark for only those curious enough to poke around for them. I have to wonder if some rights were never supposed to be slapped on a sign and waved in children's faces. And I have to wonder if some rights aren't so much a 'right' as a balancing act over chaos we can barely conceive and must never tilt too far in one direction.
Further reading:
US Abortion Statistics: https://abort73.com/abortion_facts/us_abortion_statistics/
Pros and Cons of Abortion: https://abortion.procon.org/
Dehumanization Always Starts with Language: https://brenebrown.com/articles/2018/05/17/dehumanizing-always-starts-with-language/
The 5 Steps of Dehumanization: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/cutting-edge-leadership/201811/the-5-steps-dehumanization
Did Hillary Clinton just make her own ‘47 percent’ gaffe?: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/09/10/republicans-think-hillary-clinton-just-made-her-own-47-percent-gaffe-did-she/?utm_term=.e790bf43a7ce
Hart Family Parents Killed 6 Children in Murder-Suicide, Jury Determines: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/05/us/hart-family-murder-suicide.html
Woman accused of threatening to 'shoot everyone' at Tampa elementary school: http://www.fox13news.com/news/local-news/woman-accused-of-threatening-to-shoot-everyone-at-tampa-elementary-school?fbclid=IwAR2AN89HkMpsaUUIYQWmNjGgncjDK5KKdU0zmkWYh1uHoyGGTf3ycwh4IIQ
Premature Birth and Survival Statistics: https://www.verywellfamily.com/premature-birth-and-viability-2371529
another male coming up with male-dominated decisions about what a woman should do with the situation may have not wanted the first place.
No one ever seems to look at what it costs to bring a child point of college graduation, the only point where they will earn enough as a taxpaying citizen not to have to survive on some form of government support and/or illegal activity. I'm all against eliminating birth defects, but they are very common and happen to the best of people. I am against bringing another hungry consumer into the world that I think every couple birthing babies should have a very serious discussion before doing so. We are over 7 billion people and rapidly destroying the natural world around us, most dangerously, the ocean that really is a major part of sustaining us. While draconian measures like China enacted of having only one child, and then the Chinese people believing that that child must be male for some archaic, but stupid reason, is a form of dehumanization that you describe and should not be allowed to happen, family planning should. And, family planning should include abortion as an option.
There's nothing more dehumanizing than being born with a severe disability and living as a freak all your life, dependent upon many others to keep you alive and sustain you while you garner small victories like being able to walk and have friends.
I have a clear vision. Do everything we can to reduce population growth worldwide through education and best practices, and leave abortion to pregnant women in consultation with their doctors and their birth fathers.
Ron