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She Was a Girl
from
Bir-ming-HAM...
or,
"How
to
Win Arguments about
Abortion"
Aside
from religion, the War, and those
pop-up polls about whether
Britney Spears’s kids should be taken away where you can win
a free ringtone,
abortion is the nation’s most hotly-contested issue, and last
week’s Supreme
Court ruling has thrust it back into the spotlight.
Now, we all know that
practically everyone who’s pro-life is
pro-life because of wack religious shit… but unlike other right-wing positions based on wack
religious shit, Conservatives
are actually willing to engage in debates
about abortion, because they are under
the impression that they have good arguments aside from the
core
mumbo-jumbo about souls.
Many Liberals, however, are
disinclined to debate minutiae
outside of our general prescription about “a
woman’s right to choose.”
We here at 1585 of course agree
with the idea that a woman has
this right, but also think
it’s
important to remember that this right is derived
from myriad smaller logical points.
And
when we assert it a priori and
refuse
to engage beyond that, it makes Conservatives think
that their arguments are more “logical” than ours
(when
they’re actually not) and that we are simply basing our
stance on the warrant
that women should be able to do whatever they want simply because
they’re
women.
So, to help you the next time
you find yourself in an
abortion debate that advances beyond the sloganeering of
“souls vs. rights,”
here are some sweet, checkmate-ass retorts to some of the most common
Conservative attacks on Roe v. Wade,
all based on wickid-smaht logicianing, so as to nullify the
Conservative’s
accusation that your position is based solely on touchy-feeliness, or
whatever
the fuck they were going to say.
1. “Being
pro-choice is illogical! If
your mom had had an abortion, then you
wouldn’t be here!”
Yes, that’s
true. It’s
also true that I
wouldn’t be here if my parents had never met, or
not had sex that day, or if my dad had come two seconds later or two
seconds
earlier, or jerked off earlier that day, or had something different for
lunch. There is an
effectively infinite amount of shit
that could have
caused me or anyone else to “not be here,” so why
single out abortion?
1b. “But
the fetus
is already alive!”
Technically,
so are sperm, and millions of
those already die inside your nuts every day anyway, and a fetus early
on is no
more alive than an individual sperm cell is.
By the way, you are changing your argument now,
since your original
point was just about what would or wouldn’t cause someone to
“not be here,” not
whether the fetus is “alive,” but I’ll go
ahead and label this point “1b”
anyway.
1c. “But
sperm
wouldn’t survive outside the body
for more than a couple of seconds.”
Exactly. Neither
would a
fetus. Oh, and just
so you know, I could
be giving you shit for calling it a fetus
before the third month, because before that it’s an embryo and before that it’s a zygote,
but what the hell, I can fuck you up on this regardless.
1d. “There’s
no difference between all those
fancy science words! It
is a human
baby!” I’m
glad you said that,
because, you see, there is a big
difference between those “fancy science words,” as
you call them. The
blob in question is basically a retarded
fish for the first three months, and a reptile or some shit for a while
after
that.
2. “What
the hell
are you talking about?”
What I’m talking about is the fact that,
although it doesn't do so exactly,
ontogeny roughly recapitulates phylogeny, which means that the stages
of in-utero
development of an individual higher animal mirror the stages of the
evolution
of that animal’s species.
Thus, whether
a fetus is alive is actually not
the
same question as whether it is human,
because the parts that make it human—the cerebrum, for
example—don’t appear
until the ass-end of the gestation period.
2b. “Oh,
yeah? Well,
I… actually,
wait,
nevermind.” No,
that’s okay, what is
it?
2c. “Nothing.” Are you sure? You weren’t
going to say that you
don’t believe in evolution, by any
chance, were you?
2d. “Maybe,
but why
are you dragging the
evolution debate into this? Isn’t
it
totally irrelevant?”
That’s what I’d
assumed you were going to say, and the reason I assumed this also
explains why
the evolution “debate” is relevant, as follows: Only 14% of the U.S.
population believe that
evolution is “definitely
true,” 51% believe it is “definitely not
true”—i.e., they are Creationists—and
the other 35% aren’t sure.
Since the
same population is split roughly 50/50 on the abortion debate, and both
these
issues correlate nearly exactly with party identity itself, this means
that
there are virtually no pro-life people
who believe in evolution, which is something you never really
hear anyone
bring up. But since
the abortion debate
is about whether the fetus is “human,” and since
the
reason it isn’t
directly
involves evolution—i.e., someone can’t accept that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny if that
person does not accept phylogeny itself
to begin with—I think
it’s something people should start pointing out a whole lot
more, seeing as how
I just proved that anything that anyone who doesn’t believe
in evolution has to
say about abortion is automatically just as useless and irrelevant as
what they
have to say about evolution itself, and
that virtually no-one who is against abortion believes in evolution.
2e. “Fuck. But the whatever-it-is
would still end up being a
human baby if you
didn’t do anything about it.” Yeah,
which is why you do something about it—namely, having an
abortion.
3. “But
you are
messing around with Nature! Aren’t
you happy to be alive?”
Those are two different points, but I can
answer them both together, since they were both stupid.
You are already
“messing around with Nature” in everything that you
do. For example,
are you planning to go have sex
with someone five minutes from now?
3b. “Of
course not. I’m
a giant
loser.” Okay,
well, if you did go have sex with
someone five minutes from now, then you might
have gotten that person pregnant, so therefore I guess you are
“messing with
Nature” by continuing to stand here and have this
conversation with me, since
by doing so you are preventing the person you would otherwise have been
creating from existing. And
by the way,
same goes for the fact that you are not planning to go rape
someone in five minutes, so I guess that means you think rape
is not only excusable, but a moral imperative, since you are
effectively
“causing people to not be here” by not
going around raping women 24 hours a day.
4. “Of
course I
don’t think rape is okay.
In fact, I think women who are pregnant because
of rape should be allowed to get abortions.” I’m glad you
said so, because guess
what? That means
you were lying before when you said
that you
thought the fetus was a living human being.
If you really
thought that,
then you would consider a rape exemption to be equivalent to murdering
an
innocent for someone else’s crime.
So,
you basically just admitted that
you
are only really against abortion
because you want to punish women for having sex voluntarily, because
you’re
pissed off about being a giant loser.
4b. “Hey,
I’m not a giant loser!”
Dude, you just admitted you were a giant
loser like two minutes ago.
4c. “Oh,
yeah. In
retrospect, that was a grievous
misstep.” Don’t
worry. It’s
not like it was some big secret in
the first place.
5. “You
are only
mature enough to have sex if
you are mature enough to raise a child!” (sometimes
phrased as) “You should only have sex if you are
willing to accept the
consequences of pregnancy!”
Bullshit. While
it is obviously
true that pregnancy is something that can happen as a result of having
sex, it
is equally true that dying in a car accident is something that can
happen as a
result of driving a car, so you could just as easily say that no-one
should
drive a car unless they are willing to die in a car accident.
5b. “That’s
different!” How
is it different? A
fatal car crash is a terrible accident that
can happen as the result of driving a car, and getting pregnant is a
terrible
accident that can happen as the result of having sex.
There are things you can do to reduce the
risk of getting pregnant, like using birth control and condoms, which
you are
also against for some reason, and there are things you can do to reduce
the
risk of dying in a car accident—and, now that I think about
it, aren’t you guys
also the ones who think there should be no speed limits and who opposed
mandatory seat-belt laws? Interesting. Are
you sure your
goal isn’t just to ruin people’s lives because
you’re insane?
6. “Well,
what
about Post-Abortion
Syndrome? It has
been proven that
eleventy billion percent of women who have abortions are depressed and
shit
afterwards!” I’m
going to go ahead
and respond to this in stages. First
of
all, it has been nowhere near proven—and in fact, very nearly
disproven—that
Post-Abortion Syndrome
exists. People get
depressed for lots of
reasons, including lots of pregnant women who don’t
get abortions and get depressed after having
the baby, which would seem to indicate that there is
chemical shit going on in pregnancy that’s likely to make you
depressed either
way. Secondly,
since there is high
correlation between abortion and unplanned pregnancy, and also high
correlation
between unplanned pregnancy and depression (because people with bipolar
disorder or clinical depression tend to engage in risky behavior more
often
than the general population), it is very likely depression
that’s indirectly leading to abortion,
rather than the other way around.
So that’s two post
hoc ergo propter hoc fallacies on your part.
And finally, there’s also the fact that
even
if women are getting depressed
after
having abortions, that doesn’t
prove
it’s wrong. You get depressed after
quitting your job or
breaking up with someone too, because big changes in life tend to
rattle
people, even if in the long run they are the right decision. Plus, there’s
also the seemingly obvious fact
that you assholes are causing this
alleged Post-Abortion depression yourselves
by making women feel like there’s something wrong with having
an abortion, so
this P.A.S. shit is also a fallacy of self-fulfilling
prophecy—if half the country were always screaming
that it was evil to eat
broccoli, then there’d probably be such a thing as
Post-Broccoli-Eating
Syndrome, but that wouldn’t prove that there’s
something wrong with eating
broccoli, only that the people who scream about it are nuts.
7.
“You are
doing so much crazy stuff with logic that you are losing sight of the
real
world!" That's an interesting objection, since you
began by
accusing me of not being
logical.
I guess logic is suddenly a bad
thing, now that you've realized I'm actually better at it than
you are,
huh? Anyway, this is a stupid objection,
since you're essentially
saying that my arguments are bad because
my arguments are good—i.e., that I am so
smart that being smart is making me
wrong. No
dice. Today is not
opposite day.
7b.
"Well,
you can only say all that stuff because you went to a fancy school!"
Well, no shit. That's how you become smart. But
that doesn't mean
that being right actually counts as being wrong. By
the way, I was
also pretty smart to begin with, which is how I got into the fancy
school.
7c.
"No,
it's not! You only got in because you're Black!"
Dude, I'm
not Black.
7d.
"Oh,
yeah. Oops." No harm
done. I guess you're
just so used to saying that that sometimes you don't even stop
to think
about whether the person you're talking to is actually
even Black, huh?
8.
"I
guess so… But
even if you can prove with
your fancy logic that abortion should be legal, it is still horrible
and we
should do everything we can to lower the number of abortions being
performed!” Okay,
so why don’t you become a Liberal,
since we are the ones who are
“do[ing]
everything we can to lower the number of abortions being
performed,” e.g., giving
people access to birth control and information about safe sex, not to
mention
trying to eliminate poverty, since the most common impetus for abortion
is
financial problems. The
number of
abortions being performed in the U.S. went down
during Clinton’s presidency and then back
up under Bush II, because lunatics like you who are against
abortion are also against all the
things that
actually prevent people from
needing
to get abortions. So,
the question is,
do you actually want to lower the
number of abortions being performed, or just be pissed off about sex
because
you’re a loser?
8b. “I’m
not against everything that would
prevent people from needing an abortion, because I am pro-abstinence,
and the
most effective way to keep from getting pregnant is not to have sex at
all.” Yeah,
good luck with that. Are
you also against teaching people the
Heimlich maneuver, because the most effective way to prevent choking is
never
to eat food, and teaching people about the Heimlich maneuver would make
them
think it was okay to be “running around eating food all
day?”
8c. I
was totally not about to
say “running
around having sex all day.”
Yes, you
totally were. I
have had this
conversation a million times, and people like you always
say “running around having sex all day.” What is it with you and
that stupid
hyperbole? And why
are you the ones who accuse us of being pussies, when you are the
ones who always talk like you’re someone’s lame-ass
mom?
9. “Okay,
well,
abortion law is biased! There
was a Roe v. Wade for women, so it
is only fair that there be a Roe v. Wade
for men!”*
Uh…
what? No,
seriously, what the fuck are you talking about?
Only women get pregnant,
so when you say
there should be a “Roe v. Wade
for
men,” I have no idea what you mean.
Besides, the actual Roe v.
Wade
wasn’t a “Roe v. Wade
for women” so much as it
was a “Roe v. Wade for people.”
*(We’re
not
kidding. We have
seen people say this
word-for-word in conservative chat rooms, and we still have no idea
what the
fuck it means.)
9b. “Well,
you
Liberals are the ones who think
that everything should be equal, so I guess that means you
can’t have a Roe v. Wade
for women, because you can’t
have one for men, ha ha ha.”
Dude,
are you even still taking this seriously?
9c. “Actually,
no, I
was just trying to act like
a tough guy and make my friends laugh.
But to be honest, that’s all I was ever
trying to do. Really,
I was only even having this
conversation because I thought I’d have an opportunity to
call you gay.”
Okay, whatever.
I’ll give you one more shot at a
legitimate
point.
10. “But
pregnancy
is the point of sex! It
is what is supposed to happen when you
have sex! It is
Nature’s Law!”
I choose to respond to this by obliterating
the relevance of your language. By
the
same logic you are using, the fact that I am bigger and stronger than
you means
that I am supposed to kill you and take your food, because that is
Nature’s
Law, and it is the point of being big and strong.
Nature’s-Law arguments are worthless,
because
“law” in that sense should mean that it is impossible
to break, not that you “get in trouble” for
breaking it. If
someone managed to build a
perpetual-motion machine, we wouldn’t send him to jail for
breaking the Laws of
Thermodynamics, because his doing that would mean that the Laws of
Thermodynamics aren’t what we thought they were, and
therefore were not “broken.”
And speaking of science, since you don’t
believe in evolution, what the fuck are you doing talking about the Law
of the
Jungle and shit?
10b. “Umm… Fuck.” Yeah, that’s
what I thought. Listen,
why don’t you go home and sort out
all your beliefs until you get somewhere remotely close to the point
where they
don’t all massively contradict one another, and then you will
be allowed to come
back and argue with me. Until
you do
this, then not only does a fetus not count as a person, but you
don’t even
count as a person, and what I say matters and what you say
doesn’t matter,
period. Have a nice
day.
11. “You’re
gay!!” Congratulations,
you got it in at the buzzer.
11b. “So
I
win?” No. No, you don’t.
11c. “But
I called
you gay! That means
I win!” You
know what? Here is
a crazy homeless man. Why
don’t you argue with him about the
effectiveness of tinfoil in
re preventing the aliens
from stealing his
thoughts?
11d. “Does
it say
anything in the Bible about
whether tinfoil can do that?”
Umm…
yes. Paul says it
can, in his second
epistle to, uh… the
Solarmanites.
11e. “Then
I stand no
chance against this learned
gentleman. Anyway,
I must be going.”
Off to buy some tinfoil, are you?
11f. “None of your
business! Typical
Liberal—always wanting to know who’s
going to buy tinfoil. What
ever happened
to Free Speech?”
Wow. Just… Wow.
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