Politics and Culture

Sometimes historical coincidences provide us with illuminating contrasts. Today, for example, we had a pro-choice president, who will probably ease abortion restrictions, pronounce that torture is wrong. We also had the March for Life demonstration in Washington D.C.

The events contrast how pro-choice and anti-abortion (Those are the most precise terms.) people make decisions. My idea assumes that pro-choicers would be more against interrogations than anti-abortionists. I base this assumption on party platform and demographics. I also take liberals at face value when they say that they're against torture because it's wrong and not just because their president slurs his speech.

How Christians decide on abortion:

Abortion is easy to figure out for most anti-abortionsits because they're usually religious: "Thou shalt not murder." Murder is the unjust taking of a human life, humans being distinguished by their possession of a soul. Babies are unborn humans and therefore deserve protection. Or, if one isn't sure as to the exact status of babies, it's still appropriate to err on the side of caution, lest a society allow or an individual commit, murder.

Christians on torture:

Although unpleasant interrogation- "torture," if a president of the opposite party is in the White House- may be against the Christian spirit, it's neither specifically prohibited by scripture nor condemned as intrinsically evil by mainstream Christian theology.

Torture, therefore, is to be avoided, but can be a moral choice depending on the situation, e.g., the "ticking time bomb."

How liberals decide on torture:

Secular liberals can't rely on the tools above so for them it's mostly feelings. A liberal might imagine how awful it must be to experience torture, or picture somebody going through a lot of pain and shudder in its awfulness. So, torture is wrong.

Liberals who worry about the effectiveness of torture aren't serious. Think about it: If it didn't work, then the only reason that the C.I.A would do it is to be mean.

Related:

Feelings-based morality is also why progressives tend to be more involved in animal rights: Every knock a baby seal* receives to its furry little head is a string pulled in a liberal's heart (It's also why most animal rights activists are women, usually without children.). Tears = morally wrong. The same for Euthanasia: The most important thing is to reduce suffering.

Finally, if you've watched a Democratic convention from the last forty years, you're aware that they're usually huge Oprah-like sob fests.

How a liberal makes a decision on abortion:

Remember the movie, Cider House Rules? It's about how women suffer because they can't have abortions. Young ladies encounter shame for becoming pregnant and are forced to have babies who themselves suffer from poverty. In modern times, women with unwanted babies wouldn't have shame, but if they couldn't have abortions, they wouldn't be able to go to college or on vacations and would miss out on parties and sleep.**

A liberal feels bad that people have to go through all of this because of a baby. What about the baby? Doesn't a liberal feel sad that abortion kills babies? Not as much. A liberal can see the born person suffering because of the baby. The suffering person cries and may even be a friend; crying friends are hard to resist. A liberal can't see a baby in the womb. The baby isn't aware of itself and probably wouldn't suffer if a doctor performs the abortion quickly enough. A liberal would be against killing a born baby because babies are cute, and it's sad to see one being killed, especially in a war by soldiers from the opposing side (us, for Berkeley progressives).

The liberal might counter that it's about body rights. That's a way of rationalizing its legality, but doesn't touch upon the act's morality. The rights discussion also leads to many bizarre contradictions like why a person has the right to kill her baby but not her baby seal. It neither suffices to say that it's a personal preference as that also doesn't address it's morality. Besides, why can't torture be a personal preference?

The inability of liberals to imagine that somebody would prefer a book to a crying girl leads some pro-choice liberals to accuse anti-abortion activists of harboring sinister motivations like wanting to control the bodies of women (which is ridiculous, as most anti-abortionists are women, and a selfish man would be more likely to want abortions in order to limit his responsibilities).

Conservatives appealing to liberal sensibilities:

It's interesting that recent anti-abortion propaganda methods include showing amniocentesis photographs of unborn babies or pictures of actual aborted fetuses. Why? They're making a play for the feelings-first crowd. If pro-choice people start thinking of fetuses as baby seals, maybe they'd change their minds. In an age when authority and reason are rare, these are the tactics to which one must resort.

*I'm sure most conservatives like seals, baby or adult, just fine.

**This is from an actual PSA campaign which featured pictures of girls with babies looking enviously upon other girls as they go to the prom or speak on the phone.

A baby seal, awwww.

A souled creature.

The Cider House Rules (Miramax Collector's Series)