So, Kevin Williamson, a contributor to such illustrious rags as the National Review, has been fired from The Atlantic magazine after only two articles. His problem wasn't the articles. His problem was that he actively called for the execution of women, approximately one-quarter of all women, because they've had an abortion at some time in their lives. He reiterated the position, and argued that hanging was an appropriate response because he thought abortion was a worse crime than "regular" homicide.
At the same time as this kerfuffle was going on, a place called the University Hospitals Fertility Clinic was undergoing its own crisis. A freezer had malfunctioned and no alarms had been set. Four thousand frozen embryos were destroyed. Hundreds of couples who had been looking forward to getting pregnant instead learned that all their work and sacrifice had been lost.
I have yet to find a #UniversityHospitalsMeltdownMassacre tag on Twitter... or anywhere else for that matter. There hasn't been very much discussion of it at all. It's "regrettable," but not a major issue. The anti-choice, anti-woman movement has been as reluctant to address this issue issue as the NRA has been on the murder of Philando Castile.
In the rhetoric of the anti-choice, anti-woman contingent, four thousand babies died and not a single one of them is up in arms about it. The anti-choice, anti-woman movement doesn't begin to believe its own bullshit about abortion.
It's not about babies. It's about women. It's about controlling women's lives by turning them into breeding machines. Forget the "We found two women, one of whom regrets her abortion, the other one doesn't" narratives. Very few women regret having their abortions, while those women who live in forced-breeding regions of the United States experience significant poverty, their children grow up with much shakier foundations, and the overall impoverishment— financially, morally, intellectually, and socially— of the next generation is perpetuated.
There is an anti-abortion narrative that even some Progressive Christians support. It rests on two premises. The first of which is that the abortion procedure described in the Bible, in Numbers 5:11-31, is theater. That it's designed not to actually induce an abortion, but to reassure the husband that the clergy have given his accusation of faithlessness their full attention and they, and God through their arduous ritual, have announced that it is unfounded. There is no mention at all of the fetus in this case; it's all about healing a rift within a married couple. It's about restoring caritas.
Caritas is often translated as "charity," but it's much more than that: In the Christian tradition, caritas is identified with justice; and the will, the goodwill, is love.
The second premise is that abortion is itself a violation of the principle of hospitality embedded within caritas. That we are obligated to treat the stranger well, even if the stranger is someone within our own bodies. But Exodus 21 basically says that a man can sue someone who induces an abortion in his wife without his permission, and the courts must settle the amount, but that's it; it doesn't treat the fetus as a stranger deserving of hospitality.
But more than that, the United States is a bloody-minded, inhospitable nation. We have become more so, not less, with the election of Donald Trump. An all-out war against immigrants, both legal and illegal, is being conducted by the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement office. Good men and women have been sent "back" to their home countries to die. Long before we should start to worry about hospitality to the "mere fruit of the womb," as the Bible puts it, we should start to be hospitable to actual living human beings.
Kevin Williamson may believe that women deserve to be punished for abortions, but only because they're depriving men of their God-given right to their children, and to the God-given control over women's lives.
They don't care about the babies at all. They're merely grotesque props meant to make us look away from their attempt to seize, secure, and maintain their illict power over the rest of us.
At the same time as this kerfuffle was going on, a place called the University Hospitals Fertility Clinic was undergoing its own crisis. A freezer had malfunctioned and no alarms had been set. Four thousand frozen embryos were destroyed. Hundreds of couples who had been looking forward to getting pregnant instead learned that all their work and sacrifice had been lost.
I have yet to find a #UniversityHospitalsMeltdownMassacre tag on Twitter... or anywhere else for that matter. There hasn't been very much discussion of it at all. It's "regrettable," but not a major issue. The anti-choice, anti-woman movement has been as reluctant to address this issue issue as the NRA has been on the murder of Philando Castile.
In the rhetoric of the anti-choice, anti-woman contingent, four thousand babies died and not a single one of them is up in arms about it. The anti-choice, anti-woman movement doesn't begin to believe its own bullshit about abortion.
It's not about babies. It's about women. It's about controlling women's lives by turning them into breeding machines. Forget the "We found two women, one of whom regrets her abortion, the other one doesn't" narratives. Very few women regret having their abortions, while those women who live in forced-breeding regions of the United States experience significant poverty, their children grow up with much shakier foundations, and the overall impoverishment— financially, morally, intellectually, and socially— of the next generation is perpetuated.
There is an anti-abortion narrative that even some Progressive Christians support. It rests on two premises. The first of which is that the abortion procedure described in the Bible, in Numbers 5:11-31, is theater. That it's designed not to actually induce an abortion, but to reassure the husband that the clergy have given his accusation of faithlessness their full attention and they, and God through their arduous ritual, have announced that it is unfounded. There is no mention at all of the fetus in this case; it's all about healing a rift within a married couple. It's about restoring caritas.
Caritas is often translated as "charity," but it's much more than that: In the Christian tradition, caritas is identified with justice; and the will, the goodwill, is love.
The second premise is that abortion is itself a violation of the principle of hospitality embedded within caritas. That we are obligated to treat the stranger well, even if the stranger is someone within our own bodies. But Exodus 21 basically says that a man can sue someone who induces an abortion in his wife without his permission, and the courts must settle the amount, but that's it; it doesn't treat the fetus as a stranger deserving of hospitality.
But more than that, the United States is a bloody-minded, inhospitable nation. We have become more so, not less, with the election of Donald Trump. An all-out war against immigrants, both legal and illegal, is being conducted by the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement office. Good men and women have been sent "back" to their home countries to die. Long before we should start to worry about hospitality to the "mere fruit of the womb," as the Bible puts it, we should start to be hospitable to actual living human beings.
Kevin Williamson may believe that women deserve to be punished for abortions, but only because they're depriving men of their God-given right to their children, and to the God-given control over women's lives.
They don't care about the babies at all. They're merely grotesque props meant to make us look away from their attempt to seize, secure, and maintain their illict power over the rest of us.
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