Tell it like it is: support for fetal rights is a mile wide, an inch deep

This is in response to that (in)famous article by Joyce Arthur about pro-lifers who have abortions, as seen on this blog.

I don't doubt for a minute that there are people who call themselves pro-life, who even fight against abortion, who choose to have abortions.

What I see in my experience, is that when there is opposition to abortion, it's a mile wide and an inch deep. Think about it. If people are so favourable to protecting the unborn child, why isn't there an outcry?

There is a subtle difference between fighting for an abstract "sanctity of life" and upholding the unborn child as a lovable human being. I sense that many people who consider themselves pro-life want to be on the right side of morality-- we all do. But it's an abstract for them. It's not about loving a little human being. And I think this is why some self-professed pro-lifers can go out and have abortions.

Think about it. There are plenty of women who consider the fetus an unborn child, but they still think they have the moral right to abort him. Or they don't care about morality. They just want the result of not being pregnant. In the recent past, I've seen two blogging women admit to having an abortion, even if they think it's murder.

One major reason they are capable of this is that there is a lack of emotional investment in the value of the unborn child. Our culture is not programmed to love the unborn child. Sure we have ultrasounds, but those individual experiences are not enough. They are practically no collective references to unborn children. There are practically no works of literature, art,or film that reference the unborn child. If there are, there are not enough of them. The individual does not have any participation in a collective experience that affirms the unborn child. Or only rarely. And so, there's no "experience" of the unborn child as real, on an emotional level. So that feeling doesn't get re-inforced, and so when push comes to shove, and emotions take over after an unplanned pregnancy, the mom will act through fear for herself, because she lacks that feeling for the unborn child-- there is not a sufficient fear of consequences for killing the unborn child (and I'm not even talking about going to hell-- I'm talking about the emotional consequences) AND she doesn't have that positive emotional experience of the unborn child. What emotions do you think will win out in that case?

We have to re-program our culture. We have to speak out. We have make art. We have to change hearts, not only through logic, but through experience. Because when a person is confronted with an emotional situation, he doesn't necessarily think logically or want to. Emotions take over. That's where the emotional response to the unborn child is important.

And it's this lack of emotional response to the unborn child that makes support for fetal rights a mile wide and an inch deep. It's this very reason that so many scoff at the notion that the unborn is a person, a human even. We don't expose him for who he really is.