MgS’s struggle to defend her false and absurd pro-abortion principles takes an Orwellian turn

Now I know that it can be a bit clichéd or over-the-top to denounce someone or something as ‘Orwellian’ but it’s hard to see how what MgS has done now would have elicited anything but warm approval from Big Brother. You see, rather than simply blocking me out of discussion, she has shut the discussion down altogether and deleted the post and all its comments! Last night (early this morning, technically) I sent the following two comments to her blog post at
http://crystalgaze2.blogspot.com/2008/12/base-squirmeth.html
(the first comment is a response to someone new to the discussion, and the other is a response to MgS herself):

***

Firstly, I'll respond to SB:

SB, if shouting and trotting out silly (childish, MgS?) slogans about 'forced birth', 'subjugation' and 'pregnancy machines' is the best you can do then I'm not sure that there's any point in you joining this discussion.

You scream that

"YOU [me, the commenter Cardinal Pole] ARE NOT FREE TO IMPOSE THOSE BELIEFS ON OTHERS."

Which beliefs can I, and the State, impose though? Can I impose my beliefs opposing polyamory and incest? If mere consent of the parties is all that's necessary then how can you possibly reject polyamory and incest?

***

Now, back to you MgS:

You say, again (and again, and again ...) that

"in my books that doesn't hold water because it removes the ability from the woman to make her own moral and ethical decisions with respect to the pregnancy."

and

"he merely seems to think that once a woman is pregnant that she loses any and all right to make her own moral and ethical decisions regarding her pregnancy."

How many times do I have to refute this? Whenever the State prohibits any behaviour, the State doesn't presume that the offender has completely lost his or her moral and ethical faculties, but that the offender has, for whatever reason, reached a decision that is contrary to the common good.

"During pregnancy the fetus is entirely dependent upon the pregnant woman's body for sustenance. Once born, the baby can be cared for by others in all essential respects."

Once again: if you want to assert that as axiomatic then we can only agree to disgree. What I have shown, though, is that this creates the absurd situation where two babies are identical in all respects except that one has been born prematurely and the other is still in the womb, yet one has the right to life and the other does not.

Furthermore, you have asserted repeatedly that the mother's right to decide whether his or her child has the right to life arises from the child's condition of dependency on that mother. Now I'll say it again: a newborn baby is every bit as dependent on other people as a pre-born baby is; without carers he or she will die. So I take it, then, that if condition of dependency confers power of life and death that this power is transferred to whoever the carers are, up till the child is old enough to fend for him- or herself? In other words, your assertion that "Once born, the baby can be cared for by others in all essential respects" only transfers the power of life and death to the new carers.

"Second, this is something of a red herring to the topic ..."

No it isn't--you have asserted repeatedly that the mother's power of life and death arises from the baby's condition of dependency on her. So in fact the question of whether the dependency is absolute or relative is of vital importance. Consider the following situation: a woman seven months pregnant requests an abortion (such a situation happenened recently in Australia when a woman found out that her unborn baby had dwarfism; the abortion was performed in a hospital). Now at seven months development, one way or another, whether the baby is killed while still in the womb or not, the baby needs to be delivered, whether by labour or by c-section. So I take it that if the doctors determine that the best way to proceed is to deliver the baby alive, then once the baby has been delivered and hence the condition of dependency has ended I take it that you want to see the baby's life preserved? (The situation of babies being delivered alive and then left to die has happened something like fifty-four times in Victoria, Australia, so it is not at all implausible that doctors might determine that the best way to proceed is with a live delivery.) I would be very interested to see how you would reason about this kind of hypothetical situation. It will show whether you are consistent in your reasoning on the basis for the mother's asserted power of life and death.

"One final point, your arguments hinge upon the assumption that a fetus receives/deserves the same rights that you and I possess as independent beings."

Of course they do--in every other situation in society one looks at the characteristics of the subject of the right (the one who has the right, in this case, I argue, the baby) in order to judge whether he or she has the right. These characteristics are empirically verifiable. But the cornerstone of your argument is that the mother confers the right to life irrespective of the baby's characteristics--the right to life is in the mother's gift at eight months gestation every bit as much as at, say, two months gestation.

"I [MgS] do not believe such a structure is either practical or meaningful, as it disregards the biological dependency during pregnancy ..."

Of course it disregards it, otherwise consistency demands that the baby's right to life post-birth is also to be conferred at the pleasure of his or her carers.

***

I returned to MgS’s blog later today in order to see how the discussion was going, but the blog post was nowhere to be found. So I went directly to the U.R.L. and found the following mysterious message:

Page not found
Sorry, the page you were looking for in the blog The Cracked Crystal Ball II does not exist.

Now it is not altogether clear whether this disappearance is permanent or whether MgS has just sent the post off to Winston Smith at the Ministry of Truth for a bit of his famous creative editing. Whatever the case, if MgS is unable to win a debate on the merits of her point-of-view then perhaps she should do us all a favour and let her entire blog pass into non-existence as well.

Reginaldvs Cantvar
Feast of the Epiphany, A.D. 2009