A collection of catch phrases

By Scott Tibbs, May 31, 2019

An Indiana Daily Student columnist argues that "With no guaranteed support in place, abortion bans are severely hypocritical." Is it also "severely hypocritical" that it is illegal to murder a child five months after she is born, if no support is in place to care for that child? After all, the woman is required to care for that child, despite the fact that she is not allowed to murder her.So what is different about killing that same baby three minutes before she is born? What about three weeks? What about three months?

The key question is exactly what is growing inside a mother's body. Is it a human person, like those reading this letter? Is it a tissue mass, part of the woman's body? Is it a potential person? Well, we know scientifically that the fetus is a separate entity. If the fetus were part of the woman's body, rather than inside of her body, then the DNA would be identical. That is not the case. The question, then, is personhood. If the fetus is a human person, it is just as immoral to kill her as it would be when she is one year old.

The word "hypocrite" is frequently tossed around any time a contentious social issue is debated. The author is not applying the term correctly. A hypocrite is someone who espouses certain moral standards and then refuses to live by them. For example, someone who claims to be pro-life and then pays for an abortion. It is not hypocrisy to have opinions on two different (but related) social issues. Unless the author knows the charitable giving history of the legislators who supported the ban, she cannot even conclusively demonstrate that they are not for helping women in need.

It is a common rhetorical tactic among abortion-rights advocates to talk about something "the size of a pea" but that does not match the reality of surgical abortion. Go to CreatedEqual.org to see the reality of what we are discussing. This is not a tiny clump of cells, but something clearly recognizable as a human being. Claiming otherwise is fake news, plain and simple. That one is writing an opinion column does not release you from the obligation to present factual information in the column.

Ultimately, this was just a collection of generic talking points and catch phrases, with little intellectual curiosity regarding why the anti-abortion movement believes as we do.



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