Anti-abortion, not pro-life

When I first encountered the "pro-life" / "pro-choice" debate first hand, was "in college".

(State-side; so we do not say "at uni". Although, technically, this institution of higher-learning did bill itself as a university. But anyway.)

I met up with the pro-choicers first. They were insistent that they were, in fact, pro-choice and that their opponents were against choice. Abortion's opponents, they claimed, were humbugs. The latter owned no principle for human life, as witness their support of war and the death-penalty. Abortion opponents cannot even be said to be religious: the words using religion to take away choice rattled off pro-choice tongues like a printing-press. Instead upon them the pro-choicers imputed patriarchal motives, and also a motive that extramarital sex was a sin and deserved punishment. I add that this view of the pro-life side was the default assumption of the WASPy/Hebraic family which raised me.

Later I hung with the pro-lifers. Their most dedicated adherents were Catholic and female. They had no truck with putative male superiority; in their ranks they claimed Susan Anthony, feminist. I could not see in these women the caricature the pro-choicers had pinned upon them. These pro-lifers knew the pro-choice side better than the reverse. War and the death-penalty could be accommodated in the pro-life framework; every rule has its exceptiones probantes. This made it easier, at the time, to break with my upbringing to side with Life.

That was before SARS 2 / COVID 19.

We are now being treated to a Republican base insistent on "opening the economy NOW". The economy is, in fact, still open; just not as open as it was last year. A lot of what Republican voters say is rhetoric. Sometimes though a Republican pundit will let slip that a few innocent lives, a few myriads of such lives, are expendable.

A MUNUS-Catholic would call herself pro-life and might even mean it. I cannot say this for the Pass The Open The Economy Bill Now Bill supporters. So, why do they oppose abortion, if they don't care about life?

I regret we have to go back to the pro-choicers. I have to concede that some of them must have known a different sort of pro-lifer than the sort standing before our Lord's Table.

That segment of the "pro life" side are supporters of patriarchy if they are seeking a family, or in sticking it to "the roasties" if they are /r9k/ *cels. Demographically many of these are men, but not all of them. The position isn't pro-life and it's certainly not pro-choice; but it can be argued on "neo-reactionary" principle. Which principle this blog doesn't dismiss... but then, this blog prefers not to dress up a position as something it isn't.

OR, 8/9: We cannot rule out a proxy for critarchy generally, erupting after Brown vs. the Board of Education.

And if you are a neo-reactionary who just doesn't GAF, I suggest that you think to why you adopted so harsh a position. I'm guessing it is because you hoped it would protect lives and safeguard your people's legacy. So, let's do that.

It is all a hard pill to swallow; but this pill is ruddy in hue, so must be choked down. As Jeremiah and the Didache wrote, we are for the way of life - or we are for death.