Against the Machine

by guest blogger BroKen

I need your help.

Aliza Shvarts performance art turned my stomach. But Gerard Vanderluen's bittersweet response has turned my head. He concludes his wonderful piece with thoughts of his own performance art killing those who promote social decadence. That was hyperbole, right?

For me, the issue is protection of the weak and innocent; speaking for those who have no voice. I know the country (and some art) is moving in the pro-life direction. Movies like Juno and Knocked Up express the value of the unborn. The recent Horton Hears a Who, while not as good as the book or the cartoon of my childhood, trumpets the elephant's wisdom: "A person's a person no matter how small!" This gives hope.

But I'm scared. The next president could appoint three judges to the Supreme Court. If Clinton or Obama make those appointments we will probably have Roe v Wade for another 35 years. If McCain loses, even a popular majority against abortion will not sway the court. We will allow abortion on demand for essentially the rest of my life. Please, tell me this analysis is wrong. Otherwise, my rage compels me.

Murderers like Griffin and Hill have not helped the cause with their angry gunshots. The devil laughs when righteous indignation turns one confused human against another confused human. We wrestle not against flesh and blood but against spiritual wickedness. We don't fight people but the evil behind them. Yet those people use tools and machines to perform evil. You don't have to kill a dangerous lunatic if you can disable him.

What if "rage" was turned on the machine that sucks the life out of the womb? What if the rear window of every car in a "clinic" parking lot was etched with this simple, Kilroy-like image; the driver haunted each time he looks over his shoulder? What if the image were sprayed on manicured lawns in vinegar; dead grass speaking for dead babies? What if the plumbing of a "clinic" was clogged so that tiny arms and legs, dismembered and flushed into the sewer, bubble back up in sinks and toilets; little hands and feet carry sickening bacteria making it unhealthy; like it always is to its innocent victims?

Let those who profit from abortion be afraid. Let their insurance rates rise. Let landlords terminate their leases. Let their neighbors be ashamed of what is going on next door. Let them fear, not for their lives, but for their property. This art would require discipline limiting the destruction to just the machine; never any person. Bombs are out of the question, as is arson. Still, this project, artfully implemented, would likely earn the artist a government grant of room and board for several years.

Four years ago, Alec Baldwin promised to move to Canada if Bush won the election. Baldwin didn't follow through. Perhaps he was using hyperbole. Maybe I am, too. But if McCain loses in November, I just might go to jail.

Please, convince me that I shouldn't.

Comments

[Morgan K Freeberg]

Maybe this is another case of my brain not working like anybody else's, but the most thought-provoking visual I saw on this subject had nothing whatsoever to do with blood or gore.

Interesting, isn't it, how those among us who insist we must respect each other's "rights" -- to minimum wage, to employer-provided health care, to look around without seeing something that might offend us, to wheelchair ramps in highly implausible places, to higher and higher living standards without working -- further insist that you're entitled to none of these things, or even to life itself, unless you make it past a certain point.

[salvage]

No, no, you are above the law, you are smarter than all the legal minds who have wrestled with the issue all these years. You know what's better for the women who get abortions than they do because you are right and righteous, that's all you need to know and that's all the permission you need to act.

So why not bombs and guns? Abortion is murder what possible wrong could you do in fighting it?

So shoot doctors, blow up clinics, anyone caught in the crossfire, well they died for a holy cause and your god will set it all right later on.

Groups like the PLO, the IRA, the Army of God, Al Qeada, etc. all think this way and look at all the great things they've achieved for their causes!

And like you all they really needed to know was that they were right, their god was on their side and the enemy evil. The rest is gravy.

[Morgan K Freeberg]

Well put, salvage.

Especially when, it occurs to me, that allowing abortion to proceed is just more of the same. Hmmmm....

[Morgan K Freeberg]

Well put, salvage.

Especially when, it occurs to me, that allowing abortion to proceed is just more of the same. Hmmmm....

[Morgan K Freeberg]

Uh oh, we have some accidental pregnancies in our duplicate posts again...better get a qualified abortion provider in here.

[BroKen]

Salvage, glad to see you back. (Yes, tim, I still mean it!)

But please go back and read the piece again. I gave fairly explicit examples and explanations of how people can go wrong fighting abortion. You continue to fight the bogymen in your own head rather than engage the ones you find online. You might be surprised to know that I am interested in what you think. But this response was WAY beneath you, my friend.

Now, Morgan, I am MUCH more interested in what YOU think. Can YOU convince me I'm wrong?

[BroKen]

Oh, and Salvage, have you read The Abolition of Man by C. S. Lewis, yet. Still waiting for your critique. (Just a friendly reminder.)

[salvage]

What I think on the issue is simple (and I think I've explained it before): I would never have an abortion, while I can't call it murder I can't get behind something that kills a potential human life.

BUT

When it comes to someone else's body (and the fetus is part of that person's body like an organ) I cannot tell them what to do. That ends it right there.

So in short: You don't like abortion don't have one and the only abortion that is any of your business is the one you have.

The End.

Now as for your piece I’m not interested in talking you in or out of anything.

If you believe abortion to be “murder”, truly believe it than you have no choice but to act in an appropriate manner. If you think that a foetus is a person than you should protect that foetus with the same passion as you would any other person otherwise you are compromising your beliefs.

But of course when it comes to the so-called “pro-life” movement there’s a lot of that.

For instance if someone really hated abortion and really though it murder well then they would have to be very keen on birth control. Condoms and pills are the best way to prevent abortion so instead of protesting clinics they should be spending all that time and money on effective sex-ed and free contraception.

Yet the pro-life groups seem to despise those options as much as abortion, makes me think that they’re not so much anti-abortion as anti-people doing stuff that they don’t like.

Another example is the reality that women would still get abortions even if it were illegal and that of course would lead to deaths at the hands of back alley quacks with hangers and bottle of bleach.

I wonder how many women dying this way would be too many or would you think they got exactly what they deserved?

I’m not sure if I asked you this but what punishment a woman should receive for having an abortion? If abortion were to be made illegal that is, what would be a fair jail term for her? For her doctor? Fines perhaps if jail seems unpalatable? Again how much? What about multiple offences? If a woman got three abortions should there then be jail time then? The death penalty perhaps? We are talking multiple-murder right? Anything less would be a compromise wouldn’t it?

[BroKen]

Much, much better Salvage. Thank you.

Here are a few comments:

I'm glad you can't get behind abortion. You ought to be more sympathetic to those of us who are against it.

>the fetus is part of that person's body like an organ

Really? It has unique DNA. If it has the Rh factor, the mother's body will attack it. Doesn't look like an organ to me.

>I cannot tell them what to do.

Really? Even if their actions (suicide, drug addiction, drunk driving, defecating in public) effect society as a whole? Seems to me that we are all connected one way or another. Anyway, all laws express our responsibility to each other.

>I’m not interested in talking you in or out of anything.

OK, but humor me. Assuming the position expressed in the piece, are the actions described appropriate?

>if someone really hated abortion and really though (sic) it murder well then they would have to be very keen on birth control.

"Would HAVE to be?" Here is the link you might be missing. Sex is, by definition, about reproduction. Our culture is DEAD set against that connection. Much of what passes as sex ed, and certainly the giving of free contraception, is merely the severing of that connection. Severing that connection is bad for individuals and society. You can see that, can't you?

I can't speak for "pro-life groups" and I'm sure I have some "anti-people doing stuff I don't like" lurking in my psyche, but I hope that the "stuff I don't like" makes me "anti-people doing stuff that is really harmful to themselves and others."

>I’m not sure if I asked you this but what punishment a woman should (sic) receive for having an abortion?

No, you haven't asked me that. I suspect that the abortion itself is a "punishment" for many women. I've heard it described like this: "a woman decides to have a abortion like an animal in a trap decides to gnaw off its leg." The solution is not to surgically amputate the leg (even if you think is is merely an organ) but to open the trap.

[Morgan K Freeberg]

That's pretty interesting, salvage. I get to shoot whoever I want with my gun, so long as I put my hand in front of the barrel before firing so I can claim the act has something to do with "control over my body."

Can you please cite the legal document that gives people this right, so I can read the language for myself and satisfy my own curiosity as to whether or not that might have been the original intent?

[Morgan K Freeberg]

BroKen, I'll be happy to put together a reply. For now, I have to go pick up a certain person whose entitlements won out over a certain other person's "control over her body" about eleven years ago. :-)

[Morgan K Freeberg]

Okay, in my view salvage's summary above pretty much captures the pro-choice view, I mean, in lock-step. Round up a hundred of 'em, and all hundred of them are going to sign on to what he said. The consistency, even across diverse socioeconomic layers, is breathtaking.

There are two ways to look at it.

One is, the constant is that we have to preserve "choice" at all costs. We don't want to admit we're murderers, so we pretend to have respect for the sanctity of life after babies cross the birth canal. We have this court-ordered privilege of performing these abortions up to that point. So we prop up the abortion industry by ridiculing anybody who acknowledges a baby is a baby, before it's crossed the birth canal. Until then we call them "fetuses" and we try to bully and cudgel everyone we know into calling them "fetuses" until they cross the birth canal, for the greater good of raking in all that money on the abortion industry.

The other way to look at it is, we really do believe in the sanctity of the birth-canal finish-line. It all begins with that, and the nomenclature about "fetuses" and "babies" derives from that. So, like I said, you get a whole Captain's Fish and Chips Sampler Platter of rights once you cross that birth-canal finish line, and until then, you aren't even worth squat. You're not a person. You're a lump of cells.

The second way of looking at it, among the two defined above, is loaded with contradictions. It demands this hairpin turn to take place: You have no rights; you cross the magic finish line in your mother's vagina; now you've got a bazillion and one rights. That's logically tenuous by itself. But then you have to consider -- what, aside from purely artificial and obsessive-compulsive rule-making, gives you all these rights? Let's keep in mind, that among these rights, is that if you're female you can cross that birth-canal finish line, wait a few years, come to child-bearing age in your own right, and murder others so that you can keep "choice" over "your body." So according to this mindset, it is all -- repeat that in capital letters, ALL -- about that millimeters-long journey across that magical finish line.

Which is why that graphic I linked above is so much more thought-provoking than any image I've ever seen involving fetuses, jars, limbs, tiny toes and knuckles...etc. You're pro-choice -- now that you've crossed that finish-line.

It makes all of humanity into a sort of a...gentleman's club. We meet with each other, we vote privileges on new members, and anybody denied our approval has no privileges. At all. None.

This is a deeply personal issue, and it isn't just because the ladies so affected are having things going on with, and choices to make about, their precious "bodies." Let's face it: If you're a woman, and you know a certain guy isn't going to make a good daddy but you spread your legs for him anyway, you really don't care that much about your body and your supposed "rights" to it aren't worth as much to you as a more modest and chaste lady's "rights" to her "body" are to her. That's politically incorrect, extremely so. But it's true. With bodies, with property, with your livelihood -- it's ridiculous to demand others respect it for you, if you don't respect it yourself. Ridiculous, as in patently absurd.

Now, I believe in a specific type of God. My God is a God of cause-and-effect. My God built a universe that works according to cause-and-effect -- and then He built a species of homo sapiens, designed for the express purpose of exploring cause and effect. In my universe, cause and effect is what it is all about.

In such a universe, is God contemplating the idea of wiping us all out? I dunno. Maybe mankind is teetering on the brink of self-destruction from divine wrath. It's outside of scope for me to answer this. It isn't that I don't care, it's that I don't have what's needed to ascertain this. It's outside the dominion of mortal man.

But it is well within the dominion of mortal man, and well within my capacity, to figure out cause-and-effect of the human condition. Or, to be more precise about it, to figure out how any given thing we're thinking of doing, affects the net effect of the human condition overall. And since it's a triplet-article of faith of mine that -- there is a God, that God was responsible for putting us here (at some expense), and this is the same God who watches over us now -- it's easy to see that it's counterproductive to our purpose in being here to allow late-term abortions.

To put it in more concise terms, what's the freakin' point? We are put here, we multiply, we acquire the technology to thwart the propagation of our own species, and we exercise it. We decide for ourselves that this theological axiom about the birth-canal finish-line must reign supreme -- we have a smorgasbord of rights after we cross it, but until that final inch, we have no right to be.

Why would a deity put us here, then? We see each other as non-humans if some among us are too nascent to have crawled past that birth-canal finish-line. How arrogant of us. What other litmus tests can we then establish? We're non-humans if...we carry a genetic attribute that makes our lineage more susceptible to cancer? To AIDS? To Alzheimer's disease?

Far-fetched, I know. But I couldn't help noticing: The folks who champion abortion rights, are/were the same ones who were championing Michael Schiavo's "rights" to put his wife down...by & large.

I just find it really hard to believe in a deity who would put us here to do that. To sit in judgment of each other, and say to the new arrivals..."oh, no, now that we're here we deem you unworthy of the existence that we enjoy."

My God of cause-and-effect may look down on that with blistering acrimony, or He may look down on that with complete apathy. But given that I believe in a God of cause-and-effect, I know from that one thing for absolute certain: He cannot possibly look on this favorably. Such a doctrine essentially says: I am mature and I have crossed the birth-canal finish line, therefore God knew what He was doing when He created me -- but when He created this young whelp who has not yet crossed the finish line, He no longer knows what He is doing and I am here to overrule Him.

It is arrogance coupled with dizzying logical inconsistency, coupled with a false moral code made of minute-to-minute convenience. Coupled with genocide.

I expect, BroKen, you agree with all or most of the above (with the exception of my God of Rube Goldberg devices). Where we part company is with this chosen remedy you seem to be pointing out. Not sure what you have in mind, exactly. But if God is truly offended that He is inspiring pregnancies to take place, and mortal man is terminating those pregnancies, His righteous anger can't be satiated by the idea of pregnancies being initiated by Him, mortal man moving to thwart the pregnancies, and then other mortal men moving to thwart the thwarters.

I'm just ready to rule that out -- that goes for the glorious, heavenly domain. As far as the mortal domain, I would simply comment that your impulse gives ammunition to your enemies. Even when you don't move on it (as I'm sure you will not), the simple expression of your desire gives them license to play the victim. Which is an abject tragedy, since the burden they have chosen to shoulder is one of judge, jury and executioner. They've been able to perpetuate this practice for the last 35 years by muddying up the issue, and here you've made it possible for them to muddy it up some more.

[Rick]

Sheez Morgan... that was brilliant... you just set off a smart bomb... might the intellectually vapid be well within the blast zone...

[Mommynator]

I'm echoing Rick - brilliant.

And just to add to it, those "fetuses" - the three I was blessed to carry to term (two miscarriages that I mourned0 - had personalities from before they were born.

There was my son, kicking the cat that had snuggled onto my belly and sticking his fists and hands out.

My oldest daughter who kept sticking her bottom out to be rubbed and kicking me if I did not comply.

My youngest who seemed to dance the whole time she was in there.

They came out with complete personalities - totally different from one another, yet from the same gene pool.

People ignore this humanity at their peril. You must turn something vital off in order to think that what lives in the womb is any less human than you or I.

And that something vital that's turned off has driven our culture to obsess over sex, trying to find new ways to make it more exciting or alive or whatever. But that can't happen because you cannot experience the full realm of sexuality by denying the most important end result - something declared GOOD by God, and commanded by Him - making new human beings.

Divorce is an ugly thing that includes having sex only for the cheap neurological thrill.

[BroKen]

Rick, you aren't saying I am "intellectually vapid", right? OK, thanks.

Morgan, thank you for your reply but I was hoping for more. Not more words, but more on the point of the post. Yes, I agree with your outline of issue. Yes, I quibble with your Rube Goldberg God. The "expressed purpose" of humankind is relationship (with God and each other) not the investigation into cause and effect.

But seems to me that I spelled out quite explicitly what I have in mind. I gave three examples (I have more!) Your response seems to be that it is not up to mortals to thwart the thwarters of God. Really? Is that just in regard to abortion or any injustice humans inflict on others?

Now about giving ammunition to the enemy, that is a great concern of mine. As long as the political process carries hope of success, I believe that is the path to take. But if that process fails (three judges and 35 years might not be failure but surely it's pretty close), then what? Should we just shrug our shoulders or is there more to be done in that case?

In that case, I think the conflict must be escalated. Why are you so sure that I wouldn't move on it?

[Rick]

Ken, I was not including you as a potential victim of Morgan's smart bomb blast...

[Morgan K Freeberg]

Well, I thought I was addressing it head-on. You're talking about raging against the "machine" by destroying parts of it -- rejecting any harm done to human beings because it would case the devil to "laugh," by destroying property...killing grass...defacing car windows.

Perhaps I left too much unstated. Your "machine" is, among other things, a propaganda machine. You use vinegar on the grass so that each blade represents a casualty of the industry. The metaphor is in your mind, and your tactic depends on other minds accepting the metaphor. The machine would move to counter this, instilling in all those inclined to pay attention that the point you had in mind was to kill the grass.

Newspaper stories about the ghastly figure etched in the car windows, would only include the phrase "defaced car window" with no mention whatsoever of the graphic. All photographs of the vandalized car would be angled in such a way that window itself would not be visible.

My God of cause-and-effect, however, has already been hard at work on this issue. Cause: People believe in abortion, see nothing wrong with it, and work hard to make sure they never see anything wrong with it or that anybody they know ever sees anything wrong with it. Effect: They are alienated from God. You still doubt my God of cause and effect? Simply take a sampling of people who champion choice over life, and inquire of them their viewpoints about religion. The secularism within their ranks is overwhelming; it's an overpowering stench.

They'll insist they "figured out" that "there is no sky fairy." They'll insist that they're following "Occam's Razor" or some such; "logic" and "common sense."

What's really happened, is that they rejected God, not because options were open to them, but because options where closed to them. They believe in a godless cosmos because they have no choice but to do so. God, and their viewpoint on choice-over-life, are mutually exclusive things. They didn't leave God; God left them.

Cause, and effect. As is often said around here, with diabolical sadness: Their will be done.

[BroKen]

Yes, yes, Morgan. This is very good. Thank you.

So, counter-propaganda would have to be a part of the project. Perhaps youtube videos of actions with descriptions and explanations by the actors, a website with a manifesto and rules of engagement would be part of the "project". I don't know if it would persuade anyone, but I think we could shut down a many "clinics" before we were caught. It might even catch on and spread. Just two to ten people in a few major cities could cause quite a ruckus.

I suspect that several "actors" would have to be martyred (jailed or perhaps shot by an over-eager security guard) for each doctor who has been shot by people like Hill in order to balance the equation in peoples' minds.

Oh, I don't dispute your God-of-cause-and-effect. I just would point out that there is much more to Him than that.

And there is the trouble with pesky liberal, mainline churches (like mine!) that are officially pro-choice. The phrase I've heard is "prayerfully pro-choice." I find it sickening. They don't fit your model of secularists. They are convinced that women are the most aggrieved and abortion (in their minds) sets them free (at the expense of the fetus, in my mind.)

[salvage]

>I'm glad you can't get behind abortion. You ought to be more sympathetic to those of us who are against it.

I am but as I said you are trying to tell others what they should do with their bodies and lives, that is where my sympathy ends.

>Really? It has unique DNA. If it has the Rh factor, the mother's body will attack it. Doesn't look like an organ to me.
What it looks like to you or me or even science is immaterial, the only person that it matters to is the woman, she decides.

>Really? Even if their actions (suicide, drug addiction, drunk driving, defecating in public) effect society as a whole?
Suicide is a grey area, there are legitimate reasons for people to want to end their lives and if they’re sane it’s theirs to make.(let’s not spin this into that argument)

Drug addiction certainly can affect society and when it does it should be dealt with but if it’s just some idiot shooting up heroin I say give them a park and clean needles so they can kill themselves out of our way. In fact I think heroin should be free and legal, what a great way to ride ourselves of useless people.

Drunk driving is illegal because its danger to society is clear and present.

Public defecation is illegal because its hazard to public health is clear and present.

However all of those things are nothing like abortion. In fact the only thing that is like abortion is abortion, it is unique and thus immune to comparison.

>Seems to me that we are all connected one way or another. Anyway, all laws express our responsibility to each other.

We are but we are not connected to a fetus inside a woman, she is the only one who has any connection and her carrying it to term or aborting again only affects her.

> Assuming the position expressed in the piece, are the actions described appropriate?

Only you can answer that.

>"Would HAVE to be?" Here is the link you might be missing. Sex is, by definition, about reproduction.

No. That is your definition. Part of your problem is you assume what works for you works for everyone. I’ve had plenty of sex with no reproduction to show for it so by your definition I’ve never had sex.

>Our culture is DEAD set against that connection.

No. Our culture isn’t dead set against anything of the sort, our culture says if you want to have sex for kids have sex for kids if you want to have sex for whatever other reason do that. What consenting adults to do each other and themselves for whatever reason is no one else’s business.

>Much of what passes as sex ed, and certainly the giving of free contraception, is merely the severing of that connection. Severing that connection is bad for individuals and society. You can see that, can't you?

Nonsense. Sex-ed is teaching kids what sex is and how to do and what the consequences can be. It’s like driver’s ed but with more interesting slide-shows.

There is no possible way to sever the connection between sex and reproduction anymore than it’s possible to sever the connection between sex and pleasure. That’s reality and sex-ed teaches it. Teaching reality is never bad for individuals or society.

>I’m not sure if I asked you this but what punishment a woman should (sic) receive for having an abortion?

>No, you haven't asked me that. I suspect that the abortion itself is a "punishment" for many women

You believe that they kill babies and you mean to say you don’t think they should be put in jail?

That’s a cop-out, c’mon. Roe v. Wade is overturned, President McCain makes abortion illegal. Women still get them from doctors willing to provide them and some get caught what should the punishment for conviction be? You cannot have a law that prescribes the fruits (if you’ll forgive the term) of the crime to be the punishment or the criminal’s guilty conscious or whatever other psychological impact the crime may have on the perpetrator. There has to be either time served or a fine, what do you think it should be? What do you think a serial offender should receive as just punishment? Five years? 10? Life? A fine perhaps? $500? $5,000? You want abortion illegal? Well passing a law against something is only half the justice, you need the punishment.

The reality is that you can protest, block, shoot videos, shoot doctors, blow up clinics, pray to your god, prove that a fetus is a person that starts making life plans in the second trimester and it won’t change a thing. Women who do not want to carry a child to term will find a way to abort and if they’re going to do that I want them to do it safely by a certified doctor. I wish they wouldn’t, I wish they would make the better choice but my wishes do not trump theirs or their sacred right to be masters of their own body.