On Twitter last night I replied to a tweet by a feminist who uses the pseudonym ‘Glosswitch’, and runs the ‘Glosswatch’ blog. She was lamenting the passing of a bill in Texas which will reduce the period after conception in which a woman can legally obtain an abortion, to 20 weeks. I sent her a short message, and she posted the following on her website in response:
Her commentary flits seamlessly between the inaccurate and the absurd. An example of both:
What gets me is it seems there are people who oppose abortion on the basis that if they can’t have one, no one else should be able to.
I defy anyone to point to any evidence suggesting this is the ‘basis’ on which J4MB might campaign to have the law on abortion changed. We then had an exchange of comments, and others joined in, inevitably including a male feminist.
It’s often been said that those who strongly support elective abortion glory in their power of life and death over the unborn. The sheer inhumanity of some of the comments was breathtaking. An example, from Emma Newman:
As far as I’m concerned, women everywhere should be able to have all the abortions they want! What a wonderful way to control the population.
Glosswitch inevitably (and predictably) accused me of misogyny whilst (again, predictably) providing no evidence for the accusation. She and a number of the commenters trotted out the usual mantras of ‘choice’ and ‘bodily autonomy’. Along with the charge of misogyny, the aim is to have people not engage their brains when it comes to abortion, not to think seriously about any moral dimensions.
So what happens when people do engage their brains, and think about the moral (and other) dimensions of abortion? A person yesterday left a comment on our post about our plans to consult the British public about possible changes to the law on abortion, and he provided the URL of a YouTube video titled, ‘The 180 movie’. It’s the work of an American, Ray Comfort, and it’s been watched by around 4.1 million people. He describes himself as Jewish at the start of the video, but it’s clear he means Jewish by birth, as he’s now a practising Christian.
Much of the video consists of interviews with young American men and women on the subject of abortion. It’s illuminating to see how their opinions change dramatically when they start to think about the issues involved, possibly for the first time in their lives.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7y2KsU_dhwI
Some of Ray Comfort’s arguments are based upon religious convictions, but most aren’t. This interests me, because while some of those who support our plans to consult on abortion do so on religious grounds, this isn’t true for the majority of those individuals, and I’m not personally religious. I repeat a point made in the original post on this matter – a desire to reform the abortion laws in the UK is the leading concern of female respondents to our public consultation document. These women believe that the price being paid for women exercising ‘choice’ and ‘bodily autonomy’ is too high.
