Abortion & Emotional Manipulation
Tackling the illogical, feelings-based contentions of pro-choicers.
There’s definitely one tactic that pro-choicers have used effectively to promote their movement: That would be an appeal to our emotions. Making arguments that tug at our heartstrings is by no means an inherently illegitimate technique. After all, pro-lifers also use this same approach whenever they utilize images of adorable infants and late-term fetuses. Sometimes, we need a stirring glimpse at reality to aid us to the right conclusions, like such as repudiating Nazism in part to being exposed to grisly images of the Holocaust. But nonetheless, appealing to the emotions is only as legitimate as the facts and logic surrounding the argument. So, while appealing to the emotions can lead us to take the right stance, our emotions can also be deceived to lead us to horrible conclusions.
The pro-choice movement, I believe, frequently makes use of emotionalism done wrong while suppressing facts and engaging in illogical nonsense.
(Important disclaimer: If you are reading this and you are pro-choice, I am not accusing you personally of engaging in manipulation or being a uniquely bad person. I do disagree with you to an incredibly high degree, though. And if I disagree with you, I ought to be able to explain why I do and point out the flaws in your perspective, as I would expect you to do the same with me.)
Now, this act of emotional manipulation is very much prevalent in defenses of abortion, and it’s even used to defend late-term abortions.
In its latest issue, The Nation led with this title on its cover: “Defending All Abortions.” You are not mistaken if you believe this cover story is actually defending all abortions (including late-term abortions) because that is exactly what it does. In the story, Amy Littlefield makes a point of contending that in a time where “Democrats love to avoid it, and Republicans love to lie about it,” we must recognize that “later-abortion care has never been more important.”
Littlefield chronicles several women who had abortions later in their pregnancies. One woman got an abortion at 28 weeks pregnant, another at 32 weeks, and one at 16 weeks. (There was another woman who, we are told rather sympathetically, was unable to have an abortion because she was far too late in her pregnancy for the abortion to be legal in the blue states of California and Maryland.)
A key feature of this article is that banning abortion at the point of viability, as currently understood, should be ditched. Though we’ve understood viability to be the point when a child can survive outside the womb, the article leads us to reinterpret viability to mean whatever the mother decides it is.
One of these mothers, who was pregnant at 16 weeks, decided to have an abortion because her baby was a girl, and she was worried about what could happen to her child given her history of abuse. So, it was the very existence of her unborn child that led her to decide that “her pregnancy wasn’t viable.” Now, this particular mother feel some guilt going into the procedure, being that this was her second abortion. She had been reading her Bible and wasn’t too sure if this was right. Nevertheless, her abortionist reassured her, giving a piece of cliche inspiration, “Any God I believe in knows your heart and knows you’re a good mom.”
Don’t sweat it. God knows you’re good for doing away with your child.
But the main story we are told concerns Ayana, who was 28 weeks pregnant. She is said to be a loving mother of three who works two jobs while her boyfriend works another. While changing her one-year-old’s diapers, she thought about what a “newborn would subtract” from the attention she could give her current baby. In fact, her five-year-old daughter even told her that “we don’t need any more babies.” So, she came to the conclusion that she wasn’t “ready” for another child.
The article notes that while some women may delay their abortions to take time to think about it, they rarely wait as long as Ayana did to make their decisions. (Most of these women spend days, not months, to decide). Still, we are then informed that we really shouldn’t worry too much about this late-term abortion because while Republicans have claimed that “later abortion involves ripping live babies apart,” it’s actually standard procedure to just administer an injection that causes the unborn child to “no longer [have] a heartbeat” (i.e., die). After waiting a day or two, the abortionist opens the cervix and removes the small corpse. Not as graphic sounding when you describe it this way, but it still ends in the termination of the child.
Following the abortion, the footprints of the baby is collected and placed in a pink envelope, per Ayana’s request. I suppose Ayana wants to remember this occasion. So, after completing the procedure, Ayana, “relieved of a heavy weight,” returns to her boyfriend and children, who are waiting in the car, so that she can get back to her normal life with a “new lightness.”
Throughout the piece, Littlefield resorts to emotional manipulation to get the reader to misdirect the reader from the key issue: Aborting unborn children months into the pregnancy. Ayana is a “superstrong” mother of three who loves her family. She and her boyfriend are struggling financially, and it’s already hard enough for her to be there for her kids. She simply can’t handle another child. Yeah, she felt uneasy about going through with the abortion. She even shed a tear when the needle was stuck into her abdomen, feeling her child move before dying. No need for alarm, though. Her abortionist reassured her that the “procedure doesn’t cause the fetus any pain or discomfort.” So, after all is said and done, she can go on with life, grateful for being relieved of her burden. She even sentimentally keeps the footprints of her aborted child to remember the experience. Sure, you may be uncomfortable hearing about this late-term abortion, but for Ayana, “it’s a chance to be the mom she wants to be.”
Poppycock.
I’m not denying that these women are going through really tough situations, but what’s at issue here is the fate of living, unborn children. And frankly, some of the details Littlefield uses to induce emotionalism actually work against her argument. Take the fact that Ayana keeps the footprints of her aborted child. Besides it being rather dark when you think about it that Ayana wanted a personal memorial of her abortion, this detail is a reminder that we are dealing with an actual baby. Abortion is not about removing an impersonal object within the womb. It’s about the termination of an unborn child who has footprints like any infant.
If we’re dealing with living babies who squirm in the womb when being aborted and can leave behind footprints, in what world is it justifiable to kill him or her if a woman merely does not feel “ready” for another child? And what about that other woman Littlefield profiled who got an abortion because she found out her baby was a girl? Does worrying about the potential of the baby being abused by malign relatives justify killing her? Of course not.
The fundamental divide between pro-lifers and pro-choicers rests in the identity of that entity in the womb. Pro-life advocates say that the fetus is a living being with personhood, while pro-choicers have traditionally contended that the fetus doesn’t have personhood until viability, a measurable metric.
But pro-choicers like Littlefield want us to leave even the viability measure to be determined by the mothers alone. We simply have to trust them, and if they determine their pregnancy is not viable, then it’s not viable. Who are we to judge these women who have unique and challenging experiences? Well, actually, we can come to moral judgments because this whole framework is relativistic nonsense. Personhood and viability are not decisions based on the whims of anyone, and insisting that we must have sympathy for these women (and we certainly should) does not excuse the abortion.
Let me put it this way. If someone is operating under the (correct, I believe) assumption that a fetus is an unborn baby with personhood, they won’t be persuaded that it is morally justified to abort the child because the mother is dealing with difficult or scary situations. One who does not operate under this assumption will face tougher questions to answer. The pro-lifer must answer, “Why are you trying to complicate things severely for struggling pregnant women?” Pro-choicers must answer, “Why do you support terminating unborn children?”
Emotional manipulation may be the most common tactic of pro-choicers to weasel out of the hard questions they must face, but at the end of the day, those footprints will reveal how illogical and shallow this tactic truly is.