Blog About Pro-Life Student Leader Becoming Pro-Abortion is Wrong

Opinion   |   Kristen Walker Hatten   |   Nov 6, 2012   |   6:13PM   |   Washington, DC

Blogger Libby Anne’s piece, “How I Lost Faith in the Pro-Life Movement,” is in the process of going viral on Facebook. You’re going to see a lot of debunking of this piece from pro-lifers, here on Live Action and elsewhere, since it is full of logical fallacies and links to “evidence” that does not support Libby Anne’s claims. But the thing that bothered me most in this somewhat lengthy piece (besides the sub-heading “Barack Obama: Pro-Life Hero,” which made me do a spit-take) can first be found in the intro:

As a child, teen, and college student, I sincerely believed that personhood, life, rights, and the soul all began at fertilization. I was honestly opposed to abortion because I believed it was murder. It had nothing to do with being anti-woman or anti-sex. I thought that the pro-life movement writ large – the major pro-life organizations, leaders, and politicians – were similarly genuine. I thought that they, like myself, simply wanted to “save the lives of unborn babies.”

I have come to the conclusion that I was a dupe.

This is Libby Anne’s first self-contradiction. She says pro-lifers are not actually genuine about being in the movement to save lives, yet she claims she herself was genuine. So I suppose that means all pro-lifers except her are big fat liars.

Later on, she contradicts herself again:

But I am very sure that there are other dupes out there. If you’re sitting there reading this thinking “but I really am in it to save unborn babies,” I am sure you’re not alone. After all, I was one of you.

If you are one who has been a part of the pro-life movement because you really do believe in “saving unborn babies,” it’s time to cut your ties with the movement. You may be an honest and kind-hearted person, but you’ve been had.

Okay. So now some pro-lifers do want to save babies? Oh, wait. Nope:

I am done making excuses for the pro-life movement. I am done trying to explain that the movement is not anti-woman. I am done trying to insist that the movement really is simply trying to “save unborn babies.” I’m done because it’s not true

The reality is that so-called pro-life movement is not about saving babies. It’s about regulating sex… It’s not about babies. It’s about controlling women. It’s about making sure they have consequences for having unapproved sex.

Anybody else confused?

What I’m getting is: pro-lifers don’t really care about saving babies, except the ones who do, and you’re doing it wrong.

This same kind of muddy thinking dominates her article, and the fauxminists loooove it. Then again, this is the same movement that shares a view of birth control and abortion with Tucker Max and Hugh Hefner, yet calls itself pro-woman.

What we are looking at in Libby Anne is a person who has stopped believing in the sanctity of life. It’s really that simple. In the article, she admits that she no longer believes in the personhood of the fetus. At that point, it would be understandable to simply stop reading. (I almost stopped reading near the beginning when she was utterly convinced, immediately and without fact-checking, of something she read in the New York Times.)

All of her arguments can be debunked. But she wouldn’t even be attempting to defend the pro-choice position were it not for this simple fact:

I no longer believe that abortion is murder because I no longer hold that a zygote, embryo, or fetus is a “person.” I also came to realize that the focus on personhood ignores the fact that a zygote, embryo, or fetus is growing inside of another person’s body. For a variety of reasons, I see birth as the key dividing line.

That’s what it boils down to, folks. The “key dividing line” being birth, the fetus at 36 weeks – able to survive outside the womb with little medical intervention – is not a “person,” according to Libby Anne. The fetus at 24 weeks – possibly able to survive outside the womb with medical intervention and go on to drink coffee and drive a car and have opinions and maybe even love Obama like Libby Anne – is not a “person,” according to her. The fetus at 12 weeks – scientifically proven to be a totally unique human life, with a human heartbeat, with budding fingers and toes – is not a person, according to Libby Anne. And so on.

There is no point earlier than birth, according to this woman, at which the fetus becomes a person. And Barack Obama, who thinks partial-birth abortion is fine ‘n’ dandy, is a pro-life hero.

Now that you know this, you can approach the rest of Libby Anne’s article with a handful or two of salt.

Oh, but I almost forgot: there’s that whole “argument” about how we don’t really care about babies, how we just want to ruin everybody’s sexy good time. I could formulate an argument about natural law, about how sex has led to babies ever since there was sex, and when you try to subvert natural law you get all kinds of different and exciting flavors of suffering and death…

CLICK LIKE IF YOU’RE PRO-LIFE!

 

But you know what?

You got me, Libby Anne. I admit it. My objection to premarital sex has nothing to do with its damage to the human body, mind, and soul. I don’t care about STDs, low self-esteem in women, abandoned or neglected children, the ascendancy of the welfare state, the collapse of the family, or the wholesale killing of the unborn.

I just, like everyone else in the pro-life movement, am possessed of a sick, twisted, pathological desire to stop people from having fun, carefree, no-consequences sex because I am mean and hate everybody. Also something about the Bible. And women suck.

You win: babies are not people ’til they’re born, and I hate sex.

Libby Anne, you said it, not me: you’re a dupe.

LifeNews.com Note: Kristen Walker is Vice President of New Wave Feminists.This post originally appeared at the Live Action blog and is reprinted with permission.