Whether the issue is war, abortion, capital punishment, or asking the law which they have made to pronounce on the ‘futility of life’, I always feel a major outbreak of ‘moral repugnance’ creeping over my very soul every time politicians feel that they are equipped to decide who shall live and who shall die.
One week a Trade Unionist in Glasgow town, next week a pugilist in the Stranger’s Bar, and the week after? The final arbiter of our life or our death! Such is their qualification for the ultimate philosophical question. Who has the right to life?
Andrew Lansley is the latest politician to step flat footed into this philosopher’s bourn, he shall emerge with more than soggy principles. ‘Illegal abortion‘, he pontificates, ‘is morally repugnant’. Note where the qualifying adjective lies – the morality is engaged with the criminality, the usurping of parliament’s power to decide who lives, who dies, not with the taking of life.
What has brought about this unaccustomed fit of morality in our politicians? This outpouring of words such as ‘infanticide’?
Why the news that some abortion clinics are aborting fœtuses, not for the ‘perfectly understandable’ reason that they are less than perfect future human beings; nor because having set aside the money for a new pair of Jimmy Choos and three weeks in Ibiza Madame has decided that there is insufficient money left to raise a child and that therefore her ‘mental health’ will be affected, but because these fœtuses are potential women. Sheesh, break out the morality smelling salts.
Female infanticide? Note once more the qualifying adjective. There is apparently nothing wrong with infanticide per se in our materialistic, consumer driven society, but female infanticide? Now you are talking; we can get enraged. God help our morality if they ever discover a gene for homosexuality – can you imagine the outcry if a clinic was discovered carrying out homophobic infanticide? Perhaps we should be searching for the gene which causes feministaism, or cyclism, or HarrietHarmanism, I can be persuaded to change my views…..
We were encouraged to adapt our views on infanticide largely by the spectre of criminally violated Irish girls, well just the one actually, forced to carry a rapist’s child. It was ‘morally repugnant’ in those early days of women’s rights, and ‘my body, my decision’. There was a modicum of morality in the decision, not for the fœtus of course, but viewed purely through the eyes of young unmarried girls, for whom birth control was still not reliable or easily obtainable, and rape, even within marriage, still not taken that seriously.
How far we have come. ‘Detrimental to the Mother’s mental health’ is now the most common justification for taking the life of a fœtus – and in the age of instant gratification, where absolute happiness is taken as the norm and any deviation a sign of potential mental illness or ‘deterioration in the Mother’s mental health’, I can see no moral reason for singling out abortion on the grounds of the female sex of the fœtus, as opposed to ‘common or garden infanticide’ as being morally repugnant. Presumably those Mother’s health would deteriorate if they were asked to carry a child they did not want?
The feministas are liable to disappear up their own generous backsides over this one. They cannot claim that it is the idea of an illegal act which is morally repugnant – they have supported many illegal acts, nay encouraged them; they cannot support the idea of infanticide being morally repugnant – too many years spent telling us that it is the woman’s right to chose, her body etc., indeed, too many years avoiding the very mention of the word ‘infanticide’.
A fœtus is now a consumer product, to be returned to its maker if it is substandard in any way. A woman’s mental health is too tightly tied in with her right to be totally happy at all times. Her role in life as unwilling receptacle of male semen, the result to be rejected if inconvenient. Normally the Girlies would retreat into supporting just about anything on the grounds of multi-culturalism, and support for cultural differences and social practices.
But female infanticide? Blimey, that’s a tough one.
Life is so much simpler if you just reject the notion of having any right to take any other life. That is where the case for ‘moral repugnance’ lies.
As it is, the Girlies are just going to have to swallow, and swallow hard. Female infanticide on the grounds of a woman’s right to chose meeting up with diverse social and cultural practices is the logical outcome of their meddling with the laws surrounding the outcome of our private sex lives.
SBML is the landlord of the Raccoon Arms. He lives North of Watford and has an eclictic range of interests from Science and Technology to Politics including Woodwork and Genealogy. His political viewpoint has evolved from being a student demonstrator to more liberal views and has now seen the light in Libertarianism.
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“…in the age of instant gratification, where absolute happiness is taken as the norm …”
We’ve become children, accustomed to the ‘I want it, and I want it now, and I should have it!’ attitude to everything.
If women are aborting female foetuses because a girl’s life is worth less to them than a boy’s, does that not argue for increased activity from the “sisterhood”? Aren’t these women being culturally brainwashed to accept that even their own lives are worth less than their male partner’s? Should campaigners be more active to demonstrate that women are equal to men in their worth to both themselves and their communities?
Just asking.
Gladiolys, your question captures the essential contradiction of feminism and an issue that caused me grave doubts in the days when I believed the movement could be reformed from the inside.
The ‘right to choose’ put the cart before the horse, assuming that, except in cases of rape or potential severe foestal abnormality, the choice would be made by women behaving in an adult and rational fashion. Such women would already have considered the possibility of an unwanted pregnancy and have exercised all reasonable contraceptive precautions.
Sadly for the sisters, a substantial proportion of the female population has firmly resisted being shepherded to the sunlit uplands of enlightened womanhood – or been prevented by ‘cultural values’ from achieving the goal of educated liberation.
Beautifully put, Macheath as always!
This was a foregone conclusion, partly because of the feministas view that different cultures threw up female viewpoints that merely needed ‘re-educating’. The stubborn determination of some of the female members of different cultures to resist such re-education – on the grounds that they think THEY are right, wasn’t foreseen!
General Napier made this comment on the Indian practice of sati:
“This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pile. But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them, and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs.”
Both cultural traditions were accorded parity of esteem: how enlightened were those Victorians.
Thank you – though I should have proof-read; for ‘except in’ read ‘excepting’.
There is an interesting contemporaneous parallel in the world of education, where the assumption that horses led to water would drink their fill without any further effort on the part of the authorities has produced a generation of virtually unemployable young people and the current ‘work experience’ fiasco.
Someone with a less serious view on life would be forgiven for seizing upon your last paragraph!
Andrew Lansley is not quite correct when referring to illegality. There is nothing in the Act which makes it illegal per se.
Providing a woman can satisfy two doctors that her physical or mental well-being would be harmed by giving birth, whatever the reason, then she qualifies for a termination – revealing the fact that the underlying reason for her predicted mental ill-being is the anticipated gender of the child is a matter for her to decide. Only a dumb woman or an investigative reporter would ever offer that cause – and then only a dumb doctor (or two) would give consent.
The challenge of the girlies of accidentally supporting female infanticide as a bi-product of their ‘freedom’ remains and is for them to resolve.
And I am glad that Saul identified the final paragraph’s alternative-approach imagery in a more subtle way than I would.
Typically female infanticide is cultural. It is a method used by some cultures to limit the size of the population.
The law of the land is becoming subservient to cultural groups. For example it is morally acceptable for Christians, and the Church, to be homophobic. If that logic is applied equally then it also follows that other cultural groups should be allowed to flaunt British law and allow female infanticide.
On the other hand the rule of law could be enforced, but then any religious group that does not provide equal access based on sexual preferences would have to be banned and their leaders jailed…..
“For example it is morally acceptable for Christians, and the Church, to be homophobic”.
Less with the ‘phobia’ nonsense. Atavistic fear doesn’t come into it. You are displaying homonausea.
Most Christian church’s find gay marriage morally unacceptable and will not permit it. The law says you cannot discriminate based on sexual preference. For some irrational reason the church gets a free pass.
If the church can get a free pass on the definition of morality, then where does that stop in a multicultural society? The rule of law must apply equally to all, no person or group should be given “special rights” because of their religious and/or cultural background.
The Christian church’s views on gay marriage sends a message to all other religious and cultural groups in the UK that the morals of a region/culture take president over the laws of the land. Further, when we condemn cultures for immoral behavior they will naturally feel discriminated against when Christians can define their own morality.
Its not about ‘phobia nonsense. I’m questioning which morals are right in a multicultural society and a basic democratic principle that the rule of law should apply equally to all.
The Church is not getting a ‘free pass’ on defining morality. The Church is being recognised as having its own opinions on morality.
You are arguing for an imposition of uniform morality by the force of the State. That is seriously intolerant and disturbing.
This is on a par with the information that I read the other day.
http://www.voiceofthecopts.org/women_rights/female-genital-mutilation-rife-in-egypt-despite-ban/
It’s supposedly not unknown here either…
How as a libertarian (someone who supports the
non-aggression principle) is it possible to support abortion, the ultimate pre-mediated act of violence?
I don’t support taking any life!
Sorry, I was unclear, I was not suggesting you specifically do, rather raising the question in general.
Incidentally, you can always tell a modern liberal. Here’s how.
It is reasonable to oppose both capital punishment and abortion on moral grounds. A brutal pragmatist may support both. But it takes a liberal to agree to killing innocent babies but not convicted murderers.
The rise in selective abortion should be laid at Blair’s multiculti door. All the “richly varied cultures” imported wholesale by his underhand immigration policy have brought many unwelcome side-effects with them, including this one. The truly sad thing about his scheming is that, if the policy had been above board, adequate provisions would have been made, at both national and local levels, to ensure infrastructure, integration and acceptance of British culture. Instead we now have ghettos where British law is impotent and tribal attitudes to the sanctity of life prevail.
This is not a difficult issue. It has been well known and well understood for some time that certain ethnic groups prefer men to girls as children, for cultural or “religious” reasons. And that there has been abortion based on this.
It is very simply utterly wicked.
I’m with JuliaM and Gildas on this one. It is an immoral world, that wants everything instantly, without, in some instances, pondering for a second how the thing itself is to be paid for.
It is an utterly wicked concept that anyone would wish to kill an unborn child, merely because they are the undesired gender. I don’t have a lot of time for abortion in any instance but this trend is beyond the pale…
I love my little girl more than anything. Her presence in my world has changed it completely and all for the better…
How anyone could value a girl less than a boy is beyond my understanding.
I read on another blog today someone used a new politically correct euphemism for abortion, calling it “emergency contraception”.
you have left out that it is all the fault of men.
It will be intewresting to see how things turn out in fourty years or so. Reluctant elderly single ‘non mothers’ being scorned by masses of immgrant true believers.
I found this You Tube video put the whole idea of abortion in context. I especially liked the line that said that a child is not a tumour.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJgUHsRZLak
With you on this one – abortion for gender-only reasons is pretty horrible, but comes squarely under the right to choose. Not a nice position to hold, though.