Abortion’s Arguments: Newsweek’s Anna Quindlen

Newsweek magazine’s columnist Anna Quindlen serves as a perfect example of half-thought, which means that a person does not include both cause and effect but merely one or the other.

Anna Quindlen points out that “Roe v. Wade has become the starting point for every discussion” of abortion (“Out of the Time Warp,” Newsweek, Jan. 27, 2003, p. 76). True indeed, this is the problem precisely. We jump into the discussion of whether a pregnant woman should have an abortion while not asking how a woman gets pregnant without wanting to (excluding rape).

Anna Quindlen states that having kids is “best done from a bedrock of maturity and security and not to be entered into casually” and so to “force anyone into its service is immoral.” That is just the point: do women not know that if they engage in sexual activities pregnancy is the natural result? Do they not know that the only 100% effective (and free) form of contraception is the dreaded abstinence?

Thus, when she writes of “control over fertility” and “the right to individual control over the womb,” we must consider that once a woman is pregnant it proves that she has already made the choice. Therefore, Pro-Choice is really the right to change one’s choice. The choice to be made is whether or not to get pregnant and not what to do when you have willingly engaged in the activity that causes pregnancy and are surprised that you are pregnant. Women certainly do have that right to their own body, their womb and their life. Therefore, make the right decision at the right time.

Furthermore, she wrote, “This is not 1973. The clock cannot move backward.” Did you catch the message? We cannot turn back so we deal with the effect and not the cause. Also, note that her statement is utterly wrong since you can not only move a clock backwards but if the clock is broken it would be quite prudent to do so.

Here is a fuller view into Anna Quindlen’s odd view of morality:

Someone once told me I would feel differently about abortion after I had children myself. She was right. I now feel that mothering is so critical and so challenging that to force anyone into its service is immoral.

What can be said? We are dealing with a woman who has experienced the growth of a baby in her womb, and experienced that baby’s birth and is now even more in favor of abortion. But why, because it is challenging? This is why one ought not engage in sexual activity lightly. And if you engage in sexual activity, knowing that that activity is known to result in pregnancy, and find yourself pregnant who is forcing you to become a mother? You are the one who made the decision, you chose, to chance getting pregnant.

Now consider Anna Quindlen’s concept of ethics: a woman purposefully engages in sexual activity, she knows that she could get pregnant, she does not want to get pregnant but will not abstain from sexual activity, she finds herself pregnant, she wants an abortion and it would be immoral to prevent her from having one. But it is moral to murder a healthy, beautiful, innocent and defenseless human baby in an inhumane, subhuman, inhuman, unimaginably, dismembering, brutal and painful manner. That Anna Quindlen can believe this and write an article about it is one thing, that Newsweek would pay her for writing it and publish it is quite another. It simply boggles the mind.

But she is not done:

American women…have developed a sense of themselves as educated consumers, whether in childbirth, in menopause or in maintenance; they have a sense of ownership of the equipment.

It is beyond belief and sensibility that someone, much less a woman, much less a woman who has given birth to a child, would refer to the miracle of childbirth as if she were talking about picking a ripe banana, kicking a car tire, or romping around the mall looking for bargains. It is not only shameful but it contradicts her point because she is trying to get us to believe that women can take care of themselves and use their bodies with strong womanly conviction.

Yet, the point of her article (while never, ever, stated in these all too honest words) is that woman are finding themselves suddenly pregnant without meaning to be. Thus, when she states that we ought to look forward to “a future with more, not less, control over fertility,” she is talking about abortion and not the obvious place to start: with women and men controlling themselves and thus, controlling fertility in that way. This is the kind of appropriate understanding of the issue that makes Anna Quindlen’s remark against “those who oppose the right to individual control over the womb.” This is odd since the whole point is that a woman has full and total control over her womb and she has the right to choose whether or not to get pregnant.

A woman who finds herself pregnant without wanting to be is providing clear proof that she is not in control, is not strong, is not independent but is simply out of control since she cannot even manage her own body.

Anna Quindlen wrote:

The idealized gave way to the real. A previous marriage had ended in divorce. The ring bearer was the 5-year-old son of the bride and groom…newspapers began to run announcements of the commitment ceremonies of gay men and lesbians (“Getting Rid of the Sex Police,” Newsweek, (Jan. 13, 2003 AD), p. 72).

These and other such things were “a reflection of the ways of the world.” She may not realize how right she is. Indeed, the ways of the world are those that allow all and any behavior (except moral restraint).

She also states, “Every citizen who cares about what America is supposed to stand for should be rooting for that result.” Here she is referring to the overturning of laws such as anti-sodomy. Now you know, you are not a true patriot unless you support any and all sexual expressions (except abstinence which is the premise upon which responsible sexual expression is based). But who ever said that the USA was built on a foundation of anybody can do anything, anytime, anywhere, with anyone?

Absolute freedom corrupts absolutely and the freedoms that this country protects are not nonjudgmental and all inclusive. There are plenty of restrictions of behavior; after all we do not live in a state of anarchy. Making all behavior acceptable and legal is not the answer rather, it is the problem. Some behaviors should be abolished and we all know it.

Anna Quindlen further explains, “sodomy laws are part of a dark tradition in this nation” because “They are meant only to demonize and marginalize a class of human beings. In this, their closest corollary is the now reviled Jim Crow laws, which excluded black Americans from hotels and restaurants and consigned them to separate schools and restrooms, not because it served any civic purpose but because it was a way to signal that black men and women were inferior.”

This is a tactic by which to aggrandize a position by rousing a strong emotional response to which none would dare disagree out of pure fear of societal ridicule. But there is no likeness whatsoever between a racist law and a law based on behavior. In other words, Jim Crow dealt with skin color, pigmentation, which is something that is not a choice for the individual who was, after all, born that way. On the other hand, sodomy and likewise laws deal with behaviors that a person makes a conscious decision to partake in (and this is regardless of whether they have a natural impulse to do so as, in the end, they still make decision whether or not to follow, act out, that impulse).

On her view, the problem is that we interfere with one of the politically correct commandments, “Two consenting male adults were in the midst of a private act of sexual congress.” The problem is then taken to its ridiculous extreme in that Anna Quindlen fears that we may “turn a free country into a police state…monitoring private acts” but is not all law the monitoring of private acts? (in fact, law legislates morality).
It is true that this is a free country but that in no way means free to do what, how or wherever we want. We stated that absolute freedom corrupts absolutely because it is when a person feels as if they are free to do anything they want that we run into trouble. After all what do we call criminals? Outlaws, they consider themselves to be above the law, beyond the law, outside the law. When freedom is taken to its extreme it makes law necessary because not everyone is particularly benevolent.

There seems to be a lack of full-fledged reasoning in our society. We do not take cause and effect into consideration. Instead, we only consider one or the other without making the logical connection between the two. The problem with the idea that there are private acts between two consenting adults is that their private acts rarely end up affecting only the two consenting adults.

What is it that results from these so-called private acts? Pregnancy, abortion, adoption, AIDS and other STDs, broken homes, welfare, etc., etc. Our politically correct and morally bankrupt culture does not want morality to be legislated. Ok, let us make a deal: we will not impose our morals upon you if you do not impose upon us when you want our hard earned tax money for federally funded abortion, AIDS research, welfare, adoption agencies, etc., etc.

Things that we would not need if you had a high moral standard in the first place. A private act between two consenting adults is tantamount to a pop-cultural myth and is only half of the story. Maybe Anna Quindlen could write an article entitled, “Getting Rid of Financial Imposition on the Moral by the Immoral.”

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BOOKS:

Bernard Nathanson, The Hand of God: A Journey from Death to Life by the Abortion Doctor Who Changed His Mind

Randy C. Alcorn, Why Pro-Life?: Caring for the Unborn and Their Mothers

Randy C. Alcorn, Pro-Life Answers to Pro-Choice Arguments Expanded & Updated

Scott Klusendorf, Pro-Life 101: A Step-by-Step Guide to Making Your Case Persuasively

ESSAYS:
“Sacred Abortion”

Richard Dawkins – On Abortion, Tadpoles, Rape, Cows, Murder and Sheep

The Exorcist’s Abortion and the Satanist’s Repentance

George Tiller, Abortionist Murders, and the Richard Dawkins Correlation

Is pro-life and pro-death penalty a contradiction?

Dan
Barker – His Views On Human Dignity