Amy Richards and the Culture of Death

I haven't had much time to blog lately.  A busy one-year-old doesn't leave much time!  And yet I wouldn't change it for the world.  In fact, when we first got pregnant, I had hoped for twins.  Oh, I knew first-hand how much more work that would be - my sister has twin boys.  I have always referred to them as "a baby and a buddy."  They seemed to come into the world pre-packaged with a friend for life.  How lucky for them!  And how lucky for their mom and dad.

Seems rather appropriate to start with that this morning, as I address the article "everyone's talking about" - the cold, calculating and murderous admissions of the (now) infamous Amy Richards in the New York Times a few days ago.  You all know the story - she got pregnant with triplets - a set of twins and a "stand-alone" and opted to abort the twins and carry the third baby to term.  The article is an abomination.  Richards expresses no hesitation, no regret, no remorse.  If she has any grasp of her others childrens' possibilities as human beings, there is no proof of it in her writing.  Her tone throughout is whiny, smug, defiant and callous.

Her castrated boyfriend seemed to want all three children, but she dismissed that possibility out of hand, hissing that that would condemn her to a life buying big jars of mayonnaise at Costco.  (I frankly think this whole article is an insult to Costco, and if I were the President of that company, I'd go on record saying so.) 

Isn't that just peachy?  A father has no rights - only responsibilities.  He wants his children.  But the woman's "choice" trumps everything else.  But why should this surprise us?  If these two childrens' lives don't prevail against her bodily discomfort and inconvenience (however severe), why on earth would a father's interest in his own sons andor daughters mean anything?

I can't add anything meaningful to the chorus of horrified voices that have spoken out about Ms. Richards' actions.  But I do have a different perspective that I would like to add.

Does anyone wonder why The New York Times published this piece?  Does anyone wonder why on earth Richards-the-Baby-Butcher wrote it?  If abortion is supposed to be this deeply private decision between a woman and her doctor (*chortle, snort, cough, gag*), then why the hell does a women choose to publish that story in one of the most widely-circulated newspapers in the world?

Is it just because controversial stories sell more papers?  I don't believe that for a second.  Is it to provoke the ire of pro-lifers everywhere?  Please.  Pro-lifers already oppose abortion.  And even under dire circumstances, such as the (admittedly rare) conception resulting from rape, or a severely-deformed child, the most consistent among us still maintain that abortion is the wrong response; that you don't punish a child for his or her father's sins; that you don't destroy a human being because he or she is less than "perfect."  How much more, then, would your garden-variety pro-life American cringe at this story?

No, the purpose of the story is to create support for poor, poor Ms. Richards.  And yet I wonder if it won't create precisely the opposite reaction.

In that vein, it's interesting to note what poll after poll is showing these days - that more Americans think abortion ought to be more limited than it is.  Some polls show that a majority of Americans think abortion should be illegal after 20 weeks (or "viability," the definition of which continues to be earlier in the pregnancy, thanks to technological advances).  And overwhelmingly, Americans do not support abortion for whimsical reasons like sex selection, or for minor problems like cleft palate.

But - even in these polls, the results seem to indicate that a majority of Americans are uncomfortable criminalizing or outlawing abortion in all cases - or very early in the first trimester.  (New advances in ultrasound technology may change that collective view, as well.)

The point is that even the majority of those Americans who consider themselves "pro-choice" have limited - and even conflicted - support for it.   And if you look at polls conducted over the past five years or so, increasing numbers of Americans oppose abortion in ever greater circumstances.  And this is in spite of abortion's easy availability.

This terrifies the hard-line pro-abortion movement.   They have always wanted complete support for abortion on demand for all 40 weeks of pregnancy.  Knowing full well that they would not get this right away, they started with the "hard cases" - rape and incest.  Then, it was for deformed or otherwise "imperfect" children.  (After all, who would mandate such a hardship as caring for a "special-needs" child?)  And whenever a child (or more than one child) would cause a possible detriment to a mother's health.  Including, of course, "mental health."  Or personal inconvenience.  And then they threw the lovely slogan, "Every child a wanted child," at us.  Oh, boo hoo.  We are supposed to feel better because the mother had her child killed.  And this is preferable than being born unwanted (whatever that means).

Some of the voices of the pro-abortion crowd are more forthcoming than others.  The so-called "Center for Positive Sexuality" (thanks to Ashli from The S.I.C.L.E. Cell for pointing this one out) proclaims proudly that any reason to have an abortion is a good enough reason.

CPS may be one of the few that says it out loud.  But their position is the ultimate goal of the pro-abortion movement.  The first step was to get a large percentage of Americans to accept the inviolability of others' "choices."  Having done that, they continue to try to whittle away at American' discomfort with certain types of abortions, or with abortions for certain reasons (viewed, perhaps, as frivolous).

There have been two ways to approach this.  The first was by lying, dissembling, covering up the truth.  There is no question but that the pro-abortion crowd has kept pregnant women and the American public at large deliberately ignorant about the number of abortions, the nature of the procedures, the percentage of late-term abortions, the level of fetal development, and other significant facts.  But the testimony in the recent cases challenging the Partial Birth Abortion Act has made that a more difficult challenge.

So, the other approach has been to desensitize Americans to abortion - at all times, using any and all methods, and for any reason whatsoever.

It's the old "camel's nose under the tent" approach.  Once you agree that an unborn child has no rights under the United States Constitution, once you agree that a woman's right to "privacy" encompasses her "right" to have her children killed, once you agree to the premise that one's "personal morality" cannot be legislated (the consummate absurdity) - you have lost any basis for objecting to any abortion at all.

The Richards piece is just the next link in a long, long chain.  The purpose of writing it, and the purpose of publishing it, is to continue to push the envelope of acceptance for abortion.

But even if, as the polls cited above seem to indicate, Americans' support for abortion is waning, not waxing, the advocates of death will not be still.  As many have already argued for years, it will not stop with abortion.  If we are expected to be "tolerant" of a woman's unilateral decision to have a shot of potassium chloride administered to the hearts of two unwanted (but  completely healthy) unborn children, then why not born but "imperfect" children?  Why not Grandma, suffering from Alzheimers'?  Why not Uncle Carl, paralyzed in a motorcyle accident?  Why not Mom, who is incontinent?

We are becoming a nation of nice Nazis.  "Nice," because we presently couch our decisions to terminate people's lives on high-minded premises like being deformed or unwanted, rather than racial supremacy or lebensraum.  And (in the case of the so-called "right to die" movement) on apparently compassionate grounds like "a life worth living" or "ending someone's suffering." 

Oh, how dare you draw that comparison!, the death advocates charge in a fit of false indignation.  The eugenics and genocide policies of the Third Reich were imposed from above!  Against people's will!  While we, only do away with the unwanted!  We harvest their tissues not to make lamps, but to help the disabled!  And we enlist the support of the doomed in their own demise!  And even where they haven't spoken their intent to die, we have self-interested, unfaithful spouses, ready and able to testify in court on their behalf!

I am not persuaded.  The spirit of the Nazi death camps is alive and well in this country, insidiously pervading every aspect of our culture like smog.  We've been living in it for so long that we can't even see it anymore. 

We already have hundreds - perhaps thousands of our own Mengeles.  They are in my town and yours - the doctors willing to cut little babies up into pieces. 

We have the political supporters - the Democratic Party has sold its soul to the pro-abortion movement, and virtually no one in it has the balls to stand up to them anymore.  (And I am not exonerating the "pro-choice" Republicans, either.)

For those who need religious sanction, we have some established American churches which have come out in favor of "choice."

We have a well-oiled propaganda machine.  Witness the New York Times - and 90% of the rest of the media.   (Go ahead and try to name five newspapers from major cities that have a stated pro-life editorial position.)

Why, we even have our very own crematoria!

It's true that we don't have Hitler.  But with people like Amy Richards, we don't need him.  For the moment, anyway, we seem to prefer to create our Culture of Death from the ground up.