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Thursday, June 16, 2022

Links - 16th June 2022 (1 - Abortion)

Meme - Cole Sullivan: "Breaking news: Knoxville's Planned Parenthood clinic is on fire."
Sandi Bachom @sandibachom: "Christofascist bastards"
John A. Douglas @JOhnADouglas: "It's just a clump of bricks, it's not a building"

Stephen L. Miller on Twitter - "AOC on how babies in the womb are not a life: “‘Oh…you’re harming a life, I believe this a life.’ Well, some religions don’t. How about that?""
"Huh.. she starts talking about religious beliefs instead of science."

Jo Luehmann says she would prefer having abortion to having kid that gets 'adopted by white evangelicals' - ""I would rather get an abortion than have a Brown child who ends up being adopted by white evangelicals. It is not a kindness to children of the global majority to give them to people who’ll traumatize them with self and ancestral hatred. An abortion is an act of love," Jo Luehmann tweeted... "I have 4 children. The last one was an unwanted pregnancy. Do not speak about how I feel about my children just because I would chose abortion over letting my offspring be raised by bigots who subconsciously (and sometimes consciously) hate them," Luehmann replied... Over on Instagram Luehmann wrote, "White and Christian supremacy kill people of the global majority. They kill LGBTQ+ people. They kill religious minorities. Why would I give a Brown child who could (and likely will) be queer and may have no interest in Christianity to people who’ll teach them they are inadequate in most all of their identities?"  "People who think not coming to this world is the worst that can happen to a zygote have never had to experience the excruciating realities of systemic oppression. Not existing isn’t the worst that can happen for MANY Black, Brown, queer, non-Christian folks. In this oppressive dumpster fire it absolutely is love to choose an abortion for marginalized folks (and since women, non-binary folks, trans men and poor folks are all oppressed in this society, abortion is love, love that can hurt for some, but love nonetheless," Luehmann wrote."
Racial and religious discrimination is only good against a few types of people

Axios on Twitter - "SCOOP: The U.S. government is bracing for a potential surge in political violence once the Supreme Court hands down the ruling that's expected to overturn Roe v. Wade, according to a Department of Homeland Security memo obtained by Axios."
Damn pro-lifers inciting violence! But of course the pro-choicers will just be having "mostly peaceful protests"

‘Unrelenting Daily Confrontation’: After Roe Leak, Yale Law Students Call for Ostracizing Conservative Classmates and Tossing Out Constitution - "Contacted for comment, the students decried "leaks" of their social media posts and said the Washington Free Beacon was not "authorized" to publish them...   The replies may have been a tacit invocation of copyright laws that ban the dissemination of photos without their owner’s consent. Publishing private Instagram posts, a lawyer might argue, violates intellectual property rights, though Adam Candeub, an intellectual property expert at Michigan State University College of Law, called that argument "bullshit."  "It’s not clear copyright would even apply," Candeub said. "I wonder what they’re teaching at Yale Law School."  Eugene Volokh, a professor of First Amendment law at UCLA School of Law, said the copyright argument was a stretch... The reactions at Yale Law School, long ranked the top school in the country, reflect the radicalism of a younger generation of law students—and, some have speculated, of the leaker himself—who believe that long-standing legal norms perpetuate oppression... Such sentiments are widespread at Yale Law School. In March, nearly two-thirds of the student body signed an open letter condemning the Federalist Society for hosting a bipartisan panel on free speech. The letter—which Fessler, Olgun, and Ramakrishna signed—also condemned the law school for calling "armed police" on "peaceful student protesters," who caused so much chaos at the panel that the speakers had to be escorted to a squad car outside. Similar scenes have unfolded outside the homes of Supreme Court justices in the wake of the leak. Though it is illegal to picket a judge’s home "with the intent of influencing" a case, hundreds of protesters did just that to Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, raising concerns about their safety. The Biden Administration does not appear to share those concerns: then-White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Tuesday that "we certainly continue to encourage [peaceful protests] outside of judges' homes." Congress has likewise taken a page from the Yale Law playbook. Days after a pro-life advocacy office was firebombed in Madison, Wis., House Democrats tried to kill a bipartisan bill that would beef up security for Supreme Court justices...   As the law school’s student body has radicalized, some judges are hoping to hem in its prestige. In March, D.C. Circuit judge Laurence Silberman warned his colleagues against hiring Yale students."
It's only okay to leak things that help liberal ends

The Chicago Thinker on Twitter - "Jen Psaki brazenly lies to @UChicago student journalist, @RealDSchmidt, denying she encouraged anti-lifers to illegally protest outside Supreme Court justices’ homes to influence SCOTUS abortion decision"

The End of Roe v. Wade - WSJ - "The recent leak of a draft Supreme Court opinion overruling Roe v. Wade has prompted many commentators to charge that a hyper-politicized, conservative Court is on the verge of losing its legitimacy and plunging America into a constitutional abyss. Should the draft become the Court’s ruling, they argue, it would threaten a wide range of basic rights and perhaps the rule of law itself.  These are dire assessments, reflecting the country’s intense, long-standing divide over the issue of abortion. But they don’t stand up to scrutiny... Nor is there anything unusual in the leaked draft’s treatment of precedent. Supreme Court precedents strictly bind lower courts, but they do not bind the Supreme Court itself. Indeed, an essential function of the Court is to revise incorrect or outdated prior rulings. Over the last century, the Court has overruled itself about twice a year—roughly the same rate at which the Court has overturned acts of Congress. Precedents fall for many reasons. Sometimes the world changes in ways that mock the logic and expectations of the old ruling. Sometimes opposing lines of cases evolve and clash, and something must give. Most fundamentally, sometimes the Court comes to believe that an old case egregiously misinterpreted the Constitution, so the old case must go. In 1954, in Brown v. Board of Education, the justices rightly buried their predecessors’ 1896 ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson, which had proclaimed the dubious doctrine of “separate but equal.”... the New Deal Court properly repudiated dozens of earlier Gilded Age cases that read property and contract rights far too broadly and in the process invalidated minimum-wage, maximum-hour, worker-safety and consumer-protection laws of various sorts—laws that are now seen, quite rightly, as perfectly proper. The liberal Warren Court also overruled a staggering number of precedents, introducing now familiar terms to our constitutional lexicon. Mapp v. Ohio (1961) dramatically expanded the “exclusionary rule,” Reynolds v. Sims (1964) sweepingly mandated “one person, one vote,” and Miranda v. Arizona (1966) required the now iconic “Miranda warning.” These cases and dozens like them jettisoned earlier settled precedents that, in the minds of the justices, mangled the Constitution. As law professor Philip Kurland once wryly observed, “the list of opinions destroyed by the Warren Court reads like a table of contents from an old constitutional casebook.” Today, the Supreme Court’s 1973 opinion in Roe v. Wade, written by Justice Harry Blackmun, is similarly ripe for reversal. In the eyes of many constitutional experts across the ideological spectrum, it too lacks solid grounding in the Constitution itself... In Roe, the Court did not even quote the constitutional language it purported to interpret in handing down its ruling—the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment. That clause holds that the government may not deprive any person of “life, liberty or property, without due process of law”... The Texas abortion law at issue in Roe in fact provided for fair courtroom procedures, which made the decision’s “due process” argument textual gibberish. Constitutional history also cut hard against Roe. When Americans adopted the 14th Amendment in the 1860s, almost no one thought it barred laws against abortion. Virtually every state back then prohibited abortions. Roe likewise ran counter to state laws still on the books almost everywhere in the 1970s. The opinion clumsily cited various earlier precedents involving “privacy” rights related to contraception and erotic expression, but in a devastating concession, the Roe Court admitted that the presence of a living fetus in abortion scenarios made the matter “inherently different” from all previous privacy cases. And Roe said nothing, amazingly, about the relationship of abortion rights to women’s equality. Does Justice Alito’s draft, as many are now claiming, inflict collateral damage on other areas of constitutional case law, such as the Warren Court’s precedents on contraception and interracial marriage? It does not. In fact, the Dobbs draft reinforces these iconic opinions by explaining why they were right—namely, because the freedoms recognized in these cases were “deeply rooted in the Nation’s history and tradition.”... As a constitutional scholar at Yale and later as an unsuccessful nominee to the Supreme Court, Bork denounced a landmark contraception case, Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), in which the Court declared unconstitutional a Connecticut law criminalizing the use of contraception, even inside the marital bedroom. Bork considered the law “nutty” but argued that there was no broad constitutional “right to privacy,” as the Court had declared... Whereas the Court in Griswold sided with 49 states against the outlier Connecticut, the Court in Roe invalidated the laws of at least 49—perhaps all 50—states. The Dobbs draft takes pains to cite this stunning fact. In keeping with a long line of cases and the spirit of the written Constitution, Justice Alito notes that rights which are neither explicit nor implicit in the Constitution’s text and history generally need strong roots in the mores and practices of the American people. One way to measure these mores and practices is to count state laws: How many states recognize a putative right and how many try to abridge it? How often and how strictly are laws on the books in fact enforced?... Roe v. Wade... has been under fierce and relentless attack for decades in most states... Perhaps surprisingly, the draft’s logic also buttresses certain important LGBT rights. As the Court emphasized in its landmark ruling in Lawrence v. Texas (2003), which invalidated anti-sodomy laws, such laws were almost never enforced in America against private consensual conduct, but rather only in cases of rape or public indecency. Justice Anthony Kennedy’s majority opinion reported that only 13 states at the time still had laws prohibiting consensual adult sodomy and only four states singled out same-sex sodomy. Even in these outlier states, there was “a pattern of nonenforcement with respect to adults acting in private.”... “Americans generally and with good reason view today’s Court more favorably than today’s Congress and Presidency. The current justices are outstanding lawyers who do loads of close reading, careful writing, and deep thinking; try hard to see other points of view; spend lots of time pondering constitutional law; and spend little time posturing for cameras, dialing for dollars, tweeting snark, or pandering to uninformed extremists or arrogant donors. Can today’s President and Congress say the same?” In short, I am a Democrat who supports abortion rights but opposes Roe."

I Was Told I'm Pregnant. Then I Found Out It's Likely Cancer — And I'm Actually Relieved. - ""With cancer, disease or dysfunction, there is no government intervention or regulation restricting care. ... No one claims cancer cells have a right to thrive.""

Our daughter lied to us and went to a pro-life rally. - "I seriously thought she was a feminist... Yesterday, my 17-year-old daughter, a junior in high school, told us she was going to her boyfriend’s house. It turns out she lied.   I only found out because today, I casually mentioned Roe v. Wade may be overturned, and she replied, “I can’t wait. So many innocent lives will be spared.” We got into an argument in which she ended up confessing her actual whereabouts—she went to a “pro-life” rally with her boyfriend.  We’ve grounded her and taken away her phone for going behind our backs, but she’s showing no remorse. I just can’t believe it. This is the girl who dressed up as Ruth Bader Ginsburg for Halloween when she was 10. She’s heading to law school in a couple years. I seriously thought she was pro-choice and a feminist. I’ve been taking her to rallies and protests since she was a baby. We’ve been educating her about safe sex and consent. We donate to Planned Parenthood every year for Christmas. I’m fine with her disagreeing with us on other topics, but I had an abortion years ago. We live in a conservative state. I don’t want her right to choose to be taken away. And I’m furious at her for going behind our backs. I’m suspicious of her boyfriend—I know he’s a conservative-leaning Christian and I don’t want to have raised a daughter who votes for whomever her boyfriend does. How do I convince her being pro-life isn’t helping her in the long run?
— Just Trying to Raise a Feminist...
Luckily, she’s still in your house and still subject to both your influence and rules. Inundate her with pro-choice content. Require her to read articles and books that explain why it is important for women to have control of their bodies. Remind her that a person can choose for themselves to never have an abortion—or at least intend not to have one—while respecting the rights of others to choose otherwise...   Don’t allow her to go to with him to any conservative events or any other environment where she’s likely to face some attempts at indoctrination, especially without telling you. You may want to limit the amount of time she spends around his family"
Nothing more feminist than not allowing women to have their own opinions, trying to coerce and brainwash them into agreeing with you and limiting their freedom of movement

Secular Pro-Life on Twitter - "PC: You just want to punish women for having sex.
Me: Do you think men should have to pay child support?
PC: Child support isn't about punishing men! It's about taking care of children.
Me: Man, that's a really good point."

Meme - Stefan Molyneux: "It's interesting that if you don't have a uterus, you can't have an opinion on women's issues, but you can compete in women's sports."
Women who've had hysterectomies don't get to have opinions on abortion! Anyway this common liberal line is a lie, since when a pro-life woman is cited, the claim suddenly morphs to "only the person getting an abortion has any say"

Meme - David Leavitt @David_Leavitt: "Enough is enough. Make vaccines mandatory. #ThursdayThoughts"
David Leavitt @David_Leavitt: "The only person who should have control over your personal medical decisions is you. Not politicians. You. #BansOffOurBodies #RoeVsWade"

Coleman M. Ford on Twitter - "Every church I’ve been a member of has regularly taught on the sanctity of life, supported crisis pregnancy centers, welcomed single mothers, helped families in financial need, & advocated for adoption & foster care. Don’t believe the lie that Christians only care about births."
Liberals don't understand Conservatives after

all

Nathan Alexander on Twitter - "Abortion bans disproportionately harm: Black, Indigenous & other people of color
the LGBTQ community
immigrants
young people
those working to make ends meet
people with disabilities
Protecting abortion access is an urgent matter of racial and economic justice."
"What about women?"
"It's such weird framing. Are there really ppl out there who think, "abortion bans only affect wealthy white women, so what do I care if Roe v. Wade is overturned?" and then upon seeing this tweet from the ACLU, think, "wait a sec, now I DO care!!" ??"

Mary Katharine Ham on Twitter - "MANCHIN: "Make no mistake. It is not Roe v. Wade codification. It's an expansion. It wipes 500 state laws off the books. It expands abortion.""
"This Manchin guy is one of the few reporters I’ve seen be clear about the contents of this bill."
I checked some media reports and of course none of them were honest about what the failed abortion bill really entailed, naturally

Stephen L. Miller on Twitter - ".@SenWarren : "I believe in democracy, and I don't believe the minority should have the ability to block things that the majority wants to do. That's not in the Constitution. [...] It's time to get rid of the filibuster.""
"The bill only received 49 votes. That's a minority. Raju stands there and lets her get away with this."
RNC Research on Twitter/a> - "In 2017, Democrat Senator Elizabeth Warren expressed her support of the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees: “If the nominee can’t get 60 votes, you don’t change the rule – you change the nominee.”"
Americans are bad at maths after all

Bill To Legalize Nearly 100% Of Abortions Through Birth Failed In The Senate 49-51, Elizabeth Warren Says She Doesn't Think A “Minority” Should Be Able To Block A “Majority” 🤔 - "Joe Manchin is literally the only Democrat in the United States Senate that supports having ANY restriction on abortion.  Read that again: EVERY Democrat, except one, voted in favor of removing EVERY limit on abortion.  So much for the moderate left."
Liberals claim the system is broken because politicians don't reflect their constituents' views. This is a good example of that.

RNC Research on Twitter - "“Do you think there should be any limitation on abortions?”
NYC MAYOR ADAMS: “No, I do not.”
“None? Day of birth, totally fine?”
NYC MAYOR ADAMS: “No, I do not. Women should have a right to choose”"

Bungie, Microsoft, others react to Roe v. Wade repeal - The Washington Post (also headlined "As Roe v. Wade repeal looms, video game industry stays mostly silent")
Not just is no dissent tolerated, neither is silence

Meme - "DESPITE MAKING UP LESS THAN 1% OF REASONS FOR ABORTION
RAPE AND INCEST MAKE UP 80% OF SHITTY PRO CHOICE ARGUMENTS."

Meme - "IF YOU PRAISE A WOMAN WHO ABORTED HER CHILD BC 'SHE DID WHAT WAS BEST FOR HERSELF' THEN I HOPE YOU PRAISE MEN FOR ABANDONING THEIR CHILDREN BC THEY DID WHAT WAS BEST FOR THEMSELVES."

Meme - "LET US HAVE ABORTIONS OR WE WILL WITHOLD PROMISCUOUS SEX"
"if you were capable of doing that you wouldn't need abortions"

Opinion | Watch out, Democrats, abortion ruling may energize Republicans - The Washington Post - "Yes, polls show that most Americans say they don’t want the high court to overturn Roe. But polls also show that most Americans don’t know what overturning Roe actually means. A 2019 study reported that 65.7 percent of Americans incorrectly believe that if Roe were overturned, abortion would be illegal everywhere in the United States. It would not. But a Fox News poll released this week finds most Americans agree with the Mississippi abortion law at the heart of the Supreme Court case. The survey found that 54 percent favor state laws banning abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy, except in the case of a medical emergency — exactly what the Mississippi law does — while just 41 percent oppose such a law. This is consistent with the results of a 2018 Gallup poll that found most Americans want abortion restricted to the first trimester (the first 12 weeks of pregnancy), while only 28 percent support allowing abortions in the second trimester and just 13 percent in the third trimester. So, if Roe is overturned, Americans will wake up the next morning and discover that the justices have not in fact banned abortion nationwide but have simply upheld the right of states to impose restrictions — including restrictions that most of them support. That is unlikely to spark the kind of popular outrage Democrats are hoping for. If the Supreme Court does send abortion decisions back to the states, Democrats will have to own their abortion radicalism. Democrats used to argue that, in Bill Clinton’s famous phrase, abortion should be “safe, legal and rare.” No longer. In 2012, they formally expunged “rare” from their party platform, declaring their support for “safe and legal abortion, regardless of ability to pay.” Polls show that a majority of Americans oppose taxpayer funding of abortion. Yet in 2016 Democrats approved a platform that called for repeal of the Hyde Amendment, which bars federal funding for abortions. To secure the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, Joe Biden had to surrender to the pro-abortion radicals and renounce his more-than-40-year support for the Hyde Amendment. And in recent years, Democrats have increasingly embraced unfettered abortion access far beyond what the majority of Americans support. In 2019, Democrats in New York lit up the Freedom Tower to celebrate the passage of a new state law that removed almost all restrictions on abortion, even in the third trimester, while in Illinois, Democrats repealed the state’s Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act. The new Democratic orthodoxy is taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand up to the moment of birth — a position supported by a tiny minority of Americans. So, if the battle over abortion moves from the Supreme Court to the states, Democrats will have to fight 15-week abortion bans (which most Americans support) and defend second- and third-trimester abortion (which most Americans oppose). If Democrats focus on defending abortion this November, it will backfire. An April Economist-YouGov poll finds that abortion is the most important issue for just 4 percent of voters — trailing jobs, the economy, immigration, climate change, national security, health care, taxes and civil rights. This should come as little surprise. We are experiencing the worst inflation in 40 years, the worst crime wave since the 1990s and the worst border crisis in American history. Focusing on abortion amid these crises will make Democrats seem hopelessly out of touch. Every minute they spending talk about abortion is a minute they don’t spend talking about the issues Americans say they care more about. Will it energize the Democratic base? Democrats face a massive 17-point enthusiasm gap going into the midterm elections. The last time Republicans demonstrated so much more zeal was in 2010, when Democrats lost more than 60 seats in the House. But abortion might not close that enthusiasm gap in the way Democrats hope. If anything, conservatives might be more galvanized by a Supreme Court decision striking down Roe than liberals — because victory is energizing, while defeat is dispiriting"

Protesters in 'Handmaid's Tale' outfits disrupt Mass at downtown L.A. cathedral - "The protester yells, "I have a right," as she is escorted toward the staircase and out of the nave."
Anti-abortion activists should go protest at the homes of pro-abortion rights activists, since they have a right

Roman Orthodoxy on Twitter - "A thread of Catholic churches that have been vandalized, attacked, and their members harassed by pro-abortion extremists:"
Imagine if it were mosques under attack

Meme - Kate Manne @kate manne: "Can philosophers stop pretending now that abortion is an ethical issue, rather than a political one? Start teaching it (if you must teach it) by grounding it in historical context. Greenhouse and Siegel are a good place to start, and I discuss their work in both DG and Entitled."
Meme - Kate Manne @kate manne: "Bear in mind that by teaching this in the traditional, both-sides, manner, rubbing your hands in glee at an ethical controversy, you are feeding into right-wing hands and singling out many of your students' bodies-- especially female ones--as the site of moral problems."
Even philosophy has fallen to liberals

Jude "Pre-Order MAW in Paperback" Doyle on Twitter - "It is important to remember that, in the entire history of the anti-abortion movement, violence has ALWAYS come from the anti-abortion side. Denying someone an abortion IS violent."
Violence is anything a liberal doesn't like

Nevin Climenhaga on Twitter - "Whatever flaws there are with Roe, it doesn’t cite 17th century English law from a jurist who burnt at least two women as witches—to use @d_a_swafford's example."
"If this is Matthew Hale, he is cited in Roe v Wade as well."
The first is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Cognitive Science at Rutgers University - and misses such a basic fact

Reporter calls for violence against pro-lifers, says they shouldn't have 'peace or safety' until they're dead - "A reporter for Rewire News Group called for "more" violence against pro-life Americans over the weekend as she appeared to celebrate reports of vandalism against the headquarters of a pro-life group in Wisconsin.  "More of this. May these people never know a moment of peace or safety until they rot in the ground," Caroline Reilly wrote... Wisconsin Family Action, a group staunchly opposed to abortion, was attacked Sunday morning when someone tossed a Molotov cocktail into its Madison office and spray-painted a message outside reading, "if abortions aren’t safe then you aren’t either.""

Auron MacIntyre on Twitter - "Leftwing terrorism is always committed by inanimate objects Cars run into crowds, fires brake out on their own"

Auron MacIntyre on Twitter - "How do you think Democrats and legacy media would respond if there were mobs screaming in front of the homes of Justices Sotomayor and Kagan?"
"The left doesn’t go to jail for this stuff and they are proud of that The left doesn’t get fired for this stuff and they know that The double standard IS the selling point"

It’s shocking how little the left understands the pro-life movement - "The left's working knowledge of the pro-life position appears to be the caricature of the pro-life position concocted by the left's own media allies. As science and technology have gradually undermined the moral, philosophical, legal, and constitutional ground upon which the pro-legal abortion crowd has chosen to stand, they have become increasingly reductive in the formal presentation of their position.  The left has developed a two-pronged approach for abortion advocacy. First, rely heavily on euphemistic and oblique terminology (see, "reproductive justice") that sounds consequential but conveys no meaning. Second, engage only strawmen representations of the opposition.  This understanding of the left's abortion dynamic would explain why conservatives have complained for years that they can't get progressives to actually debate the merits of Roe, or the morality of feticide. The consequence was always easy to predict: an entire pro-abortion movement utterly oblivious to the realities of what conservatives actually believe."

Are the Unborn a Convenient Group to Advocate For? - "“The unborn” are a convenient group of people to advocate for. They never make demands of you; they are morally uncomplicated, unlike the incarcerated, addicted, or the chronically poor; they don’t resent your condescension or complain that you are not politically correct; unlike widows, they don’t ask you to question patriarchy; unlike orphans, they don’t need money, education, or childcare; unlike aliens, they don’t bring all that racial, cultural, and religious baggage that you dislike; they allow you to feel good about yourself without any work at creating or maintaining relationships; and when they are born, you can forget about them, because they cease to be unborn. It’s almost as if, by being born, they have died to you. You can love the unborn and advocate for them without substantially challenging your own wealth, power, or privilege, without re-imagining social structures, apologizing, or making reparations to anyone. They are, in short, the perfect people to love if you want to claim you love Jesus but actually dislike people who breathe.      Prisoners? Immigrants? The sick? The poor? Widows? Orphans? All the groups that are specifically mentioned in the Bible? They all get thrown under the bus for the unborn.  — Pastor Dave Barnhart"...
First, the challenge makes all kinds of ungracious assumptions. For example, it claims that pro-life Christians choose to care for the unborn so we can “claim to love Jesus,” but we “actually dislike people who breathe. Prisoners? Immigrants? The sick? The poor? Widows? Orphans?” That’s an incredibly uncharitable take on pro-lifers and wrongly assumes their focus on the killing of innocent human beings is misguided. How can he know who people like or dislike? In my near-twenty years of traveling the country and working with pro-life ministries, I’ve never come across pro-life people who dislike orphans, widows, etc. In fact, I experience the opposite. Pro-life people typically have a robust understanding that God made all human beings valuable and that we’re to care for those who are vulnerable. I see their compassion for the unborn pour over into compassion for others who are marginalized.Second, the challenge wrongly accuses pro-life Christians of throwing prisoners, immigrants, widows, etc. “under the bus for the unborn.” Even if it were true that pro-life groups didn’t spend their resources caring for prisoners, so what? Why is that a problem? Not every Christian is called to do everything for everyone. Ministries typically focus on specific areas of need, but they shouldn’t be faulted for failing to address every need of every person.I know ministries that help women and children who are trafficked. They don’t do anything about abortion, though, and they seem deaf to the pleas of prisoners. That’s not wrong. It’s just not their focus. I know men who serve in prison ministry but do nothing to serve those who are sick. We shouldn’t fault them either. They’re doing what they can in their sphere of influence. If pro-life groups only care for the unborn and their mothers, they should not be faulted for doing so. That’s a valid ministry regardless of whether they don’t or can’t help others.Third, the challenge’s overall claim is arguably false. He claims the unborn are convenient to advocate for because they never make demands of us, but that prisoners, immigrants, and the sick challenge our wealth, power, and privilege, making it inconvenient for people to care for them. It seems like serving anyone can be inconvenient, though. Putting others’ interests and desires above your own is precisely why it’s called “serving.” You make sacrifices of time, money, energy, and many other things in order to care for those in need. The set of inconveniences will be unique depending on whom you serve.For example, this pastor claims it’s convenient to advocate for the unborn. In reality, however, it’s convenient to ignore the unborn. Why? The unborn are silent. They can’t pester you. You can’t hear their screams when they’re torn apart. It’s easy to ignore them since you almost never see them. If you looked away from their plight, you’d never be troubled by them.To advocate for the unborn is complex and difficult. These children are residing inside their mothers, who have total control over their destiny. Convincing women to make decisions about what they believe to be their own bodies is hardly easy. The media, law, courts, schools, and Hollywood are largely supportive of a woman’s right to kill her unborn child. Pro-lifers are routinely mocked, harassed, and deplatformed. It’s inconvenient. This isn’t a complaint. It’s simply a correction to the original challenge. Though advocating for the life of the unborn may not present with the same kinds of inconveniences as caring for prisoners, widows, and orphans, it’s still not convenient and no less legitimate of a ministry."
This is a silly comparison. There is a difference between positive and negative rights. And pro-life people pay a huge price for advocating for the unborn - they get so much hatred from the left for one, and they are unable to advance other causes they care about (e.g. the religious privileges that liberals keep fearmongering about). Of course pro-choice people get very upset when what they imagine is a solid argument gets refuted

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