Conservative states regulate abortions. Not guns.
A proposed set of regulations for gun purchases has been circulating on Twitter, Facebook, and e-mail.
It calls out government inconsistency and hypocrisy.
How about we treat every young man who wants to buy a gun like every woman who wants to get an abortion--mandatory 48-hour waiting period, parental permission, a note from his doctor proving he understands what he's about to do, a video he has to watch about the effects of gun violence, and an ultrasound wand up the ass (just because). Let's close down all but one gun shop in every state and make him travel hundreds of miles, take time off work, and him stay overnight in a strange town to get a gun. Make him walk though a gauntlet of people holding photos of loved ones who were shot to death, people who call him a murderer and urge him not to buy a gun.
Conservative legislatures in red states have put into place strict laws to regulate abortion. They make getting a gun easy. It is hypocritical in the eyes of advocates of abortion rights and gun regulation. There are two premises underlying the thinking of most supporters of abortion rights: Reproduction is a personal decision and the fertilized egg/zygote/embryo/fetus is not yet human. It isn't murder.
There is a school of thought--expressed in the Justice Alito draft--that abortion is uniquely different from other privacy rights because it involves taking a life. Stories in Western civilization's oldest literature are put into motion by the act of a god requiring a parent to murder their child. In Genesis God demanded Abraham sacrifice his oldest son, Isaac, to prove his loyalty. In the Iliad the Greek goddess Artemis demanded Agamemnon sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia as the price of freeing the Greek ships to go off to war with Troy. The Bible positioned God's demand as that greatest of possible tests for Abraham. In the Iliad, the sacrifice/murder set off a series of fratricides, matricides, and patricides. Agamemnon's wife plotted her revenge for a decade. We cringe from the horror of murdering our child. We understand it as a deep moral offense.
Anti-abortion ideology treats abortions as murder. From that viewpoint the hypocrisy rests primarily with abortion supporters who act shocked at murder of innocent life of schoolchildren with guns, but ignore the lives of the aborted souls.
This position is expressed by a commenter to this blog who uses the name "Curt Ankerberg," the same name as a Medford-area political activist.
MORE THAN 800,000 babies are killed annually in America due to abortions. 800,000!! Think about it! More than 200 late-term abortions are performed in Oregon annually. That means they are killing 200 fetuses annually in Oregon that are more than 5 months along. That's pretty gruesome. . . . One Hundred Times more children are killed by abortions than shot by guns. I'm not trying to discount gun shootings, but compared to abortions, they are minimal in a population of 330 million people.
There is no scientific or objective solution. Fertilization and the growth of a fertilized egg is a process and continuum. The Catholic Church has put a stake in the ground, saying the fertilized egg has a human soul. There are liberal Catholics--liberal Christians of all kinds--dedicated to concern for "the least of these brothers of mine," who include the unborn among the most vulnerable needing the protection of a compassionate state. Yet a focus on a woman's rights--not the joint rights of mother and fetus--may be the politically viable way for Democrats to frame the issue. It is the current Democratic strategy and policy.
It may be a flawed path. It pleases a certain kind of feminist, but it doesn't sit well with everyone. That thing inside the pregnant woman is something sacred in the views of many. It isn't just patriarchal domineering chauvinist men who think that, although, yes, certainly plenty of them. Lots of women feel that way, too.
Brilliant! This one is a keeper. Thank you.