It’s been said that Barack Obama is everything to everyone – a blank slate that the hopeful can project their political fantasies upon. Who would’ve thought it’d be the pro-life lobby to prove that true? Yes, apparently Barack Obama is their latest icon:
Most popular anti-choice slogans have this amazing quality of being long on emotion and short on sense – like the popular bumper sticker, “Aren’t you glad your mother was pro-life?” So many problems with that little gem. But this (ahem) “abortive” Superbowl ad has the lowest logic-to-emotion ratio I’ve yet seen. Either abortion is moral or it’s not: if you think fetus is a life, it shouldn’t matter what life is terminated, just that a life is terminated. Similarly, arguing against abortion by focusing on the potential successes of a child carried to term misses the entire point of the pro-choice argument: that it should be up to the woman, not the state, to weigh the risks and the benefits of pregnancy.
Not to mention all the bizarre counterfactuals you can dream up, if we’re to ask women to think about “who” their aborting. What if the little creature on the ultrasound grows up to be Adolf Hitler Joseph Stalin instead!?!!? Oh God no! See, now we have a debate. Or maybe a scifi series.
Nota bene: post edited to avoid Godwin’s Law.
