The Outrage Is When You Know

When they refuse to debate is when you know they know

There's something very special about pro-abortion lobbyists who insist there is no debate regarding abortion.

That shouldn't be mistaken for special in a good way. It's the other kind of special.

It takes a very "special" kind of person to deny to existence of something that, whether they like or not -- and it's clear that they don't -- is happening right before their very eyes.

If denying the existence of that debate isn't one thing, insisting that it can't even be allowed to happen -- despite the fact that it is -- is another.

Naturally, the pro-abortion lobby will over all kinds of excuses about why they can't be bothered to debate their pet issue with people who, god forbid, dare to disagree with them.

They insist it's because the anti-abortion lobby can't argue rationally. And to their discredit, many members of the anti-abortion don't argue rationally.

But if that were the case, one would have to think that the pro-abortion lobby would consider itself obligated when confronted with a rational argument.

Think again.

A recent episode invovling (who else), the Unrepentant Old Hippie, JJ, casts light on the real reason they won't engage in a rational debate: it would mean that they would have to defend their ideas honestly.

It started simply enough: with a question over whether or not medically unnecessary late-term abortions should be banned, something that was dismissed as unnecessary. Dr Henry Morgentaler himself had refused to perform late-term abortions that were medically unnecessary because he judged them to be unethical. Suggestions that a doctor's right to refuse to perform an abortion they deemed to be unethical be legally protected was similarily rejected -- if not ignored entirely.

But then there was the matter of JJ's own double-speak on the issue.

When known anti-Semite Robert McClelland suggested abortion rights be enshrined in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, JJ gushed over the idea.

When confronted on the subject, however, JJ took a rather characteristic way out. she lied:

"I’ve never “advocated” for any such thing - I once responded positively to an idea tabled by another blogger in the comments here, which is hardly “advocacy”. I’ve never even done a post about it. That’s advocacy? Uh, no."

But then again, one only has to take a close second look at the comment itself:

"Robert - Right on! That’s one debate I hope we can have very soon, with the outcome of having reproductive rights protected in a way that’s untouchable."

JJ responded affmirmatively to the idea of entrenching "women's reproductive rights" -- a euphemism for abortion rights -- "protected in a way that's untouchable".

Either JJ is simply lying about the position she's taken or she doesn't understand how the Charter of Rights and Freedoms actually works. If a woman's right to an abortion were protected in the Charter, a doctor's right to decline would have to be protected there as well.

One has to remember that this is coming from an individual who opposes protecting a doctor's right to choose to refuse to perform an abortion they deem to be unethical. That protection is unnecessary, they insist, because "no one is forcing doctors to perform abortions".

Yet if JJ and Robert McClelland were successful in their bid to entrench abortion rights in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, doctors could not refuse without risk of legal reprisal. If they were successful to this end -- a proposal that JJ insists that she doesn't advocate, and yet responded to the same proposition with a resounding "right on" -- a woman denied a medically unnecessary late-term abortion could sue in a civil court, or complain to a human rights commission.

So what was JJ's response to being confronted with the calculated inconsistency in her own stances? Recriminate:

"You really are a textbook case of bad-faith debate. If you ever want to be taken seriously as a blogger, you need to cut that out. There’s lots to debate without making shit up.

Now fuck off, I’ve had enough of your bullshit."

But JJ fails to explain: what, precisely, was made up?

She wrote the words. Robert McClelland proposed an idea that would make doctors who refused to perform abortions they considered unethical -- including Dr Henry Morgentaler himself -- vulnerable to legal reprisal.

And she responded with "right on!"

A person could quote her until the cows come home. So why can't she just be honest about it?

There is a reason. It's because the most extreme elements of the pro-abortion lobby has conducted their side of the debate under protracted conditions of intellectual dishonesty and cowardice. Not to mention precisely the bad-faith arguments that they love to accuse others of making.

For example, consider this, a blogpost wherein JJ concludes that if one single medical professional -- in this case, a nurse -- abuses protection offered by freedom-of-conscience legislation, then such legislation is a bad thing because it was abused.

Yet if one were to accept the same line of argument, then all it would take to prove that a ban on medically unnecessary late-term abortions is necessary is one single medically unnecessary late-term abortion. All it would take to dispel the argument that abortion doctors adhere to Henry Morgentaler's admirable ethical standard is one single doctor who doesn't.

Of course they'll never be honest about this. And if ever confronted with the inconsistencies, dishonesties and hypocrisies in their own arguments, they'll never take responsibility for them. Instead, they'll take the intellectual coward's way out.

Which comes back to the real reason why people like JJ don't want any kind of an abortion debate to happen -- because if it did, they would have to face the reality that it may not end favourably for them, because some of their arguments are not defensible.

That's why they won't debate. Hell, they won't even be honest about why they won't debate.