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Wherein A Young Anti-Choicer Explains Abortion

I do hesitate to be this petty, but I think someone needs to quit masturbating in the shower and then crying his eyes out afterwards because of all the lives he’s ended.

The abandonment of ideals, even wrong ones, leaves each to define his own existence, which leads to a miserable narcissism that turns to hedonism. Having found that heaven on earth is elusive, modernity seeks consolation in pleasure; if we can’t achieve utopia, we can at least have many toys and orgasms before death.

Orgasm and die, bitches.

Especially if there are toys involved.

And a final note to self: Don’t spend any amount of a time with a person so miserable that he considers an orgasm to be an example of unfettered hedonism which must be thwarted.

Abortion is a symptom of a corrupted liberalism. Liberal visions formerly had some nobility, however wrongheaded the ideology may have been when taken as a whole. But even their limited virtue has been obliterated by the insistence that we must be allowed to murder our progeny to create a better world for them.

This contradiction arises because liberalism is a dying faith. All the various liberal catechisms that were formed in the Western world were attempts to fill the vacancy left by a receding Christianity. They attempted to solve the problem of sin, each promising that if we followed their social program, the wrongs of the world would be removed.

But wickedness has not been so easily vanquished, and thus the West has become ever more hopeless.

Which explains why nations based on liberalism, like the United States, Great Britain, Norway, Belgium, and Sweden have been such spectacular failures.

Existence without meaning is a horror, and it is now accepted that man is but an animal, and an animal is but atoms assembled by random chance. Those who believe this may still seek to gratify themselves, but they haven’t the will to procreate.

Moral of the story: No, little Johnny, all dogs don’t go to heaven, because they don’t go to church to find meaning like the good animals do.

Reproduction is a defiance issued against ennui. To welcome children is to assert that life is meaningful and worth living; voluntary sterility consummates the opposite.

The culture of contraception and abortion bespeaks Western civilization’s belief that it neither deserves nor wishes to exist. Like Ivan in “The Brothers Karamazov”, we shall squeeze what we can from this life, and then “dash the cup to the ground.” The difference is that the West does not contemplate suicide with violence, but with the caresses of impotent copulation. The dream of barren sexuality is a dream of death.

Having sex for pleasure is deadly. Gritting your teeth through sex and viewing yourself as simply a reproductive instrument at the will of your husband, getting pregnant as many times as nature dictates (or, excuse me, as many times as God dictates) and giving birth as many times as you get pregnant is, in fact, not deadly at all. Which doesn’t exactly square with maternal mortality statistics, but whatever. Dying while in labor with your 16th child is as life-affirming as it gets. Thank you, Nathaneal Blake, for showing me the light. I wish upon you dozens and dozens of pregnancies, which, as a pro-life man, you will undoubtedly relish as you see all the wonderful things that dozens of childbirths will do to the body. Because we are talking about your body, aren’t we?


36 thoughts on Wherein A Young Anti-Choicer Explains Abortion

  1. speaking as someone who did reproduce, parenthood is not exalted or abstract, it’s prosaic, hard work and sometimes boring
    mark twain said it well,
    ‘children are an inestimable blessing-and a bother’.
    my heaven on earth comes from living in the present. i am a mother because i want to be, the reward for that is in the here and now. maybe the man is right about the liberals, though
    that mushy bleeding heart he calls lord and saviour was done in by good religious people and a strong state working together
    the early christians got thrown to the lions until they found some powerful politicians to hook up with
    that was when the carpenter’s son became the king of kings
    and the kings who ruled in his name had the power to kill both body and soul
    nobody expects the spanish inquisition

  2. Those who believe this may still seek to gratify themselves, but they haven’t the will to procreate.

    The will? Huh?

    Is he accusing my sperm of being weak with materialism? If I were religious, could I urge my sperm to fertilize that egg by using the force or something?

    Isn’t it more of an act of will to use contraception, or terminate a pregnancy, than to just go at it?

  3. I wonder how many kids constitutes a “will to procreate” vs. a “contraceptive mentality.” So many people who write this stuff only have 1-2 kids themselves, or as in the case of Mr. Blake, aren’t even married (I don’t think). Does a “will to procreate” mean that as long as you have children sometime in your marriage, you’re fine? Or do you have to have a “quiver full” and be completely opposed to family planning?

    People who write this stuff never define their terms.

  4. Lack the will to procreate?

    Tell that to the little joy and bother that wants me to come find his toy. Or the one whose math teacher just called me. I’m procreating just fine thank you. I just don’t feel like doing it until I keel over from exhaustion, or bleed to death after giving birth.

  5. His is a bad hash of the worst of the “theology of the body” stuff that John Paul II came up with. Lots of inspiring rhetoric about sexuality and sacrifice, and the troubling insistence that pleasure is only good when it is shared with another, that we have no right to joy that isn’t contingent on another.

    Trust me, it’s a seductive theology to young guys. This way, they can torture themselves by not masturbating, and imagine that their chastity is a great gift to Christ. It allows each of them to feel heroic, fighting his own private and epic battle against lust. No wonder Sauron looks like a vulva in the Lord of the Rings… oh, but that’s way off topic..

    Oh, I know these boys well. Heck, I used to be one…

  6. Also, if he’s so pro-family, why is he single?

    Because he’s a sweaty, judgmental insufferable little twerp?

    Just a guess.

  7. What’s there to say to someone like this? I just hope he shouts this stuff louder, to remind America that the anti-choice cause is primarily the cause of religious zealots. Most Americans want some mushy-middle compromise, but the fanatics can never accept compromise, and ultimately they must either have their way or be utterly defeated.

  8. You’ll notice that when a lot of these young conservative guys do get married, they usually wait as long as anybody else to have kids. I know a lot of 22-24-year-old married/engaged couples (from CPAC mostly) who will speak against contraception till the cows come home, but very few who became pregnant (or plan to) immediatly after the wedding. And this includes those using NFP.

    It’s very common–noticed this among NYU students too–that people often preach this stuff when it doesn’t apply to them. Most of them don’t plan to marry anyway for several years, so why not preach from the podium about how those who do marry, should follow their advice.

    I wonder if once Blake gets married, has to live on a budget, is having trouble finding a job, or finds that both he and his wife like their jobs and their time alone together, if this advice will still apply?

    Advice from single college student to married adult = not particularly credible. (not meant to offend any students in the audience btw).

  9. Maybe the prospect of living out The Handmaid’s Tale doesn’t appeal to conservative women, either.

    as it’s so wisely pointed out elsewhere, many ultra-conservatives only have a couple children, so somebody’s gotta be using birth control…..

    What do you want to bet its not the boys?

  10. Txfeminist:

    Maybe the prospect of living out The Handmaid’s Tale doesn’t appeal to conservative women, either.

    Freakin’ A, it doesn’t usually!! 🙂 Most women I knew in College Republicans and elsewhere, like most people I know here in the NY area, don’t want to think kids until the late 20’s-30’s at the earliest; even those who are engaged or married. I want them in the late 20’s and am considered young even by their standards.

    And many *gasp* take the Pill, have premarital sex, want to go to grad school, and pursue careers before having kids–even those who plan to give up the careers after kids.

    The “quiverfulls” tend to be concentrated in more rural, midwestern/southern regions and don’t tend to be college graduates. There is no way Nathanael represents them. But so many pundits claim to have the same mentality.

    People like Jennifer Roback Morse and Dr Laura can also preach “don’t contracept” because they are out of their reproductive years and can be safe sitting there saying, “I didn’t, but I should have.” That still doesn’t make it affect her. The only one I can see who practiced what she preached was Phyllis Schlafly (Married at 25, 6 children). The rest are in the same category with the college guys.

    Even though I dno’t agree with the lifestyle, I think the quiverfulls are the least hypocritical of the lot when it comes to reproductive values and practicing them. Everyone else does mostly preaching.

  11. Marian, you have quite a point. I’m a godless materialist, yet I’ve procreated and my wife and I are going through time, money and an emotional roller-coaster to do so again. If I’m caught in a whirlpool of liberal ennui, shouldn’t I be sinking into comfortable one-child life and spending all my money on lattes, instead of producing another little person that will take up my time and money, interfere with my sleep and make more stinky diapers?

    Or could it be that the Manichean insistence that the secular life is meaningless and ungratifying is no more true today than it was before the rise of the ethical monotheisms?

  12. Hey, I love being pregnant (for the most part) despite it’s random difficulties and I love children, but yet, I don’t feel I need 16 to make my life complete. Nor do I desire to spend the next 25 years pregnant/nursing/pregnant/nursing, etc… I am currently expecting #3, however our son passed away shortly after birth, so if this pregnancy goes well and ends with a healthy child, we will have two living children. I am very happy with that. I’m not opposed to more, but definately desire a break of at least a few years. I have spent the vast majority of the last three years pregnant and would like to spend some time not sharing my body. I hardly think this means I don’t have a “will to reproduce”. And I got married barely two years after my high schoold graduation, so I thought that won me brownie points of some sort 🙂

  13. Marian, you have quite a point. I’m a godless materialist, yet I’ve procreated and my wife and I are going through time, money and an emotional roller-coaster to do so again.

    It’s funny, and true. The people who actually fit the conservative ideal of the family most closely–upper middle class traditional family; 2-3 kids; mom home by choice; married/kids in the 20’s, entrepeneurial mindset/opposed to a welfare state, are the Indian Hindu communities. And the thing is, it’s totally done by choice most of the time–the men are not forcing the women into this as is commonly stereotyped.

    Ironic is that these are one of the most “pro-family, pro-marriage, pro-procreation” groups of the lot. You dont’ see many single moms among them, or single anybody over 30 usually. Yet, a lot of religious right folks want nothing to do with them because they aren’t Christian. My husband experienced this a lot in college–basically went libertarian instead of Republican due to the religion issue, then got written off as heathen.

    I’ve tried explaining this to Christian Right folks a lot, but they won’t hear any of it and keep repeating how Hinduism is evil and needs to be outbred along with Islam, and that Indian Americans are just petty materialists.

    One of two things: they only want Christians to have the “will to procreate,” or 2-3 kids still isn’t enough. (Most of them could reasonably afford 4-5 kids, but just choose not to–that bugs the pro-sperm crowd a lot sometimes).

  14. Clarification: I mean Indian Hindu communities in the US, not in India. Indians in this country are a different culture than the groups living in India who don’t emigrate.

  15. There’s a nasty fundamentalist church in my town whose members try to push this kind of crap all the time. For some reason, the people pushing this viewpoint – a Biblical lifestyle is simply prettier and more genteel – tend to be the white males who would be the ones with the power in the situation they’re setting up. I remain unconvinced.

  16. The people who actually fit the conservative ideal of the family most closely–upper middle class traditional family; 2-3 kids; mom home by choice; married/kids in the 20’s, entrepeneurial mindset/opposed to a welfare state, are the Indian Hindu communities. And the thing is, it’s totally done by choice most of the time–the men are not forcing the women into this as is commonly stereotyped.

    No, but there’s a tremendous amount of family pressure to marry. I used to work with an Indian woman who was over 30 and not married (she wanted to be; she just wanted to do it her own way). Her parents were fine with it, or at least had backed off pressuring her, but her other relatives were on her all the time. To the point where her aunt and uncle posted profiles of her on Indian dating websites — she’d get calls and emails from strange men (some of whom, in turn, had had their profiles posted by busybody relatives). I was always utterly gobsmacked by her tales of her family getting involved in her life to that degree.

  17. Is Pat Robertson looking for an intern? I think Mr. Blake is his man…

    Yet another case of someone who will never have to be pregnant telling me that it is my duty, as a uterus-bearing woman, to have as many children as possible. I wish I were a scientist, because then I would develop a uterus-transplant surgery so these self-righteous douchebags could experience the joy of pregnancy and childbirth. I bet the abortion question would disappear pretty damn quickly then…

  18. Well, there’s proofreading for you… my earlier comment should say high school, not what I actually typed.

  19. Reproduction is a defiance issued against ennui. To welcome children is to assert that life is meaningful and worth living; voluntary sterility consummates the opposite.

    I had no idea priests were such miserable people.

    And that first line is both the funniest and meanest thing I’ve read in a month.

  20. zuzu: No, but there’s a tremendous amount of family pressure to marry. I used to work with an Indian woman who was over 30 and not married (she wanted to be; she just wanted to do it her own way). Her parents were fine with it, or at least had backed off pressuring her, but her other relatives were on her all the time. To the point where her aunt and uncle posted profiles of her on Indian dating websites — she’d get calls and emails from strange men (some of whom, in turn, had had their profiles posted by busybody relatives). I was always utterly gobsmacked by her tales of her family getting involved in her life to that degree.

    You’re absolutely right, and that is what my 31-year-old brother in law is experiencing right now. Pressure seems to be on both girls and guys, at least in this case. Then after you’re married, the pressure to reproduce is on.

  21. What I meant is that the husbands aren’t forcing the wives to stay home–the wives are voluntarily giving up careers as doctors, lawyers, etc.–we’re close friends with many of them and they have told us such.

    Keep in mind I’m only referring to the community I know.

  22. Marian, I’m sorry to say that you’re right. You said:

    I’ve tried explaining this to Christian Right folks a lot, but they won’t hear any of it and keep repeating how Hinduism is evil and needs to be outbred along with Islam, and that Indian Americans are just petty materialists.

    For some it’s racism, while some would accept non-white people if they not only converted but assimilated. But there’s no place for non-Christians in the Christian right, and none in a world run by them.

  23. an animal is but atoms assembled by random chance

    Someone please buy this boy even the most basic science textbook before he embarrasses himself any further.

  24. “the caresses of impotent copulation”! What a terrible writer! I get the sense, solely from reading his writing, that he’s been keeping lots of florid porno novels underneath his bed.

  25. Quite a few members of my Indo-Canadian family have avoided being pushed into marriages that they weren’t ready for by going the grad school route: by the time they were finished with school, their parents were so desperate for them to marry that they’d accept any potential suitor, even one from outside the community.

    Marian, I don’t actually know that many Indian SAHMs: the professional couples I know usually have their parents and other relatives on hand to help with childcare, and the wife usually keeps working. Even the ones that have given up work plan to return once the kids start school.

  26. Amba–Where are you from? The ones I know are mainly in New Jersey/Pennsylvania, and actually most have stayed home longer than I ever would. For instance, 1 kid, 16 years old, and they’re still home; no plans to work again till the kid hits college.

  27. Also, Amba, just FYI–since we haven’t met….my husband’s family is Indian, and I didn’t grow up in this area. So, he is my main contact here and I know more Indian families in this area (NJ) than any other group, ironically. Of course, friends and anecdotal cases don’t indicate a statistical trend, so again it could just be Philadelphia and its parking lots (hehe) that are like this. But a lot also live in the NY/CT/MA areas as well.

  28. Eleanor Says:
    an animal is but atoms assembled by random chance

    Someone please buy this boy even the most basic science textbook before he embarrasses himself any further.

    He’s a microbio major, so apparently he’s a bald faced liar.

  29. It’s especially perplexing considering he’s the reincarnation of Brigham Young.

    Seriously. I mean, he’s a senior, so he should be engaged this year, married in May or June, then by next June I expect little Blakes running around…..or I hope not. 😛

  30. I’m from Toronto, Marian. I suspect that my desi relatives and aquaintances are younger than yours, so maybe that’s where the difference comes in. In my social circle, it’s praiseworthy to be a SAHM, but it’s not normative the way getting married in your twenties and producing kids fairly rapidly is.

  31. Amba–Most likely, you’re right. Indian-American folks our age are getting married and having kids in similar patterns to other racial groups here–e.g., marriage/kids in the 30’s and returning to work sooner (nothing wrong with that btw). The folks I was referring to (my in-laws and aunties and uncles-in-law etc.) are more in the over-40 set.

    I’d imagine the patterns are similar in Canada and the US.

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