ABORTION IS NOT GENOCIDE (180 Review)

supporthumanity:

I cannot believe there is [at least one] presidential candidate running for office who OPENLY compares abortion to genocide. In light of this, I am finally getting around to watching the “180 Movie”. Stay tuned for my reaction(s). 

Sidenote: For whatever reason, people try to disqualify arguments when someone says “I went to school for that,” as if college educations can only generate stiff textbook facts and definitions. But when I say that my literary specialization in college is The Holocaust/mass murder, that doesn’t mean I believe I automatically know more than you. It simply means that I am excessively passionate about the subject, know what I’m talking about when it comes to technical terms and concepts, and get very worked up about it. 

Back to the point: a follower told me she couldn’t get through the first thirty seconds of this video, so we’ll see how I do.

[I apologize first of all for the scrambled-thought approach to this post, and then for the insane length of it. I tried and failed to keep it concise.]
(*) denotes any place where I originally entered a curse word. In an attempt to allow for intelligent argument, I found an accepted synonym.

Overall opinion: This documentary is an uninformed, non-meshing product* that didn’t even have enough power to make me angry because it was so entirely off-base. Nevertheless, there were moments so outlandish that they need to be heard and washed of their misinformation, so here are my TOP 10 BASHES:

1. Of the thirty-minute total, the first 13:00 was solidly pertaining to the Holocaust and Hitler’s family history. I literally couldn’t even see where/how they were going to try and segway into abortion. I thought I had been misguided in thinking it would eventually turn into an anti-choice campaign.

2. THEN came the transition. The ‘interviewer’ goes around asking people if they’d have followed Hitler’s instructions to mow down a group of Jewish people on penalty of death.
The common answer: No, I wouldn’t.
The segway: Oh, so you value human life?

…*Really?
That is the weakest connection I have ever heard. What ya’ll “pro-lifers” continually FAIL to acknowledge is that the definition of what constitutes a human being is not agreed upon in politics. Your arguments take the premise of “Okay, now that we’ve all agreed that a fetus is a fully sentient human being…” No. The whole root of our opposing views is that we disagree on what constitutes human life. Before you continue to throw around your propagandic photos of fully developed fetuses and mothers who look about 8 months along, maybe you should check your facts. When we pro-choicers are talking about abortion, we are talking about a fetus that cannot feel pain until AT LEAST 5 months after conception (1.5% of abortions are beyond this time, by the way, and 62% occur at 9 WEEKS or before [source]). So unless your arguments concern a different species, maybe you should hop on board with the same stats.

3. The participants. Where do I begin? A huge claim of the “Heart Changer” movement is that the people Ray Comfort speaks to ‘change their minds’ about abortion in 95-seconds or less. Really? Really.
Right off the bat, does that seem to you like anyone who has established a firm stance based on strong personal values or research? Exactly. THEN you hear them speak. These people—though sincere and good-hearted, most of the time, happen to have no idea what the hell they’re talking about. It can’t be argued as a great feat of your campaign if the people you are ‘converting’ had no stance to begin with.

Can we not all see how dismissive they are by the end of the film? One-word answers and distant looks say “get yourself and your cameras the hell away from me” more than “yes, you have truly changed my beliefs and I am now so passionate about this political issue that I don’t know what to do with myself.”
That would be called the acquiescence (‘yeah-saying’) bias—a response in self-report measures like surveys and interviews in which respondents tend to agree with things they don’t fully understand or want to invest time in…aka shut up and let me go.

I seriously *dare Ray Comfort to walk up to me or any of my followers on the street and try the same approaches. What would he do when he encounters a proper Holocaust historian or pro-choice activist?
Then, I’m sure he did. And what did he do with the clips of the people who knew what they were talking about? Hmm.

4. Ray Comfort uses the following as a metaphor for whether or not you believe a fetus is a fully sentient human being: “I’m a construction worker and I see a building and I say to you I’m just gonna blow up that building in a minute. There’s a possibility there’s somebody in there, I just don’t know. But I’m gonna blow it up anyway. What would you say to me?”


I literally laughed out loud here. I want to know if this came across as a ‘powerful’ message to anybody else. It is so entirely disconnected and unrelated that I couldn’t take it seriously. Did this honestly sway anybody? Seriously UNCOMPARABLE. How is it legitimate to compare an unborn fetus to a fully developed, living, breathing, walking human being in the real world?

5. ”To actually go in there and destroy a human life, why? For selfish reasons.”
For selfish reasons. I really don’t like to use the gender argument, because there are many, many wonderful men out there who understand how to use empathy or can think at least outside of themselves, but here it is necessary: Ray Comfort, a middle-aged, caucasian, Christian male can’t find a reason that abortion would be necessary. How refreshing.

Can anyone think of an unselfish reason for abortion? How about the #1 reason? When a woman knows that she cannot properly provide for her baby (financially, emotionally, or otherwise) that is unselfish.
—I will give my stance on adoption in a separate post. The short version: no, it is not the happy, warm alternative you’d like to think it is.

How about the ‘exceptions’ that everyone loves to qualify? That leads us to our next point:

6. When a participant brought up instances of rape or abuse as situations in which an abortion should be allowed, Ray Comfort discounted the argument by saying: ”Which is worse, murder or rape?”

…wait. What did you just say? This was one of the moments where I literally had an audible reaction as I sat on the couch watching this video by myself. I have NEVER heard something so cruel actually come out of a living person’s mouth. His sentence should be jail-time, or at least forced exposure to men or women who have survived sexual abuse. Go have a taste of their emotional pain before you ever think you are qualified to say something so vile in a public arena. How dare you compare a LEGAL medical procedure to the horrible traumas of abuse victims.

7. Religion. So. Much. Religion. The entire basis of this documentary was about Jesus Christ, The Bible, and the 6th Commandment (Thou shalt not kill). Sorry, I seem to have forgotten that the base of our laws and constitution revolve around Christianity and the religious morals and desires of your jealous god. Oh wait.

The tacked-on end of this documentary was so unsuited it was bizarre. We moved straight to Bible-bashing, repentence, and ‘save your soul because you’re a blasphemous, lying, stealing, adulterer.’  The theme directly transitioned—and not smoothly—from so-called political discourse to a televangelist show.

8. When a participant said they’d have to take some time to consider their abortion stance, he was met with this response: ”Can you see how that’s the same as saying you should take some time to think about it before burying the Jews?”

^ This is the first moment that the ‘connection’ between abortion and the Holocaust is actually voiced, and again, it should feel like an over-tried stretch even to religious extremists. The simple answer: no, I cannot see how that is the same. I cannot see how an individual woman making an individual, NON-SYSTEMATIC choice about her own individual life and individual body is the same as eleven million victims forced into purgatory, gassed, burned, shot down, starved, experimented on, shamed, dehumanized, and thrown into mass graves on the basis of their religion, orientation, political affiliation, or state of mind/body. Got it?

9. ”We’re talking about a Holocaust in America, in our country.“ 
I’d like to connect this statement to the movement “Something Atheists Would Never Do” …you DO NOT get to throw around the terms ‘genocide’ and ‘Holocaust’ to perpetuate your selfish political agenda. Immorality aside for a moment, IT IS SIMPLY IMPROPER USE OF THE TERM. Mass murder is, by definition, a systematic movement. Herein lies the greatest error of the argument that abortion is genocide. PLEASE someone explain to me how abortion is ever systematic in any way at any time. If it were the case that ALL FETUSES EVER CONCEIVED were targeted, you might be able to argue for systematization…but even then, the ‘human life’ argument comes into play. With abortion, it is the MOTHER of that fetus who makes the decision for herself. The government does not choose who is aborted and who is born. Abortion is not genocide.

10. In this attempt to ‘defend human life’, what actually resulted is a disgusting, degrading, immoral DEVALUING of the actual human lives that were lost to the true horrors of genocide throughout the ages. It specifically trivializes the victimhood of the 11 million people who perished at the hands of the Nazi regime. Dr. Crouthamel, History professor specializing in German memory and trauma during WWII, calls the argument an “ahistorical, irresponsible assertion,” and that’s exactly what it is. It is one made by people who have no respect for or knowledge about history, and total ignorance to the suffering of those victimized by true mass murder. You immediately discount yourself and your arguments when you voice this opinion.

I hope Ray Comfort and anyone out there who believes it’s acceptable to compare abortion—or ANY other thing that is not genocide—to genocide is satisfied knowing they have taken yet another thing away from these victims, because that is exactly what you’ve done by using their indescribable, incomparable pain as a tool in your political agenda.

SupportHumanity [OP] is my liberal politics blog. Lipstick Feminist is my feminist blog.
THIS 180 post is being re-adapted to fit my fem blog because if I see ONE MORE POST comparing abortion to the Holocaust on my dashboard, I will crawl through my computer screen and beat the poster with my shoe. I am not kidding. Put a lid on your disgusting, de-humanizing ignorance and realize what you’re saying.

∞ 1 year ago (76 notes)

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    SupportHumanity [OP] is my liberal politics blog. Lipstick Feminist is my feminist blog. THIS 180 post is being...
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    his video, but then...know could possibly...180 video...
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    that was one of the most offensive pseudo-documentaries i have ever had the disgust and bewilderment of sitting through…
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