The Pelosi Effect

In these days of such duplicity and confusion, it's a wonder we don't clearly see the cracks as often as we should. Perhaps it's due to media bias. The cracks sometimes show themselves to be the chasms between self-delusion and reality, between lies and the truth. In order to maintain some face and composure under incisive questioning these days, a lot of work has to be done, to keep the dissonance of corrupting influences from showing their foul incoherence. It must be like keeping two counter-progagating positron/anti-positron storage rings from colliding their brains*. Every once in a while, when the right question is asked, the quarks fly.  At a press conference recently, Mrs. Pelosi was asked about the moral difference between aborting a child at 28 weeks (as some centers in Baltimore do) and bringing the child out of the womb at 23 weeks, stabbing him in the neck and killing him dead. This question comes at the time of the conviction of Philadelphia abortionist Kermit Gosnell who performed the latter in his "house of horrors". Mrs. Pelosi firstly avoids the question completely and instead turns on the reporter, initially goading about deriving pleasure from asking the question in the first place (oh, would that Mrs. Pelosi derive some pleasure in answering it !).  She claims that the actions in the Philadelphia abortion mill were reprehensible because, in her reckoning, "those actions were reprehensible". Why ? Because, according to her, the abortionist "chose to disrespect a judgement made about her own body". But the difficulty with this is that Kermit Gosnell was exactly respecting what the poor and misguided women wanted. Their judgements made about their bodies (and the other body they were carrying) were entirely respected. I have no idea what Pelosi was trying to say here. If those actions were reprehensible, all abortions after 23 weeks of pregnancy are reprehensible. The only difference between what Gosnell did and what abortionists legally do, is that the baby was brought out into the light of day. Various ad-hominem attacks and self-contradictory claims of being a 'respectful Catholic' followed. Further absurd accusations of making abortion into a 'political' issue were raised, as if the Democrats don't use this issue to win over much of the electorate, specifically targeting women voters with flyers and propaganda material. The reporter was told by Mrs. Pelosi that he had an agenda and that he wasn't interested in getting an answer. What we learned, however, was that Pelosi wasn't interested in actually confronting the question. What is the difference between a pre-mature baby of 6 months in the incubator in the neonatal hospital facility and the aborted baby who ends up in a bucket in planned parenthood ? The contradictions of the pro-choice/pro-abortion cannot confront this question. For those who think that ascribing rights to a fertilized ovum is absurd, consider how absurd it is to maintain that a child in the womb can be killed up to some arbitrary gestational time-limit (24 weeks in most states). What happens to the child at that boundary to make it a human being, that would therefore forbid his abortion ? It's a critical boundary, getting it right is a matter of life and death. If it's not important to define it exactly, the limit can be re-drawn to justify infanticide. Whatever line is drawn in time beyond which it is considered a human being, there can always be a baby who develops faster and would have all the characteristics at 23 weeks (say) as another baby would have at 24 weeks. That life begins at conception is coherent, all the hallmarks of growing human life are there, and when left alone will grow as the human being we can easily recognize in ultrasounds and heartbeats. From conception, the growth is a matter of degree. If it doesn't, you have to somehow believe that the cells suddenly become a human being at 24 weeks, or some other arbitrary time which can be re-configured to justify infanticide.

* Thanks John Zmirak.