I don’t see how the nation can continue much longer in this dissonance over abortion. It truly is unlivable. Abortion is something about which there is no compromise. No variety of “choice” is possible.
That is simply because it is either morally right to kill the child in the womb or it is not. There is no grey area here. Either the thing is morally licit or it is wrong. Period. It cannot be some of both. It cannot be sometimes justified and other times not.
And remember, legality does not equal moral rightness. Slavery was legal. Everything Hitler did was legal. If in a few years pedophilia becomes legal, (may God save us!) it will still be heinously immoral and wicked.
The target of abortion is always innocent and always defenseless, so the question that must be answered once and for all is this: Are we a society in which killing the innocent and defenseless will be a revered and sacrosanct “right,” or will it finally be condemned as unjust killing?
Enter “feminist theorist” Sophie Lewis. She’s a woman whose views on pregnancy, babies, abortion, women, and the family are so radical the word is scarcely an adequate descriptor. Lewis proudly picks up the “forgotten struggle” from Carl Marx’s Communist Manifesto to abolish the family. Yes, she is advocating the abolition of the family.
Pregnancy is “gestational work.” A pregnant mother is a “gestational worker.”
The Nation writes, “Her new book, Full Surrogacy Now: Feminism Against Family (Verso, 2019) specifically links family abolition to a radical reconceptualization of pregnancy itself.” This chilling interview and the worldview she espouses are devoid of love, joy, purpose, humanity, and beauty. This vision of the human person and family could only be conceived, pardon the term, in the pit of hell.
The End of Motherhood
In this short video, Lewis fires off the newest euphemistic missiles. Her words reveal where the fight to preserve abortion “rights” is going next. Pregnancy is “gestational work.” A pregnant mother is a “gestational worker.”
She says the fetus, due to its hemochorial placentation, is inherently inflicting “violence” upon the gestational worker. Thus the gestational worker has every right to “go on strike.” The gestational worker can “exit the workplace” by responding with violence toward the fetus.
The violence the fetus inflicts is unacceptable. The violence the gestational worker inflicts is completely justified.
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There you have it: abortion is indeed violence, but that’s perfectly okay because it is defensible and acceptable violence. Lewis tells us it’s a violence society should be comfortable defending. It should not only be legal, but perfectly reasonable and essential.
With one fell swoop, Lewis aims to wipe away every last objection to abortion by asserting it is nothing other than an unwilling “gestational worker” exiting the workplace. She’s defending herself against abuse.
The End of the Innocence
In this warped reverse image, it is the innocent child who is the aggressor. It is the baby who is committing violence merely by existing. What a diabolically clever trick. Make the little person who ends up cut into pieces and suctioned out the real villain. Abandon all sentimental views of little fingers and toes. Waste not another second feeling any emotional squeamishness. This tiny tyrant is not innocent and deserves to be terminated.
The most strident abortion-demanders and the abortion industry will surely seize on Lewis’s tactic here. I predict we will hear it echoed often, at increasing volume in the near future. They will concede that abortion is violent, but will insist it is a defensible violence. This violence is committed only out of necessary reaction to the violence the child has committed first.
The real bully, they will say, is the child — except they will say fetus or pregnancy tissue or something — who has pushed in uninvited to a womb where it is not wanted. How rude! Surely no woman should be forced to do “gestational work” against her will! (Enter handmaids in red dress, stage left.)
Call It What It Is
What Lewis is submitting here is brazenly wicked. The child in the womb is totally stripped of every shred of humanity, and women are permanently pitted against their own babies as opponents in a fight to the death.
We are being shoved to a new confrontation and decision point in our country. In a way, Lewis has done us a favor by putting such a shocking frame around the debate. It is true that abortion is violent. It is intentional, deliberate killing.
So there it is, in stark relief. If that violence, that deliberate killing is acceptable, then logically it should be legal.
Choose
So… is it acceptable? Do we consider it acceptable to treat our unborn sons and daughters with deadly violence? Are they sons and daughters, or creatures of lesser humanity? Are we pleased to accept lethal violence toward her child as an integral part of a woman’s life?
That is what our nation must definitively answer. No more hiding behind euphemisms. Lewis is a dark and lost soul and her views are totally revolting and evil, but at least she is honest about it.
Here’s some more honesty: It’ll be a frozen day in hell before I let anyone call me a “gestational worker.”
Jennifer Hartline is a Senior Contributor to The Stream. She writes passionately on the issues of Life, faith, family and culture. Jennifer is a proud wife and mother of four daughters. You can follow her at @jenniehartline.