Incrementalism and Abortion

There’s an apocryphal story about a frog in a pan of water in which the temperature is gradually increased. The frog, not sensing the danger, is boiled before it leaps to freedom.  There’s also the history of the guillotine, which was supposed to be a more humane way of inflicting capital punishment, but which became an instrument of state terror, and entertainment for the mob.

Things which would inflict a sense of horror on most people can be more easily accommodated when they are introduced incrementally.

Abortion for population control, to eliminate the mentally or physically “unfit”, and for reasons of preserving an affluent or privileged lifestyle has been supported for over a century by a cadre of abortioneers: eugenicists, advocates of euthanasia, elitists, radical feminists and environmentalists, and statists of every stripe, including fascists and Marxists, but subsequent to World War II, with the massive destruction of human life, including indiscriminate abortion to meet state objectives (and not just the Nazis), a subtler approach was necessary, as the great majority considered a human fetus to be a person and abortion to be a heinous act.

These subtleties began with a call to protect troubled women from being victimized by back-alley abortionists, a plea that resonated with many. Next, these abortioneers connected abortion to women’s health, which could mean anything from a serious heart condition to anxiety attacks or the blues. Time passed, months and years, and these pleas became demands for legal abortion at every stage of a pregnancy, and then to more demands for the right to destroy an infant as it is being delivered.

The fact that many professional men and women: doctors, psychologists, jurists, and religious leaders, supported abortion influenced many of the conflicted who forget or ignore the fact that these professionals bring personal and ideological biases to this issue.

One would think that such “progress” would constitute success for the abortioneers, but not so fast. The next item on the abortioneers’ agenda was to require those morally opposed to abortion to pay for abortions, via health insurance and government programs, revealing that their agenda is more than just securing legal abortion; it’s about compelling those who disagree to get on board.

Don’t be lulled into thinking there isn’t more to come, as there is always more to come. In an April 5, 2013 column in the Washington Post, George F. Will discusses the abortioneers’ desire to have the legal right to destroy an infant after it has been delivered and is separated from the mother, stating, “Planned Parenthood, which receives more than $500 million in government subsidies, is branching out, expanding its mission beyond the provision of abortions to the defense of consumers’ rights: If you pay for an abortion, you are owed a dead baby.”

The abortioneers and their “progressive” allies are also seeking to abridge the “hate speech” of those opposing abortion. If the abortioneers have their way, opposing the right to an abortion or opposing a woman’s right to do anything she wishes with the “product” of her womb, even a living, breathing infant, would be an actionable offense.

At heart, the abortioneers are cynical materialists who believe that everything is a zero-sum enterprise; more people means fewer resources for those who are better equipped to occupy the world, more of the “unfit” means more societal turbulence, more people effects the affluence of the most deserving. It’s easy to succumb to these expedient pabulums.

Too bad hardly anyone reads George Orwell anymore. We are far too busy downloading music and videos, cheering on our favorite teams, and living the good life: “There was nothing there now except for a single Commandment. It ran: ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL, BUT SOME ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS.”

Americans ought to consider that the next frog in the pan may be them.