If you're like most people, then you probably think the opposite of lying is truthfulness.
If I say "yes" when I know the truth is "no," then I am lying. But if a liar says "yes" when the answer is "yes," it doesn't mean he is not a liar. Lying, you see, is not about being untruthful -- it is about controlling the information a person receives, distorting reality, so that they act on flawed facts. It is about making another person your own means to an end. This is the reason fraud ranks right up there with force as an enemy of reason. And it is why we should expect a liar to say "yes" when it's the answer that suits him best. He's not concerned with being untruthful; he's concerned with controlling your actions by altering the information you use to make decisions.
Because of this, I am not satisfied calling mere truthfulness the opposite of lying. The opposite of lying, to me, is being informative.
A fetus, women are told, is just tissue. If you believe that is a lie, you might think the remedy is to deny it. Perhaps you would create a law that declares: A fetus is a person. But this law is different -- it says: "See for yourself." And liberalism has a problem with this, not because it refutes their "tissue" argument, but because it truly allows a woman to make an informed choice. And here you thought they were protecting a woman's right to choose. Are you so sure?
Similarly, abortion activists are suing states over specialty license plates with slogans like "Choose Life." Tell me, if you wanted to make abortion "safe, legal and rare," do you think choosing life more would make abortion rarer? I do.
The truth is that we've been told that one side is about life, while the other side is about choice. When I see the life side clobbering the choice side by espousing choice, it puts the choice side in a very uncomfortable position of having to face what it is they really seek. And that's a lot like looking into a baby's face and calling it tissue.
So what does liberalism really seek, with regard to abortion? Well, it seeks what it always wants: a way to escape the consequences of irresponsible action by shifting some cost (in this case a very brutal and violent one) -- onto an innocent, but politically unrepresented, minority. And it relies on misrepresentations like "it's just tissue," to garner support from people who simply don't know better. Liberalism relies on lying.
Consider the source.
I think at the very least a woman should have to see what it is she is "flushing from her system". I can only base opinions on personal experiences (I have never had an abortion); the women I know who convinced themselves it was just tissue, like a wart, and had it removed, crashed to reality later and had a terrible time facing what they had done. Every single one of them says maybe if she'd seen an ultrasound she wouldn't have done it, and each believes that it would have been a better choice FOR HERSELF to give birth. So yeah, if it's just "tissue" no one should be bothered by seeing it.
But it's even worse than just wanting to escape responsibility---those on the left who so passionately support the right to abort a baby will go so far as to interfere in the language of a murder charge: in those cases where pregnant women have been murdered for their unborn babies, the left strongly objects to this deceased and still unborn child being called a "child" and a second charge of murder being entered against the killer. They insert themselves in these cases for the express purpose of making sure an unborn baby is NEVER CALLED a baby, or a child.
They have absolutely zero concern for the woman's surviving family and the anguish they are dealing with and the fact that this murderer should, indeed, be charged with a second murder of this anticipated, welcomed, much loved unborn child. They are only concerned with limiting the description to further their right to an abortion.
If that doesn't tell you where their hearts lie, I don't know what would.
Posted by: Daneen | 05/23/2009 at 07:40 PM