Pete Hendrickson (@LostHorizons)

What Pro-Lifers Mean By "No Exceptions For The Life Of The Mother" ...which is not at all what their abortion-enthusiast opponents want voters to imagine. HERE IN MICHIGAN, as in many other places, staunch abortion opponents are squared-up against incumbent baby-killing enthusiasts. One accusation leveled against the challengers is that they are so radical in their anti-abortion stance as to allow no exceptions even to protect the life of the mother, often supported by excerpts of interviews or publications in which those words are said. Context is, of course, omitted from the excerpts or the accusations they support. Due to tight campaign budgets, clarifying responses from challengers in Michigan, at least, are not finding their way to voters' screens. The pro-abortion incumbents are refusing to debate the challengers, even those vying for the highest state offices. Hence, many voters are left with a very distorted view of the pro-life contenders, and hence, this explanation on the challengers' behalf. WHEN A PRO-LIFE PERSON SAYS, "no exceptions, even for the life of the mother", he or she is speaking in the context of a long-standing contrivance of the pro-abortion crowd in which a woman is said to have declared that is she if forced to deliver the baby in her womb, it will be just too much for her to bear and, "I swear, I'll kill myself!" On that basis, the mendacious pro-abortionists make the claim that prohibitions on abortion threaten lives (without, or course, acknowledging that abortion invariably not just threatens lives, but ends them). It is that contrived "threat" to which pro-lifers speak when denying exceptions to save the life of the mother. They are not proposing to deny medical intervention against actual mortal injury or misfunction. They are simply recognizing that the pro-abortion crowd has inaccurately re-defined "life of the mother" to mean "whatever the mother threatens to melt down over" and are opposing the killing of a baby on that specious and fluid ground-- a ground, it is worth noting, which is equally accommodating of the argument that, "I put that pillow over Grandma's face because she was driving me crazy!" These "life of the mother" considerations are behind the pro-life position of "no exceptions for the health of the mother," as well. Such purported threats to health are also grounded in the notion that carrying a baby to term will damage the mental health of unenthusiastic mothers. In both cases, the real pro-abortion "argument" remains nothing more than, "abortion should be legal so certain women can be spared distress and the obligation to suck it up and behave like grown-ups". Herbert Spencer-- using "men" in its normal, inclusive meaning (for the miseducated youth among us)-- wisely observed that, "The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly, is to fill the world with fools." I'll offer a corollary: "The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of weakness and self indulgence, is to fill the world with self-indulgent weaklings." I'm sure everyone agrees that this would be a very bad thing (well, IS a very bad thing...). Continued: https://losthorizons.com/N/212.htm#1