Despite accusations positing the contrary, it seems to me that the recently displayed so-called Genocide Awareness Project, sponsored by the Center for Bioethical Reform, did achieve its goals, and efficiently.
The images displayed, which I’ll deal with shortly, were indeed grotesque and disturbing, but the observable effect was exactly what CBR had intended: to engender discussion amongst those who might not otherwise have given the issue any consideration.
Two women who had abortions, as well as representatives of the Center for Bioethical Reform, stood by to answer questions, respond to protests and engage in debate.
They were calm and professional, and, though the air was tense, the discussion that took place near the display was civil.
However, Shannon Frazer protested in Wednesday’s Kernel that it was the content of the discussions that was the problem.
Frazer said, “They turn(ed) the ensuing conversation to how offensive particular images are, and not to who they (CBR) are, what their organization represents and their ideologies.”
To this I respond: “exactly as they intended.” Who they are and what they represent is apparent.
The images serve another purpose. CBR displays shocking images to shock.
Regarding the issue of the images themselves, there is no issue. The same government that currently upholds a woman’s right to have an abortion also defends free speech.
Though perhaps irrelevant, it is notable that the latter right is found in our nation’s very constitution; it is more fundamental.
“But the images are offensive!” Obviously. “But the protest wasn’t civil!” Irrelevant.
The KKK and The Westboro Baptist Church receive the same First Amendment protection as CBR. The only relevant response then is simply to ask, “is CBR right or wrong?”
The answer to this, it seems, is complicated. The comparison of Holocaust victims to aborted fetuses, the controversial stretch of the term “genocide,” the contested link between abortion and breast cancer, all of these leave the position of CBR in doubt.
But there is another relevant question that I would posit is easier to answer: is abortion wrong?
Yes. Yes it is. Why should not human life begin when it intuitively seems to, that is, at the beginning?
Markers such as the acquisition of consciousness, the ability to feel pain and others are not only arbitrary, they miss the point.
It is not a question of attribute, but of being. Membership in the human species is a simple “yes or no” for all time; there’s no changing back and forth.
So is it not the same thing that begins as a bundle of cells and that is, nine months later, delivered into the loving arms of its parents?
Then what is it, a person or not? And do not tell me first one, then the other, for this is impossible. I say that it is a person, a person from the beginning and a person absolutely incapable of self-defense, a person absolutely dependent on us for its life.
This is a person whose right to make any choice at all has been legally removed in favor of its mother’s right to decide whether it should even exist. And this is wrong.
Philip Timmerman is an English and philosophy junior. Email opinions@kykernel.com.
Is it seriously impossible for anyone at UK to assess this based on theme, taste, or legal precedent without proclaiming their predictable bias on the issue of abortion? Great, we get it, you’re pro-life. That doesn’t mean diddly to the argument; the argument your article attempts to address in the first place is whether their approach, not their position, was in good taste/legal/etc.
Seriously, you’re a philosophy student and you can’t even delineate two simple thought processes from each other?
Is it seriously impossible for anyone at UK to assess this based on theme, taste, or legal precedent without proclaiming their predictable bias on the issue of abortion? Great, we get it, you’re pro-life. That doesn’t mean diddly to the argument; the argument your article attempts to address in the first place is whether their approach, not their position, was in good taste/legal/etc.
Seriously, you’re a philosophy student and you can’t even delineate two simple thought processes from each other?
I am pleased to finally see a well written and thoughtful article in the Kentucky Kernel.
@general_pepper: The thought processes were intended to be distinct. While I did argue in the first half of the piece that the methods of CBR had been misunderstood by previous criticism, in the paragraph beginning “the answer to this, it seems…” I put this issue to rest, and in the subsequent paragraph I take up the separate issue of abortion itself. I understand that I may weaken my first argument by my second, it being more controversial, but to me the second is the more important of the two. My argument for CBR’s methods I think of merely as an interesting observation. My second argument I really care for.
…seriously, when you lack sufficient logical argument, attack the arguer. This resort makes it easy to distinguish a good argument from a good arguer. Neither, in this case.