Challenging Deceptive Pro-Abortion Propaganda in Mid-term Election

This article explores deceptive pro-abortion propaganda and a comprehensive array of common arguments. We will further examine the idea of “reproductive freedom”, the claim that abortion is “healthcare”, that abortion is “safe”, that protecting voiceless humanity at any stage of development is a product of “extreme” ideology, why pro-abortion expressions focus so exclusively on the least common justifications, and what defining characteristics if any are consistently applied for objectively disqualifying pre-born human life from the allocation of “unalienable” rights.

(Originally written 10/31/22)

Ahh, what a wonderful time of the year.  An invigorating chill fills the air, savory smoke wafts from neighborhood chimneys, pumpkins are everywhere and in everything, and political attack ads brimming with holiday cheer casually careen from the post-person’s satchel like a ripened autumn leaf gracefully descending from the heavens. 

Yes…it’s the latest election cycle.  While the current political climate in America reflects the same aggressive hostility, manipulative musings, deception, and blatant hypocrisy compared to the average partisan election campaign, with divisive propaganda infiltrating nearly every facet of everyday life from public schools to retail locations and professional sports, the persistent severity is felt with even greater relentlessness during this current Mid-term cycle.  As I have repetitiously discarded obnoxiously assertive materials from any and all political affiliations and interest groups, wondering what measure of environmental protections are enforced regarding the massive production of Democratic centric flyers inundating mailboxes across the country, my objective curiosity occasionally warrants a closer examination of asserted content.

I Vote Pro-Zygote

The latest advertisement which caught my attention was a political indictment of Wisconsin Attorney General candidate Eric Toney and his ridged stance on abortion, distributed by the Democratic Party of Wisconsin and authored by OB/GYN Dr. Laura Berghahn.

Deceptive pro-abortion propaganda is overwhelmingly prevalent in the current wave of Democrat authored election materials and advertisements, following the long-gestating reversal of Roe vs Wade.  It is difficult to discern whether this decision is predicated upon its importance amongst pro-abortion voters, an apparent lack of alternative material to criticize their opponents with, or a lack of positive policy results to brag about.

Unfortunately, there isn’t much positivity to promote given the political futility of Democrat leadership across America, riding an emotional wave of irrational policy choices leading to neutral or negative results and destructive consequences within nearly every category of legislative action.  This inspires the recollection of advertisements for Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers, making ambitious promises for a potential second term, yet neglecting to mention any positive results directly attributed to his actions during his first term.  Interesting.

Upon unsealing this latest scroll of unparalleled wisdom, I was really hoping to find something new, persuasive, or intellectually crafted.  Unfortunately, the same brand of emotionally driven, factually manipulative, and intellectually futile rhetoric plaguing the abortion debate for decades rears its ugly head once more (find more here).  We just can’t seem to abandon the near-sighted assertions that the physical destruction of innocent life is “healthcare”, attempting to objectively identify and protect human life is “extreme”, while prioritizing a woman’s “right” to “choose” (although this concept is inexplicably absent regarding vaccine mandates) and in turn denying any choices to the life created primarily as the result of active “choices”.

Free From Consequence

Deceptive pro-abortion propaganda often spurns fleeting references to generic catch phrases and manipulative assertions which commonly defy reality, reasonable logic, and ironically other liberal principles.   Take for example the periodic reference to “reproductive freedom” as illustrated by this statement from UpNorthNews from 9/6/22. 

“State Attorney General race could decide reproductive freedom in Wisconsin.”

Restricting unconditional abortion does not compromise “reproductive freedom”, but rather it protects what has been reproduced.  You are free to do lots of things, that doesn’t mean you should be free from the consequences, especially when those decisions gravely effect lives beyond your own.  Because two living humans can’t produce anything other than human life, restricting abortion is an attempt at protecting voiceless and dehumanized humanity. 

How in the world can you say you are protecting “reproductive” freedom while denying the product of that production?  Humans don’t produce ambiguous clumps of cells; they produce other Humans. If you cannot show with definitive objective science under what consistent criteria the product of human reproduction is anything other than a human life, regardless of developmental stage, then what are you actually fighting for? 

If you don’t “plan” to be a parent, maybe you shouldn’t have sex…which in the overwhelming majority of cases is your “freedom”.  While the decision whether or not to reproduce is a reasonable freedom allocated to men and women, it is likewise unreasonable to allow anything other than reality to determine what has been produced resulting from the physical union of two humans.  Of course, if the unborn product of your reproductive freedom deserves no rights, at what point do we objectively allocate them?  You mean I can terminate my child…but I can’t spank them?  Why not?  What beyond perception and emotionally driven tunnel vision are we utilizing to form fair and objective conclusions?

An appeal to so-called “reproductive freedom” appears to be the latest political gimmick designed to illicit superficial emotional responses yet eventually faulter beneath fleeting applications of critical thought.  Likewise, “feminism is for everyone” until an entire girls’ volleyball team is forced to leave their own locker room because they don’t want to undress in front of a biological male.   It’s “My body my choice” until you support vaccine mandates, then it’s mandated conformity, ridicule and name calling. 

Defining Moments

We seemingly have no problem defining abortion as an essential aspect of “woman’s rights” although we now struggle defining what a woman even is, asserted as a subjective, fluid, non-descript designation valid exclusively through personal “assignment”.  If you can’t objectively and externally identify what a woman is, how could you possibly know what her rights should be, if different from anyone else? If we don’t really know what makes a woman a woman, then under what objective basis do we dehumanize unborn humans at any stage of development? While we have now adopted the term “pregnant people” as a more trans-gender tolerant classification, we still refuse to objectively identify what they are pregnant with or determine what magical moment a person becomes a person if not at conception. 

If binary gender classifications are an arbitrary social construct despite incredibly clear science in roughly 99% of cases, then so is everything else, including who should get what rights when.  Rights are a subjective, arbitrary social construct if operating from an Atheistic worldview.  The Constitution is a subjective, arbitrary social construct if operating from an Atheistic worldview.  If an unborn human life is unworthy of rights allocated upon their creation and neither their birth nor the inevitable recognition of humanity, then why should anyone have rights?  Why do we deny human rights upon conception, even though every Human life has one?

The abortion debate, for however long it exists, will always return to the same liberally neglected topic: objectively defining humanity. Deceptive pro-abortion propaganda avoids this conversation like the plague, although it’s really the only one worth having.  No need to project imaginary scenarios of fertility clinics burning down or implement vain accusations of hypocrisy.  If “Science is real”, show me with science when a person is a person.  Of course, when I say “science”, I’m not referring to the politically compromised, ideologically exclusionary institution producing partisan talking points guided by religious devotion to an atheistic mainstream liberal narrative and strong emotions over empirical truth and objective discovery.

Did we not attempt to justify African slavery with a comparable, erratically applied brand of rhetorical foolishness, blindly prioritizing the supposed rights of the slave owner over the slave?  Who deserves what “freedoms” under what circumstances, and how do we make a fair determination?  The freedoms we enjoy are contextual in nature.  The freedom to act is not free from consequence, while the freedom of decisive inaction is regularly overlooked.  Regardless of abortion’s legal status in America, men and women are free to make “reproductive choices”.  Once they choose to reproduce, the conversation must fairly and reasonably shift…

“With Roe vs. Wade overturned, women in Wisconsin are being denied access to legal and safe abortion.”

This is a fascinating statement.  Slavery used to be legal.  There was even the legal decision in the Dredd Scott case diminishing African humanity to 3/5ths of a whole individual compared to Caucasian counterparts.  Pro-slavery apologists even argued that slavery was safer and more humane than the alternative.  Sound familiar?  Why should it be legal to terminate a healthy human life knowingly created without the “unalienable” rights of the new life considered?  Should we use physical characteristics, emotionally manipulated perception, personal gain, and political ideology to reasonably qualify personhood?  Should abortion “on demand” have ever been “legal” in the first place?  Roe doesn’t think so; she regrets starting this mess. 

Who is abortion safe for?  It is not remotely safe for the subject of the abortion, whether they are chemically exterminated, their body is torn apart by suction, or they are ripped apart “surgically” piece by piece.  Explain how indiscriminately ripping apart the limbs and organs of an autonomous being constitutes doing “no harm” as vowed by every legally authorized medical practitioner? 

This does not even include partial birth abortion, banned in 2003, which involved inserting a sharp object into the base of the skull of a partially birthed individual before mechanically removing the brain.  I know I know, those darn “anti-abortionists” are just engaging in another “culture war”.  If you were grabbed by the ankles with a surgical spike at the base of your skull or gazing in horror at the rotating blades of a woodchipper, I don’t think “culture war” would come to mind, and I don’t think you would describe this scenario as “safe” either…

Extreme Measures

“Wisconsin’s pre-Civil War abortion ban is so extreme that women and girls who are victims of rape or incest would be forced to continue their pregnancies.”

I’m curious; why would you point out the “extreme” nature of restricting abortion in cases of rape and incest when you believe all abortion restriction is extreme?  If you are pro-abortion, isn’t it all the same to you?  Who is this delineation designed to coerce?  While rape and incest are amongst the most prevalent abortion justifications cited by activists and lobbyists promoting deceptive pro-abortion propaganda, they are consistently amongst the least prevalent documented reasons.  Studies consistently show that rape and incest comprise an incredibly small portion of overall abortions. 

A 2004 Guttmacher survey reported by Abort73.com indicates, based on 957 responses, that the often-referenced rape, incest, and harm to the mother justifications used to support unconditional abortion access account for less than 10% of actual cases.  A more quantitative study from Florida (also reported by Abort73.com) shows that immediate harm to the mother, rape, and incest collectively amount to less than a percent of the 74,868 documented cases, with any level of health concern comprising less than 5% of cases.  So why such a focus on the least prevalent justifications?  Because in this instance, as is often the case in politics, truth is irrelevant while perception is everything.

It would probably be considered “extreme” by most to perform a retro-active abortion on your teenager because their existence was “inconvenient”, too expensive, or induced stress, and yet doing so would accomplish the same end as a pre-birth abortion more than a decade prior.  So what’s the difference?  If we call it pre-birth or post-birth, it’s still just an abortion…right?  Ironically, your existence…is the product of not being aborted. Why can we acknowledge a stage of humanity, yet deny the humanity part?

Despite relative infrequency, rape, incest, and immediate physical detriment to the mother are serious situations which require contextual considerations as they relate to abortion.  If an obvious and severe threat to the physical well-being of the mother is present, it makes little sense to prioritize one life at the potential risk of two unless chosen by the primary patient.  In regard to incest, I would like to thoroughly study that topic before providing additional commentary. 

In the case of rape, I can easily see it both ways.  On the one hand, the woman’s choice is taken away and her body is violated.  While carrying to term could theoretically pose severe psychological trauma, what is the alternative cost?  In an era where “Love is Love” and “Kindness is Everything”, how is terminating a helpless, innocent life absolved of responsibility for their father’s reprehensible crime indicative of these principles?  They didn’t ask to be created in this way, and under unconditional abortion law they have no say and no protections regarding whether they live or die.  How is that fair under already unfair circumstances?  Are we not just “correcting” unfairness with more unfairness?  Would birthing and raising that child not be an unfathomable act of selflessness, reinforcing the principles you supposedly represent far more than asking a doctor to surgically rip that life apart and throw it in the garbage?  Additionally, who might be inspired as a result of such a courageous act of unconditional love? 

“Eric Toney has his own extreme political agenda.  Toney celebrated the overturing of Roe v. Wade and has repeatedly promised to enforce Wisconsin’s near-total abortion ban.”

It’s a sad day when attempting to protect voiceless and defenseless human life is considered by those promoting deceptive pro-abortion propaganda to be an extreme product of a conservative culture war.  How is it we live in a society that believes gender is a subjective classification, or suggests that pedophilia is a manifestation of a “sexual orientation”, and yet a living organism with human DNA, human fingerprints, a human face, human pain receptors, and a human heartbeat is something other than a human life worthy of protection?  

I am not allowed to “decide” what someone’s gender is, yet you can dehumanize the product of human reproduction mercilessly terminated most commonly as a result of indifference, inconvenience, superiority, and a superfluous projection of prioritized rights over another individual?  How do these ideas logically co-exist, and how is this mind-set not “extreme”? 

An Inconvenient Truth

Why is it that pro-abortionists refuse to acknowledge or understand the mindset of pro-life advocates?  If you believe with the entirety of your heart and soul that abortion kills innocent life, why would you not celebrate overturning Roe V. Wade?  Alternatively, pro-abortionists believe, however misguided or emotionally motivated, that they are protecting the health status and fundamental rights of impregnable persons.  It’s hard to not even apply a modicum of contextual mercy and respect, fairly perceiving the intended objective of “pro-choice” initiatives.  I can at least understand where they are coming from, even if I disagree with them on every fundamental, intellectual, objective level. 

However, it’s no surprise that mainstream pro-abortionists refuse to understand a pro-life perspective, because it might just lead them to an inconvenient destination…truth.  This of course is the great intellectual divide; making erratic emotional demands and manipulative statements promoting deceptive pro-abortion propaganda versus asking pointed questions inspired of critical thought processes.  I’m not interested in being “anti-abortion”, I am interested in wherever objective truth will lead me.  Can a pro-abortionist say the same?