Monday, February 04, 2013

Abortion advocate discouraged after experience at March for Life

In the comments at Feministing, a male abortion advocate discusses his experience at the March for Life. It's noteworthy in that he was discouraged by the lack of abortion advocates, he got angry when he was asked to defend his position, he was unable to persuasively defend his position, he lacks knowledge regarding human biology and he believes that the only effective arguments abortion advocates could make were post-abortive women talking about their own experience.
We only had about 50 this year, so I could understand people getting discouraged. I certainly was, in no small part because people from the other side kept approaching me to defend my position. Obviously when I tried to do this seriously, it was no better than talking past them, and made me a great deal more angry than I had promised myself to be. I know that as a man, I find it hard to be able to speak straightly about a woman's right to choose, when I will never have to exercise that right. More often than I wanted to I got dragged into philosophical debates over when life begins. Which I honestly don't care about – a fetus is not a human being, whether alive or not, as far as I'm concerned – but I wished I had more of a spiel to give the other side when confronted with that

The only really effective talkers on our side were the women, some of my friends in fact, who had had abortions and could speak plainly and from experience. There is no way for the other side to respond to this. I thank you for being courageous enough to do the same.

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