I saw a Catholic blog describe what they thought “winning” would look like. One of their ideas of a win would be abortion clinics closing down for lack of customers. This is … I tried to think of a more polite phrasing than “detached from reality,” but there doesn’t seem to be a polite way to say that. But it’s detached from reality in a way that doesn’t seem like it’s intentionally malicious. I think it explains both why other people tend to interpret the religious right as genocidal, and why the religious right is always so baffled at the idea that anyone could think they want genocide.As I’ve said elsewhere, I’m something of a collector of accounts of pregnancy complications. Sometimes the fetus is already dead and rotting, and the woman risks hemorrhage if she doesn’t abort. Sometimes, the newborn baby won’t be able to breathe outside the womb. I once read about a case where he would live, but would be unable to move his arms and legs and would also have incurable chronic pain.
Let’s be clear; the women who would give birth in these circumstances are not voluntary customers of abortion clinics, in the same sense that I’m not a voluntary customer when I go to the doctor to stop my immune system from ripping me apart from the inside. That’s why they tend to assume that Catholics and other right-wing Christian groups want to punish women for having pregnancy complications. I have seen feminist sites openly state that Christians think women who have fatal pregnancy complications deserved to die.
Except this Christian does not think women who have pregnancy complications should all die. They* think there’s a possible world, with no changes in medical technology, where women don’t want to get abortions at all. The only way I can think of to explain this is that they’re genuinely ignorant that these women exist.**
Now I’m going out on a limb here, because I’ve never seen OP talk about gender issues and have no idea what they think on the subject. But I’ve seen other people who have similar opinions to OP who are very invested in the idea that science supports two binary genders. If a scientist of any stripe argues that gender is not binary, they do their best to argue that the scientist’s credentials are invalid or irrelevant and the argument does not represent mainstream science.
I recently saw a blog post where someone speculated about a possible future where he*** is fired from his job and disallowed from getting Medicare because a DNA test shows he’s intersex. I wanted to grab him and shake him. “These people can’t DNA test you! They can’t live in a world where you are physically and provably intersex! They need to believe that everyone is innately male or female and chooses to defy that!”
I’m not saying these beliefs are harmless. If you think that all people can be straight, you assume responsibility for all the people who killed themselves because they couldn’t be straight. But I think OP lives in a simpler world than I do, and I think if you wanted to argue with OP, you would have to find a way to make their world more complicated.
*No pronouns are listed on their blog.
**I once saw someone say that they oppose abortion of dead fetuses because God might work a miracle. For the sake of my sanity, I’m going to assume this person is not typical.
***I don’t remember the blog name, so I can’t check pronouns, but I do remember OP is male-passing.
