When an issue enters the national conversation, whether it be the crisis in Gaza or the events in Ferguson or the epidemic of school shootings in this country, certain pro-life activists engage in a move I call “the abortion feint.” It goes a little something like this:
“You think that’s bad? Over a million babies are aborted in this country each year! What do you think about that?”
The intent, it seems, is for the reader or listener to realize she cannot simultaneously be outraged by the pertinent issue and indifferent to the insidious and (apparently) unnoticed annual body count of abortion. In practice, however, this tactic serves only to distract from the issue at hand in favor of a game of Tragedy Olympics.
Saying “this tragedy is worse than that tragedy” is a pointless show of one-upmanship that does nothing to further discussion of either issue. It also assumes one’s stance on abortion as a foregone conclusion. To someone who does not regard abortion as murder, airing statistics does nothing to sway one’s sympathies to the pro-life camp. Even assuming one’s audience is pro-life, appropriating a discussion for one’s unrelated agenda is clearly in poor taste.
A pastor at a church in my hometown, addressing the December 2012 school shootings in Newtown, Connecticut, expressed his sorrow at the murder of those 20 children before comparing this figure to the number of unborn children being aborted in the U.S. every year. Why, he asked, wasn’t everyone equally heartbroken about that? One might think the senseless murder of schoolchildren is a tragedy on which “Handmaid’s Tale” conservatives and baby-killing liberals could find common ground, but here it was used as an opportunity to be divisive and unhelpful.
In a 1985 interview with Thom O’Connor, Mother Teresa called abortion “the greatest destroyer of peace today,” a view undoubtedly still held by many pro-life activists. I would urge those who think this way to acknowledge there are other threats to peace, and they deserve to be discussed and dealt with in their own right.
Abortion cannot eclipse ethnic cleansing, gun violence, campus sexual assault and all the other injustices that plague our global society. Advocating against abortion may be the cause to end all causes for some, but pretending it renders other causes irrelevant is laughably nearsighted. Moreover, it is insulting to those who are suffering.
Imagine the families of victims of police brutality or mass shootings being told their pain is insignificant when seen in the light of abortion statistics. By attempting to appeal to the hearts of their audiences, people who use this rhetoric can sound uniquely heartless.
There is an appropriate space for discussing abortion; it’s when abortion is the issue already being discussed. When it isn’t, it’s better to be a part of the conversation at hand or keep quiet.
Charles McCrory is an English major from Florence.
