TORTURE AND "CHILD KILLING"

I think I've recently gotten a glimpse into what it must be like to be a pro-lifer.  Well, let me qualify that statement.  I mean, what it must be like to be a very specific kind of pro-lifer.

For starters, I'll just straight up say that I really don't buy that most pro-lifers are motivated because they think abortion is "child killing."  I get this from conversations I've had with these types.  Actually, I've gotten this from MOST people identifying themselves as pro-life with whom I've spoken about the topic.

It's not something they just come right out and say.  You've got to sort of read between the lines.  Sure, "child killing" is always part of the official rhetoric, but most of the emotional bombast associated with the issue seems to come from outrage about women having sex they shouldn't be having, you know, anything outside of the fundamentalist Christian understanding of sexual morality, that is, pre or extra marital sex.  It's, like, "child killing, yadda, yadda, bad, yadda," but when the talk inevitably turns to sex, which it almost always does, that's when the pro-lifer becomes really animated, really emotionally engaged.

That's how you know the "child killing" thing is bullshit for these people.  Instead, it's all about the sluts.  Sluts, sluts, sluts.  Make the sluts pay.  You had wrong sex, so now you've gotta have a baby, to pay for your wrong sex.  Wicked slut.

Never mind the insane level of misogyny here for a moment.  Since when is having a baby to be construed as God's punishment?  But I digress.  I'm not talking about those people, who are very likely the vast majority of pro-lifers.  Rather, I'm talking about a distinct subset of pro-lifers who genuinely believe that we are currently living in an era of masses of mass murder, an era when killing babies is encouraged and common, something on the level of Sodom and Gomorrah.  An era of near total moral corruption among the people.

That's how the recent news about more than half the American population supporting torture makes me feel.  I feel like we are in severe decay as a nation.  Like the people have turned callous and wicked.  Like we don't deserve to think of ourselves as being good anymore.

Indeed, torture is, without a doubt, one of the most evil things one human being can do to another.  To support torture, as official national policy, is certainly an evil, too.  And most Americans support torture.  That makes us an evil nation.

And here I sit at my computer typing this.  In my evil nation.  A place where the people crave vile and unspeakable acts against human beings they don't even know.  A place where good is only something to which the people give lip service.  Needless to say, this is very weird and surreal.  America the Wicked.  I can barely comprehend it.  This is how that minority of pro-lifers must feel.  Like everything's gone totally to hell.

So we've got some common ground now.  Of course, let's not get too crazy with this: it is entirely likely that the pro-lifers I'm talking about here, the ones who really do think abortion is "child killing," are torture supporters themselves.  But still.  I feel like I'm getting an emotional sense of what they're about with this.

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