Abortion debate gives us lots of candidates for ‘Idiot of the Year’

By David McElroy · June 25, 2022

I don’t really want to write about abortion. I can’t tell you anything new about this complicated legal and moral issue. My observations here aren’t about the issue itself. They’re about the people who are reacting to it — in ways that are irrational and downright idiotic.

Let’s get one thing out of the way. I didn’t support the Roe v. Wade decision. I also don’t support the decision which overturns it. I assumed my position about this would be obvious, but I was mistaken. Several people asked me Friday what I thought, assuming that I would either love the new decision or hate it.

I don’t “support” coercive government. Period.

I don’t recognize the legitimacy of the system which rules over us. I obey governments only because they have guns and can put me into a cage if I disobey. I’m not going to pretend I have a choice about any of it.

I have no say about abortion. Or taxation. Or wars. Or fiat money. Or anything else which politicians have taken it upon themselves to control without my permission.

But this doesn’t stop me from being both amused and annoyed right now at people on the progressive left who have loudly cheered for intrusive government for years — right up until the moment they discover they want some freedom after all.

Every time something controversial happens in the country, I read wildly irrational reactions on social media — from both sides of the controversy — and the dumber and more irrational the point someone makes, the more it’s going to be shared far and wide.

Most people are more interested in expressing the popular slogans of their “tribes” than they are in dealing with the facts of a matter. So far, the abortion debate has supplied plenty of candidates for “Idiot of the Year.”

But I’m just going to make a few big-picture observations. You’ll notice that I’m not going to give you some fiery words about what you ought to believe. The issue is far too complicated — both in the moral sense and in the philosophical sense — for me to give you a nice, neat answer. It’s complicated and I’m not going to pretend otherwise.

So here are my observations about the reactions to what’s happened:

— I suspect that fewer than one in a hundred of the people with very loud opinions about Roe v. Wade — for it or against it — have ever read the decision or understand the legal issues involved. If you have opinions about a legal document simply because on the outcome — you favor abortion or you oppose it — you’re being shortsighted, because legal reasoning ends up applying to other issues. And if you’re not paying attention to the reasoning, you might not understand what it might lead to next. (And let’s be honest. You might be too intellectually lazy to care until something you don’t like happens.)

— The actual reasoning of the Roe v. Wade decision — which required states to allow abortion — was always nonsensical. Whether you think abortion should be legal or not, the same legal reasoning in that decision would have made pretty much every decision we make into something personal that government can’t regulate. If some vague right to make your own decisions could apply to abortion, it would also apply to the rest of your life — which progressives would have hated. But the justices found this vague right to abortion, yet didn’t apply it to any other individual freedoms. It was a contradiction from the start.

— It’s amusing (and bizarre) that progressives online are suddenly talking about personal liberty. This crowd has been all about group rights and identity politics for years now, but I was suddenly hearing them talk about personal freedom on Friday. What’s odd is that they apply the notion of freedom only to abortion — and not to the rest of our individual lives. I could take them more seriously if they argued for individuals to have autonomy over their entire lives — but that would make them libertarians, so they can’t possibly allow that sort of intellectual consistency. Their heads might explode.

— For those who are upset about this decision or that decision — any political or legal decision — are you starting to see why secession is a good thing? Why should you be bound to obey a political system that you disagree with? Why shouldn’t groups be allowed to peacefully withdraw and take their property with them?

— I really wish people making sweeping generalizations based on their emotions right now could apply reason and principles to the broader issues, in context. Instead, all I seem to see are variations of either, “I hate you religious people for taking my rights away,” or else, “The baby-killers lost and can’t keep killing babies!” Reality is far more complex — legally, philosophically and ethically — than most seem willing to admit. But it’s easier to scream slogans and yell hatred of people who disagree with you.

— No matter what position you take about abortion and its legality, you should be able to understand why other people believe what they believe without having to demonize those people. There are a number of rational and morally consistent views on this issue. I don’t agree with most of them, but I can understand why people would accept those ideas instead of agreeing with me. Most people are not the monsters which your rhetoric right now makes them out to be.

— Here’s the position which is most popular right now: “Those who disagree with me about this issue are evil and stupid. I hate them all and they should die.”

And here’s what’s not so popular: “I think the people who disagree with me about this issue are mistaken, but their views must make sense from their point of view. Their intentions are probably just as honorable as mine are. I wonder how we can live peacefully with each other despite our strongly differing views?”

If you’re taking the popular and easy approach, you’re part of the problem, no matter which side you’re on.

— It baffles me that so many people are eager to insist that their political views must be forced on everyone — at the same time they complain about others trying to force their views on them. Why can’t they see this contradiction? Both sides of this debate are hypocrites about some issues — and they mostly seem blind to this fact.

— Progressives were acting Friday as though abortion was being outlawed in the country, but this wasn’t the case. All this decision says is that the U.S. Constitution is silent on the issue, so states have the right to allow abortion or ban it, just as they make a million other decisions — different from state to state — to control your lives.

— If Democrats want to pass a law requiring abortion access nationally, there is nothing stopping them. There’s nothing in the new Supreme Court decision that would stop it. The feds control all sorts of things nationally — often by claiming they’re regulating interstate commerce — and it would be trivial for Democrats to pass such legislation right now. Joe Biden would be happy to sign it.

— Those who keep claiming that the decision Friday was religious people trying to force them to obey their religion are delusional. If you believe that an unborn baby is a human being — as many, many people do — then this is no more about religion that it is when we have laws banning the murder of a child who’s just been born. Religious people tend to believe this more strongly, but many of the people who oppose abortion do so for reasons which have nothing to do with religion. Stop lying to yourself.

— I want to hate a lot of the people whose toxic rhetoric I’m seeing right now. I want to assume they’re just as stupid and vile and toxic as they appear to be. Part of me wants to lash out at them in anger. But I know this is wrong. It doesn’t solve anything. I know that there are things about them which I don’t understand — just as there are things about me which they don’t understand.

There’s already been enough hate and anger. Those never achieve anything. Sometimes, all I can do is try to love those who seem unlovable — and hope they can offer me the same grace.

There are plenty of times when I’m not loving enough. I know I should be, but I’m far too human. (I wrote about this not long ago.)

Unfortunately, I know that this is going to be a political and social tidal wave — as I also wrote about recently — not something that reasonable people will discuss and solve.

This is going to be used for political purposes. Republicans have used the issue for fundraising and campaigning for years (and will continue to do the same). Democrats are about to do the same thing on a large scale. These candidates don’t care about you. They simply want you money and your vote.

I wish people would decide to be reasonable and pragmatic and moral and loving. But I know better. We’re in for a bumpy ride. It’s just one more step on the long way to the national breakup which looms on the horizon.

Good luck with that. You can’t say you haven’t been warned. Repeatedly.

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If you have problems with high blood pressure, I’d like to encourage you to consider making serious changes to your diet. There might be some people who don’t have any choice but to start taking prescription medications for high blood pressure, but I’d like to tell you that I have completely eliminated my issue by eliminating all sugar and almost all carbohydrates. (A couple of months ago, my blood pressure hit 185/144, which was dangerously high — considered stage 3 hypertension.) By completely changing my eating habits, I’m down 22 pounds and my blood pressure is now in the “ideal” range — without taking any medication. In addition, I sleep better and I have more energy. Getting away from the sugar-laden mess that we generally refer to as “highly processed food” has been a life-changer for me. Now my challenge is to avoid slipping back into old habits — by eating in the dangerous ways that almost everyone in our society has come to see as normal.

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Every time someone tries to tighten requirements around the use of absentee ballots, I hear screams from Democrats and others on the political left that such efforts are nothing but “suppression of black voters.” These protests have never made sense to me, especially because it’s never been a secret that absentee ballot fraud goes on all the time in certain areas. (Everybody knew it when I worked in politics.) The people who engage in such fraud are rarely caught — often because the local political establishment approves of the crime — but a Democrat who won a primary election in Clay County, Alabama, last year has pleaded guilty to this sort of cheating. Terry Andrew Heflin was running for a place on the Clay County Commission. He was caught ordering seven absentee ballots in the names of various voters and sending them to his post office box — after which he used the ballots to vote absentee for himself seven time. Did he have other people cast additional fraudulent ballots? We’ll never know. But in a primary in which he was able to win with only 141 votes, it wouldn’t take many fraudulent votes to change the election. The next time you hear “civil rights activists” claim that it’s just “voter suppression” to hurt blacks which is at the root of efforts to stop this fraud, remember Terry Heflin. If you care about fair and honest elections, ballot security and voter identity should matter to you.

A state legislator in Maine has been stripped of the ability to speak in the state Legislature — and her votes are not being counted on legislative issues — all because she made a truthful social media post. Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn, Maine) opposes allowing boys to compete against girls’ teams in school athletics and she’s become known for making an issue of it. On Feb. 17, she posted on Facebook about a recent example that she found outrageous. She posted side-by-side photos of a boy named John who competed last year in a state track event and won fifth place against other boys two years ago — and a photo of the same boy (now called Katie) who won first place in the same event this year against girls. Whether you find this outrageous or not, Libby is clearly being honest and truthful about the objective facts of an issue of public importance. But the state Legislature censured her. Democrats decreed that she could not speak in the House and that her votes would not count on legislation — until she apologized for the outrage of telling the truth. She refused and her constituents have been unrepresented in the state House since then. The people who promote this ideology are out of touch with reality and won’t rest until they force the rest of us to join them in this delusion. But even if you agree with “trans” ideology, you should be appalled at this heavy-handed attack on political speech.

The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

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