"It profits me but little that a vigilant authority always protects the tranquillity of my pleasures and constantly averts all dangers from my path, without my care or concern, if this same authority is the absolute master of my liberty and my life."

--Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

Monday, April 28, 2014

Two Stories, One Story

Two stories in the past week struck me as being essentially about the same thing, although I'm pretty certain no one noticed it.

The first story had to do with the announcement (in a press conference) that Chelsea Clinton is 16 weeks pregnant, and the subsequent outpouring (read: gushing) of celebratory coverage by the mainstream media.   Now, I don't want to be unnecessarily harsh.   Having children is a great thing, and the happiness they bring is something that we ought to celebrate.   But there's a few things that bother me about the way this story was presented, both by the Clintons and by the media.   More on that below.






















The second story is frankly much harder to take, and even revolting:
Wannabe celebrity Josie Cunningham last night confessed the chance of appearing on TV’s Big Brother was worth more than her unborn child’s life. 
Puffing on a cigarette and rubbing her baby bump, the controversial model and call girl – who will have her abortion at a clinic this week – said: “I’m finally on the verge of becoming famous and I’m not going to ruin it now. 
“An abortion will further my career. This time next year I won’t have a baby. Instead, I’ll be famous, driving a bright pink Range Rover and buying a big house. Nothing will get in my way.” 
Josie, 23, is already 18 weeks pregnant by either an escort agency client or a Premier League footballer. But she claims her late life-or-death decision has nothing to do with who the father is. 
She says it is based on the breakdown of negotiations with Channel 5 to appear on the reality show. 
Josie – who caused outrage in 2013 when she demanded a £4,800 boob job on the NHS to become a glamour model – said: “Channel 5 were keen to shortlist me then they found out I was pregnant. 
"Then they suddenly turned cold. That was when I started considering an abortion. After the operation I will be going back to them and asking if they will still consider me. 
“I’ve also had loads of other offers to further my career – and I’m not willing to give them up because I’m pregnant.”
 
Aspiring model Josie Cunningham from leeds



 
 









Well!   In addition to being a viscerally repellent skank, this young lady also wins the prize for most disgustingly immoral.   I'm pretty sure every thinking adult person, left or right, liberal or conservative, even pro-choice and pro-life, would read that and come to the same conclusion.  
 
But why?   Ms. Cunningham's utter barrenness of human feeling for her own child isn't all that far removed from the standard rationales for abortion, is it?   I mean, isn't that what everyone says, including President Obama?   That it's somehow "unfair" for a young girl to have to sacrifice her education or her career by having a child?  
 
Back during the race for the 2008 election, he famously said at a Johnstown, Pa., meeting that, “I’ve got two daughters. Nine years old and six years old. I am going to teach them first of all about values and morals. But if they make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby.”
 
In fact, the phrase "punished with a baby" isn't ontologically different than “I’ve also had loads of other offers to further my career – and I’m not willing to give them up because I’m pregnant.”   Why it wasn't an immediate disqualifier of Obama for the Presidency speaks to the moral emptiness and incoherence of our culture.  
 
Which brings me to my point... why these two stories are really the same story.   Consider:  both involve mothers of babies who are about at the same gestational age.   For Clinton, her child is 16 weeks old; for Josie Cunningham, 18 weeks.   And Clinton, of course, undoubtedly would stand with her mother and father as staunch supporters of the abortion on demand regime of the Democratic Party.   So although she demands in a press conference that we celebrate her pregnancy, she undoubtedly would defend Ms. Cunningham's decision to abort her child and, at least theoretically, would equally demand that we accept her own decision if, two weeks from now, she decides that, nah, having a baby now on second thought would hurt her career too.  
 
What these two stories are really both about, in my mind, is the corruption of euphemism surrounding abortion.   So long as people use the right words and wear the right clothes and come from the right family and couch their decisions about the life and death of their children in the politically correct verbiage, we celebrate their decisions, either way.   But, peel the euphemism away and let a patently immoral fame-hungry mental midget truthfully articulate a common rationale for abortion and.... we recoil in horror.
 
But it is the act itself that is horrific, not the language in which it is dressed, nor the person who does it.
 
 

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