A Brief Statement on Grammar and Ethics, for the Spies and Screenshotters Out There

Last updated on: January 22, 2018 at 2:22 pm by Rebecca Bratten Weiss

A Brief Statement on Grammar and Ethics, for the Spies and Screenshotters Out There 2018-01-22T14:22:53-04:00 Rebecca Bratten Weiss

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It has come to my attention that certain bloggers and online characters have been attacking me for a supposed statement that “the unborn are not being oppressed by abortion.”

It would seem that certain bloggers and online characters have difficulty with basic reading comprehension. I’m trying not to be too judgmental about this. Not everyone has the same gifts. I am hopeless at playing wind instruments, for instance.

Happily, there are adult continuing ed classes that will help them better to understand complex sentences. Such classes are even available online, for those who love to spend all day at their screens.

It’s largely a matter of indifference to me, what people say in their little game of online telephone, and I find this bickering to be a waste of time that could be better spent on growing vegetables and writing poems. But I do want to address this one, because in spreading inaccuracies about my own statements (I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that they are simply intellectually muddled, and not deliberately malicious), these individuals are doing harm to the reputations of those affiliated with me. This is not pro-life behavior, folks. I know getting working mothers fired is a bit of a turn-on for some fringe oddballs, but this is not the kind of titillation that sits well with a wholesome sex ethics. Y’all are creepy, and need to cut it out.

My actual statement, on a friend’s Facebook page, was screenshotted and shared around by people who have too much time on their hands:

“The prolifers claim to be speaking for those who can’t: the unborn. But they fail to grasp that the unborn aren’t being oppressed because a powerful demographic is choosing to oppress them. Women choose abortion because of our own oppression. Marching for the unborn ends up being worthless if you aren’t marching – and advocating, and voting – for women first.”

If this is confusing, imagine for a moment that I look out the window and see a lot of birds poking about in my lawn. Imagine that my daughter says “the birds have come to our house because they are spies of Mordor!” If I say, in response, “the birds have not come to our house because they are spies of Mordor,” I am not denying that the birds have come to our house. I am simply pointing out a failure to posit causality accurately.

Of course, I could be misjudging the screenshotters, bloggers, and radio personalities out there. Perhaps they do have reading comprehension, and are actually taking issue with my statement of causality. In which case, if they are arguing that women willfully choose to oppress the unborn through abortion, I stand by my assertion that the alt right wing of the pro-life movement is not a friend to women – and therefore will continue to fail to protect the unborn, as well.

I take a both-and approach, as asserted in my screenshotted statement, and in all my writing on this topic.

I invite others who are attempting to be pro-life to do likewise. It’s the morally consistent aproach – and, as an added bonus, the morally effective one.

image credit: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1d/Confused_young_woman.jpg

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