As some of you are aware, I debated Joyce Arthur at Queen’s University yesterday afternoon. Behold: my short report.
There were about 150 students there, though I am bad at estimating crowds. It was peaceful, with the exception of some guffaws of laughter at me from a very limited group of possibly 5 to 7 anti-Andreas. (I am working with the language here, since I got called anti-choice all night. Incidentally, this suits me just fine since I am anti-this-one-“choice”. Those kids were certainly Anti-Andrea. Probably anti-life, too, if I were to guess. Oh yes, I have a keen sense of discernment.)
Joyce was respectful and pleasant in her demeanor, and wore her trademark flower as well as a lovely black skirt. She wore a shirt too, I might add, but I didn’t notice it in particular.
The question: Can Canada have a maternal health policy that excludes funding for abortion?
As expected, I said Yes We Can! My arguments came down to 1) describing that the unborn are human like you and me therefore abortion means taking a life and 2) highlighting the way in which abortion is irrelevant for saving women’s lives. I showed (if I do say so myself) a great graph showing how Canada’s maternal mortality declined well prior to 1969.
I found Joyce’s arguments (not surprisingly, let’s remember whose web site we are on) less than compelling. To address the humanity of the unborn she said simply it doesn’t matter, because the woman still decides. She is very set on legalization of abortion western-style for the developing world, so much so that she failed to wholly address the fact that maternal mortality declines with good medical care, sans abortion. She made the point that abortion is a mainstay of every woman’s life: normal and routine, nothing to see here. So where my main point was to ask the question that if we can decrease maternal mortality without abortion, and the data clearly shows we can, why wouldn’t we do it? However, she doesn’t view abortion as negative, so she sees no point in trying to avoid it.
That was jarring for me, as I suspect it was also jarring for those girls in the audience who have had abortions. There’s no amount of saying something is super easy that will make it so, when it’s not.
My other points: abortion in the developing world has been used to get rid of girls, legal abortion does not equal safe abortion, limited funding from government means we ought to use measures that garner the biggest bang for your buck (things like providing antibiotics and oxytocin).
I believe the only video recording is on my iPhone, so I’ll try to get that up. It’s not the greatest quality, sorry. I also have an audio recording of dubious quality, but I’ll transfer it to my laptop and see if I can improve it there.
Many thanks to the University of Ottawa pro-lifers who came out to support me! I think the bulk of the audience, however, was neither strongly pro-life nor strongly pro-choice and therefore this was a great event to introduce your average student to both sides of the story.
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To address the humanity of the unborn she said simply it doesn’t matter
It “simply doesn’t matter” if innocent human beings are being killed?! Wow, that is a chilling statement.
This is chilling, yes. But it is is also the standard pro-choice view, for those willing to admit it. Camille Paglia had this to say: “Abortion is the extermination of the powerless by the powerful.”
See http://www.prowomanprolife.org/Thanks_Paglia080923.png for more.
“The woman decides” Joyce Arthur claims. How about deciding before jumping in bed with someone? Intelligence, independence and power of will goes out the window when we can’t resist the opposite sex?
Where are we? In the Middle Ages, or countries where women really can’t defend themselves?
We can say “No,” can’t we? And that is what it means to decide!
As a student at Queen’s, I was so happy that my peers could hear the pro-life side articulated so clearly, intelligently and charitably when society and our professors (for the most part) readily hide the truth on a daily basis. I don’t know if hearts were changed, but I know many of my classmates were challenged to think more seriously about abortion. Thank you so much for coming!
Andrea: it was nice to meet you in person. I thought you were really sharp throughout the whole debate. You are an excellent spokesperson for the pro-life cause!
I thought Joyce’s attempt to portray abortion as something normal and routine really fell flat. I can’t imagine that would appeal to anyone but the most radical of the “pro-choice” crowd.
By denying that the humanity of the unborn child matters, Joyce is rejecting human rights in favour of a hierarchy of rights based on raw power. I think it is critical to expose that position for what it really is. I also think it is telling that she seemed unconcerned by the issue of coercion, stating that “all of our decisions are constrained” (or something to that effect).
Good for you you, Andrea- sounds like you did very well and made some great points. I totally agree with your arguments- especially considering the humanness issue. I just wanted to respond to Hanam’s comment. Since the topic of maternal health relates a lot to Canada’s international development policies these days, I don’t think the comment about deciding to “jump into bed” is fair, especially in light of one of Jennifer’s recent posts about rape being normal in various places around the world, especially in countries like the DRC. I don’t know the exact proportion, but I think one can easily say that many women in these contexts who have experienced an unplanned pregnancy did not make a choice to “jump into bed” with anyone, but were forced.
That being said, I don’t believe open access to abortion would bring much if any resolve to women in these circumstances, or would play any role in changing the situation at hand. Instead, the root of the issue needs to be addressed in these situations. Plus- I always go back to the humanness argument.
Thank you Rebekah for the clarification. I sure didn’t mean women who live in places where they tragically have no choice in the matter.
Planned Parenthood/Pro Choice is abandoning any discussion or argument about the ‘humanity’ or the ‘personness’ or the viability etcetera of the unborn. One obvious reason is that all the evidence supports the unborn as human, a person or whatever. The other reason is that they have decided that the issue is really one of ‘value’ as in you have your ‘values’ and I have mine. Besides all the inherent logical inconsistencies, like whose ‘value’ decides that the issue is only about values we see here a complete departure from science, rationality and the concept that propositions are either true or false as in say; ‘Is it true that the unborn is human?’ or ‘Is it true that values are neither true or false?’. Planned Parenthood/Pro Choice offers instead: ‘Who cares? I do what I like’.
P.S. Thanks for Saturday’s debate.
Excellent job, Andrea! I think you win because you used more evidence to support your conclusions that if the goal is health, then abortion doesn’t help.
Here’s a picture of an Anti-Andrea:
http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcR2S0Xe40X7UMLjZ27_s1Ki-naAgmZbRlwk4gZ8cQsK9ceVhE_x5A