Before I start this ramble, let me state I am prochoice. This comes from a place of freedom and liberty, from that place comes my outrage at the following. I've been smacked in the face by prolife placards while the Gardaí (Irish police) do nothing but I'll still defend their right to carry those placards.
At the weekend we saw triumphantalism from progressives over prolife campaigners having their posters confiscated by the Gardaí. These were the usual fare of images of a healthy child, blastocysts, fetuses and the after results of an abortion. This was done on the basis of obscenity laws, in the name of protecting children, ironic, no? This was supported by a few political parties. Whilst they were allowed to continue canvassing they couldn't display images of a medical procedure. When I confronted people on this I got a fairly harsh "learn the law" reply. Another irony people campaigning against an injust law, encouraging people to break the law by going abroad to have an abortion insisting laws should be followed without question. Further irony that the prochoice campaign needed the right to free expression in its early days. Other arguments included "they did it first", "wait until you have kids then you'll see my point of view" and "free expression doesn't extend to imagery".
Now I'll break those down a bit.
They did it first:
Two wrongs don't make a right. If you have a valid point you don't need to lower yourself to your opponents dirty tactics to defend yourself. Perpetuating those tactics damages society as a whole, you can't progress doing the same things over and over again. Gaining one advancement to lose another gains nothing, in this case gaining bodily integrity to lose free expression is not worth it because bodily integrity will be the last thing that will be won.
Logical fallacy:
If you ever need to resort to "when you have kids", "your to young to know", "if you had my experience" and similar to end a debate, you've failed to win a debate. When you make a statement the burden of proof is on you, if someone needs a qualifier to see your point of view you haven't explained it properly. Avoiding logical fallacies will help you debate better or help you change your mind, if your argument requires prerequisites that are limited to a subset of people then it's invalid and needs to be redeveloped until you're capable of expressing it.
The law:
"The law is an ass" Charles Dickens. As I said there's a laughable irony in people campaigning against a law, complaining when they perceive a breach of the law. Obscenity laws should only prevent perverts flashing people on the street. Not campaigners using medical imagery or pictures of children crawling around fully clothed. When obscenity laws extend to the removal of medical imagery things are going wrong. Other than the implication of the happy baby crawling is the result of every birth the imagery removed was fact based or the idea that all abortions can lead to infertility, what they use is reasonably science based. Let's play this out, in this brave new world of identity politics we're expected to be sensitive of everyone's God damn foibles all fact based reasoning could be offencive to someone. We've seen this starting in the states with things like "prove gender without using science". If Trump politics will lead the world to Idiocracy, progressivism will lead somewhere much worse.
Offence: (this will be short)
Offence, the inability to control emotional response to a situation. The simple version of offence, "fuck you" can be responded to two ways, "whaa I offended" or "welp that guys a jerk". The more complicated version of offence isn't offence, it's cognitive dissonance, the uneasy feeling someone gets when presented with evidence challenging their views.
Won't somebody please think of the children!:
Don't expect the world to look after your children they're your responsibility. You can't expect the world to stifle itself to make your life easier. Yes raising children is difficult but you can't do it by lying to them pretending the world is wonderful, otherwise your child will grow up to be emotionally stunted and incapable of dealing with the world as an adult. There's nasty things out there and you need to teach them how to deal with them.
Free expression is only speech:
No, then it would be free speech. Our thoughts do not only take place as only words therefore the way we convey information from one to another cannot either. If we allow progressivism to flail wildly down this path we'll end up pre-renaissance, in other words the dark ages. Not just called that due to a lack of adequate lighting but due to the lack of enlightened thought. Quite the dichotomy if progressive thinking leads to a lack of enlightenment. Imagery is an essential part of communication, can you explain a complex hydrocarbon without imagery? Can you express the loneliness of Picassos blue nude in words alone? Can you play a video game without pictures? How many people even use MUDs anymore? All these expressions need more than mere words but if progressivism runs rampant nothing will be safe.
Party support:
Given politicians and aspiring politicians seemed ok using an obscenity law to stop their opponents what will they use in a position of power? How can they represent all people when they find the views of some of them obscene? These lead me to the point that the less power a government has the safer people are.
Ultimately freedom of expression is key to a free society. The ability to freely debate produces new ideas. When subjects become taboo we block an avenue of learning. In this case not knowing the potential dangers of abortion could lead people to believe it is completely safe rather than having inherent risks that come with any medical procedure, unlike what prolife campaigners claim that it's always dangerous, between the 2 sides lies the truth. It reaches further than that the more taboo subjects, the more approved speech, the less we can watch and the less we can read, the less we can think, it doesn't matter if we're thinking progressive or conservative as long as we are all thinking the same, the easier we are to manipulate and control. How can you know you're thinking for yourself if you're not allowed to view all sides of a debate? Question everything, believe nothing without investigating it yourself and don't back down until you are satisfied.
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