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Well, if you redefine violence then you can prove that anything is violent

Change the meaning of words and you can indeed prove anything you want to:

The passing of the “global gag rule” effectively launched the Trump presidency. (It was scrapped by Joe Biden soon after his inauguaration a few weeks ago.) The ruling meant an increase in deaths by illegal abortion for thousands of women throughout the developing world. Its effects have been as cruel as they are precise. No non-governmental organisation (NGO) in receipt of US funds could henceforth accept non-US support, or lobby governments across the world, on behalf of the right to abortion. A run of abortion bans followed in conservative Republican-held US states. In November 2019, Ohio introduced to the state legislature a bill which included the requirement that in cases of ectopic pregnancy, doctors must reimplant the embryo into the woman’s uterus or face a charge of “abortion murder”. (Ectopic pregnancy can be fatal to the mother and no such procedure exists in medical science.)

At a talk in London in June 2019, Kate Gilmore, the UN deputy commissioner for human rights, described US policy on abortion as a form of extremist hate that amounts to the torture of women. “We have not called it out in the same way we have other forms of extremist hate,” she stated, “but this is gender-based violence against women, no question.”

It could be all sorts of things. An advance in civil liberties in that it saves some children from being killed. A reverse in civil liberties in that it fails to enables the killing of some children. Could be a good idea, could be a bad one.

But what it’s not is violence against women.

The reason that it’s said that it is is that we’ve a long running and very deep societal response to violence against women. Probably, in fact, innate in the dimorphic nature of the species. So, call to that by invoking violence for things which are not in fact violence.

It’s good rhetoric but like so much of that it’s not in fact true.

Being anti-abortion may or may not be a good thing. Government not spending upon advancing abortion rights may be a good or a bad thing. But neither are violence.

9 thoughts on “Well, if you redefine violence then you can prove that anything is violent”

  1. I remember being given a letter by my Mum explaining my absence from school being due to feeling ‘”queer”. I was young and gay in those days too…….

  2. We’ve just printed a poster for the department of health that promises safe abortion. Safe? The death rate is fifty per cent or greater.

  3. The left have been at this for decades: My ‘Peaceful Protest’ is your ‘Violent Insurrection’.

  4. Moloch cults used to throw little children into a furnace to appease their evil god, but thankfully we’re a lot more enlightened now and simply burn them to death with chemicals while still in their mother’s womb.

  5. Related.

    From Steve Sailer:

    New Accusations Against Po-Mo Philosopher Michel Foucault

    The philosopher Michel Foucault, a beacon of today’s “woke” ideology, has become the latest prominent French figure to face a retrospective reckoning for sexually abusing children.

    …..

    For example, Foucault begins with his usual tactic of making the assertion that history shows that something that might seem like common sense (making child molestation illegal) was only recently socially constructed, so therefore it could (and thus should) be deconstructed:

    “This regime is not as old as all that, since the penal code of 1810 said very little about sexuality, as if sexuality was not the business of the law….”

    …..

    Foucault was an evil man.

    But he was right about something: that power helps you control discourse and controlling discourse helps you have power.

    https://www.unz.com/isteve/new-accusations-against-po-mo-philosopher-michel-foucault/

  6. Since they’re non-governmental organisations, I believe that they should receive no money from the government. Thus if anything is going wrong, it’s all their fault.

  7. It’s not US policy, it’s individual states’ policy. Don’t they understand how federations work?

    More likely, they do, but absolutely LOATHE localised decision-making.

  8. Just imagine being so inoculated, so pampered, so cushioned from the realities of life, that you believe – and apparently expect others to share that belief with you – that *this* is violence. Also, imagine the shock she will feel should she encounter actual violence for the first time. [No, I’m not wishing ill-will upon her]

  9. Doesn’t this policy on US Aid and abortion flip flop based on party who wins presidential election, nothing to do with Trump and Biden specifically just normal US politics for decades

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