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abortion

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.