I think maybe I gave you the sense that the example was cleverer or more profound than it really is. I think it’s just straightforward and you probably mostly already get it.
The thing that happens (not all the time, but fairly frequently, like at least 10% of the time and maybe as much as 40 or 50%) is that the pro-life advocates will make appeals that depend upon a certain concept of a thriving, happy child. Like, they’ll write a story in the first person about a child’s life and all their hopes and dreams and accomplishments, but end with “but that never happened because my mommy aborted me.” Or they’ll wax eloquent about how good it is to be alive, generally, speaking unacknowledged-ly from the perspective of a person whose basic needs are met and who grew up with a happy family and supportive community, and then try to draw a straight and uncomplicated line from that to “therefore, no fetus should ever be aborted.”
(“No fetus should be aborted because life is good” being the unstated link in the chain, and by leaving it unstated that makes it harder for people to bring up “but sometimes life can genuinely be so not-good that it’s not worth living, and isn’t that relevant?”)
TBC, I think there are similar blindspots and skipped steps and fabricated options on the other side of this argument, which is why I personally liked what I saw as the less uneven-by-design footing of the framing of the issue in the John Irving novel.
I think maybe I gave you the sense that the example was cleverer or more profound than it really is. I think it’s just straightforward and you probably mostly already get it.
The thing that happens (not all the time, but fairly frequently, like at least 10% of the time and maybe as much as 40 or 50%) is that the pro-life advocates will make appeals that depend upon a certain concept of a thriving, happy child. Like, they’ll write a story in the first person about a child’s life and all their hopes and dreams and accomplishments, but end with “but that never happened because my mommy aborted me.” Or they’ll wax eloquent about how good it is to be alive, generally, speaking unacknowledged-ly from the perspective of a person whose basic needs are met and who grew up with a happy family and supportive community, and then try to draw a straight and uncomplicated line from that to “therefore, no fetus should ever be aborted.”
(“No fetus should be aborted because life is good” being the unstated link in the chain, and by leaving it unstated that makes it harder for people to bring up “but sometimes life can genuinely be so not-good that it’s not worth living, and isn’t that relevant?”)
TBC, I think there are similar blindspots and skipped steps and fabricated options on the other side of this argument, which is why I personally liked what I saw as the less uneven-by-design footing of the framing of the issue in the John Irving novel.