Nashville News Blog

When does human life begin? Birth? Then killing a pregnant woman can't be double murder. Tax and insurance dollars shouldn't be used to save babies in the womb.

We can't have it both ways.

Oh, please, Bubbadog. Telling the truth is now grotesque? Then why isn't the anti-abortion crowd pissed off that the White House Faith Based Partnership is going to oppose this?

Because what Hargrove says is true--they don't think you should be using birth control, either. There is no sane common ground with these folks and they're the representatives of the anti-abortion movement.

If they don't speak for y'all, you need to change leaders.

Until then, don't blame Hargrove for speaking the truth.

Aunt B:

My own views on the way to reduce abortions are much closer to Obama's. A complete ban would just drive it all back underground -- dangerously -- and would be no more effective than Prohibition. Personally, I think the people who oppose sex education (when abstinence-only demonstrably doesn't work) and who oppose contraceptives are nuts. And for these folks, as I said above, there truly is no compromise.

The part of Mr. Hargrove's post I objected to is the blatant generalization in his first paragraph: that pro-lifers aren't sincere in their profession that abortion is murder and that what they really don't like are reproduction and rights.

You can be firmly pro-choice and still recognize that the anti-abortion movement is nowhere close to monolithic. If you're even halfway objective, you don't have to spend much time talking to these people (or arguing with them, as I often have) to figure out that many if not most DO sincerely believe that abortion represents the taking of a life. Many of them honestly see themselves as latter-day abolitionists whom most of the rest of the country will one day come to view as having been right.

You don't have to agree with their prescriptions on what to do about abortion -- you can think many of those Rxs are loopy, as I do -- to recognize the sincerity of their position behind their ideas. And when you scratch below the surface, you find they don't even all share the same prescriptions. The most extreme would ban all abortions, even in cases of rape/incest and even if the mother's health is at stake. Others would carve out exceptions at various points along the spectrum, and far from all (even among Catholics) believe that contraception and sex education are wrong.

So for Mr. Hargrove to write a first paragraph as he did betrays either a shocking ignorance or a willful misrepresentation -- neither of which is appropriate for someone who wants to be taken seriously beyond the "vile orangutanguage" (in Ogden Nash's phrase) of the blogosphere.

My movement? Boy, aren't we presumptuous.

I truly hope you are not so young and inexperienced, or so poorly trained as a reporter, to believe that the loudest faction on one side is representative of the entire movement. By your logic, MoveOn.org and Code Pink are representative of all liberals, or conservative evangelicals are representative of all Christians.

You really owe it to your readers and to your employer to be better than this.