The Needle Was Not Moved

An Invited Response

     One of the more fascinating side-effects of spending time on Substack and taking the opportunity to engage in nuanced conversation with folks with whom one might normally disagree, even vehemently so, is that it can help a person to reduce their tendency to have a knee-jerk reaction. Asking for clarification happens on here a lot more than it might on other platforms like X or Facebook, and that is, believe me, all to the good. When one takes the approach of ‘This person isn’t necessarily trying to always get one over on me’, it offers us the chance to actually get to know them before responding to their input. It may help us understand why they hold the positions they do, and perhaps even help us empathize with their position, even if we don’t agree with it.

     This happened to me just yesterday, in point of fact. Whilst responding to a comment made on, well, one of my own comments on another user’s post, someone landed in my notifications with a quick exhortation of, “Get a vasectomy!” Now, it might be natural to assume that this person was abjuring this of me because we are in socio-political opposition in many ways, it would seem from a brief look through her profile and a look at some of my own comments and Perspective pieces, but I wasn’t absolutely certain, and sought her clarification, asking if this was in response to the fact that I make it known on my bio that I have six kids. “Yes, that’s a lot,” she effectively replied, to which I joked that, well, my wife and I have already got her outpaced, since I have an appointment for “The Ol’ Snip” in a couple of weeks. Good natured ribbing, in other words, and I’m very fortunate to have taken the chance to seek that clarification.

     The user in question here goes by PegsM, @Pretland on Substack if you’re looking to search her up. After a couple more back-and-forth quips, she linked me to one of her recent Posts, a deeply personal testimonial regarding her own experience with abortion. Given that I do not wish to rob her of traffic, I’m going to link to this Post of hers, so that when I make reference to it, you good folks will be able to quickly reference the original material in question:

     My Personal Story About Abortion - PegsM

     Now, before I proceed, it is my suspicion that Pegs had no overt maliciousness in heart or mind when she linked me this Post of hers and asked for my thoughts/response. I believe she genuinely hoped that her personal experience might sway me out of my largely pro-life position, one that I do not regularly or routinely expound upon or make central to any of my fiction materials or non-fiction commentary, but which becomes clear if one spends any degree of time actually looking through what I have occasionally said on the matter. This is especially apparent for those who have read or listened to my Amelia City Story, “Unnamed Vengeance”.

     Part 1 can be heard here: Unnamed Vengeance- Part 1

     Part 2 here: https://www.bitchute.com/video/QT9FHNuUv0Hy

     Part 3 here: https://www.bitchute.com/video/VjurVsfdlBx2

     I know, perhaps not the right time to shamelessly promote my own material, especially a version of it that sidesteps the paywalled version I have posted up here on my own Substack, but I’ll be changing the status of that story soon enough and making it free to read anyhow.

     In any event, Pegs’s story is harrowing, heartbreaking, and it certainly takes a great deal of personal courage to come out and share such a thing with the world at large in the form of a public posting of this sort. However, what I believe was her intention, which was to make me second-guess my position, stands as a failure. I’m sorry to say, Pegs, that your experience did not move the needle for me. And now, I’m going to explain why that is, and believe me, I’m aware that my explanation is going to make me come across as an absolutely callous prick.

     Given that I don’t appreciate attempts at being emotionally manipulated into changing my position on such intense topics, however, I’m not all that inclined to give a shit if that’s how I am perceived in the aftermath. I’m also not inclined to declare with absolute certainty that her intentions herein were to sway me via an appeal to emotion, because outside of this brief interaction on Substack Notes and reviewing her profile here and reading this Post, I do not know her, and do not possess psychic powers to determine the precise nature of her motivations. Sure, I can make an educated guess, based on what I have seen and read, which is at its core what most people tend to do. Yet, without an admission on her part that this was indeed her intention, I am not in a position to make such a blanket assertion.

     With that out of the way, let’s examine a few key points made throughout her Post and why they don’t budge me from my own stance regarding abortion, which is, to clarify, that I don’t believe it should be practiced outside of exceedingly rare circumstances.

     To begin with, PegsM’s situation took place in 1986, whilst she was enlisted in the United States Army. She was informed by her military physician that her developing baby had a rare medical condition, anencephalism, which is to say, the child was literally developing with no brain. She quotes the doctor as informing her that such circumstances were not conducive to functional life, period. Being distraught and seeking some hope, she procured secondary and tertiary opinions, but all indications were that the first analysis had been correct; no matter what course of action she chose, her developing child would not live.

     This is an absolutely brutal set of circumstances to be staring down the barrel of, there are no ifs, ands or buts about it. I would not wish this on anyone, even someone who I actively detested, and I do not detest PegsM; I barely know the woman, after all. But let’s again take a look at this situation, because, unlike the presumption that gets cast upon all pro-life leaning persons, this one actually fits into one of the very rare circumstances wherein many of them, myself included, would say, “Okay, that’s a circumstance wherein I can completely understand wanting to have that procedure made available to the would-be mother.”

     But this is, again, an extremely rare situation. It doesn’t cover the norm, in any way, shape or form. Just because I’m reading of this experience from this singular person, who went through it herself, does not mean that the procedure should be make blanket available across the board for any and all who select it. I’m sorry, but the personal appeal to emotion, predicated on a singular person’s traumatic past set of circumstances, does not convince me to change my stance.

     Now, let’s move on to the second problem with PegsM’s Post in regards to shifting positions. She makes it clear that she was in the Army, and that this was in 1986. Having served briefly in the United States Air Force, and having numerous family members and friends who were or are still in the service, I am aware of the fact that when you sign those enlistment contracts or extension papers, that there is a clause included therein, one with which I have huge reservations, because it is downright shameful that it is still in there: when you sign on that dotted line, you legally become classified as property of the United States Department of Defense.

     Property.

     This is historically and currently disgusting.

     As a member of the US military, your personal rights are limited in a way that otherwise defies most reasonable description. And let us be clear, this loss of personal agency and control is not made transparent by recruiters or drill sergeants (or technical instructors, depending on your year/branch of enlistment) when you’re signing up or when you’re early on in training. However, Pegs makes it fairly clear that she’d been enlisted for at least a couple of years when this set of circumstances collided with her day-to-day life.

     She would have reasonably understood the UCMJ by this point.

     She would have reasonably understood that she had extremely limited personal agency as an enlisted person.

     She would have reasonably understood that her military doctors were subject to that same exact set of rules, regulations, and contractual obligations.

     I can predict that someone might very well, at this juncture, be thinking, ‘Well Josh, she wasn’t thinking reasonably at the moment, she was pregnant and being told that her developing child would not be afforded a viable existence, no matter what course of action she took. Can’t you give her some grace or wiggle room here?’ My response is as follows: Sure, I could give 1986 PegsM some grace and/or wiggle room, but not 2024 PegsM, who is conveying this tale from the Land of Ago, nearly 40 years removed from the moment. I do not doubt in the slightest that the events of that time haunt her still to this day, I’m not a complete and total heartless monster. However, I am also not an emotional pushover, so please, next question.’

     As I said earlier, at this point, if you’re still reading, you might well be thinking, ‘Josh is being a heartless prick here’. I accept that perception. It still doesn’t change my mind.

     Now, to her credit, PegsM goes on to relate to readers that her experience caused her to ultimately end up working as a nurse in the civilian sector, working to help grieving mothers whose children are extremely ill or who end up passing away. She clarifies in the piece as well that she could have gone to a different state to receive the procedure in a civilian setting, but the cost would have been quite prohibitive, and did not calculate for the challenge of childcare for the child she already had, a four-year-old at home. These certainly are complicating variables that make things quite the mess.

     But I once again return to the simple fact that her circumstances are not everyone’s circumstances, they are not universal, and that her own variables are being presented here in her Post, it would seem, as more appeals to emotion than to logic and reason.

     She wraps her Post by saying that nobody should be in the circumstances she was in, and in that regard, I concur. Sadly, nobody has absolute control over all facets of life, and we all face challenges and variables that are not of our own design or choosing; that’s just part of the human experience. You can’t legislate for that, or demand that everything else around you be flatlined or shifted to accommodate your personal situations and circumstances. But she then goes on to play a rather shitty version of Pascal’s Wager with readers, and this dialectic tactic is manipulative and unappreciated by those of us familiar with it in the extreme. She says at the end of her Post, quote,” If anti-abortion extremists continue to dominate our discourse and define our policy, more and more people will.”

     For starters, extremists from the pro-abortion side already dominate discourse and define policy in numerous states, like the one I live in, Minnesota. Here, thanks to Tim Walz’s signature on the bill presented to him by a supermajority Democrat controlled state house and senate, an unborn child can be aborted up to and including the moment of active labor. While this has yet to happen that I’m aware of, the fact of the matter is, such a circumstance is allowed for by the black-and-white letter of the legislation as passed.

     Same goes for New York State.

     And New Jersey.

     And Colorado.

     Yet in every state that is more conservative, and that does have an effective X number of week ban on abortion, exceptions for the allowance of the procedure are still written into the language of the laws.

     So, PegsM, which side of the conversation precisely is being ‘extremist’ in all of this? Because predicated just on this, your assertion is constructed on a foundation of swamp mud. As for the notion that anti-abortion extremists ‘dominate our discourse’, I’d invite you to compare and contrast the number of folks who have been arrested, terminated from employment, or simply censored in online discourse for espousing either pro-life or pro-abortion positions; you’ll see that the ‘domination of the discourse’ weighs in favor of the pro-abortion side pretty heavily, because they never seem to suffer such punishments for simply arguing for their side of the debate.

     But the viewing of these fact patterns relies upon using observation, facts, and historical evidence, rather than relying on an appeal to emotion. It relies upon, “Count the actual numbers and come back to me,” which is cold, clinical, analytical. Yes, some might even say that it seems almost inhuman.

     Secondly, in light of her quoted final line above, I referenced Pascal’s Wager, which leans with all possible weight on the notion of “What if X, Y or Z?” This is easy enough to counter, however, by pointing out the historical record; per the American Medical Association statistics on listed reasons abortions have been sought since 2000, ‘Non-viable fetus’ measured at just shy of 4% of all abortions nationwide. I don’t believe we should allow the unfettered practice of a medical procedure that effects 4% of 50% of the national population.

     And that 50% only comes into question if they get pregnant.

   In summation, I’d like to return to the invitation PegsM gently put forth to me, asking for my thoughts regarding her Post. The invitation was, I believe, genuine. I think she saw someone commenting on a Note by user WagsSuperior from a position oppositional to her own, decided to have a little well-meaning banter with said person (myself), and thought that maybe, given my willingness to offer her the benefit of the doubt in those few exchanges, I might be swayed by the nature and content of her personal story.

     This was a miscalculation on her part, however. When I started writing this response, I was operating on the strong suspicion that she was attempting to be emotionally manipulative about the whole thing, but at this point, I don’t think that’s what’s going on here. I think it’s more likely that she hasn’t been able to locate and engage with someone who holds a stance in opposition to her own who was willing to partake in a nuanced breakdown of their own position and/or how they might respond to her story. I’m not willing to write her off for future dialogue simply given her position on this one topic of conversation, as many possibly would. However, I will note for future reference that, going forward, if there is continued dialogue between us, I will on the lookout for appeals to emotion from her.

     Because it serves me no good to just say, “Well, you didn’t mean to be doing that,” and let it pass like water under the bridge. Only an idiot doesn’t learn that when you touch the stove, you get burned.