Monday, November 19, 2007

Kudos to them for using the subjunctive tense, though

Not only is it demeaning to liken women to cardboard boxes, but the analogy is completely daft, too.
SCENE: a box factory

NARRATOR: If you thought there was a small chance that a baby was hidden in a box, wouldn't you treat the box as if it held a baby, just in case?

SCENE: an ultrasound image

NARRATOR: So even if you think there's just a small chance that an unborn child is a baby, shouldn't you treat it as if it were, just in case? Something to think about.

The first example is that of a closed box with unknown contents, but you have some (inexplicable) reason to believe that the contents may contain a baby. In this scenario, sure, you might want to err on the side of caution just on the off-chance that someone decided to ship a baby via UPS. Or you might actually look inside the box so that you know what the contents are if you have reason to believe there's a baby in there.

The second case has absolutely no relation with that scenario; instead it relies on the bizarre notion that a fetus has "a small chance" of being a baby. But of course a fetus is a fetus, and a baby is a baby--the desperate need to conflate the two is always bizarre. Further, we might point out that women aren't black boxes. The stages of pregnancy and fetal development are well-known. To compare pregnancy with a closed box whose contents are unknown is just a testament to the determined ignorance of the anti-choice side.

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