An astounding majority of the stagnation and hostility of the abortion debate stems from both sides impugning the other’s motives. Most pro-life people simply want to protect the lives of the unborn, not control women’s bodies. Most pro-choice people simply do not view a zygote or a fetus as a human life, or, as the polls point to, view abortion as a necessary evil that ought to be limited to rare occasions.
But every once in a while, a bad actor lets the mask slip on their whole charade, and today, it’s a professional bully Jameela Jamil masquerading as a rah-rah feminist. (Just to illustrate, Jamil has called Beyonce a “stripper,” the Kardashian matriarchy “double agents” for the patriarchy,” and Karl Lagerfeld a “fat-phobic misogynist” just hours after his death.)
I had an abortion when I was young, and it was the best decision I have ever made. Both for me, and for the baby I didn’t want, and wasn’t ready for, emotionally, psychologically and financially. So many children will end up in foster homes. So many lives ruined. So very cruel.
— Jameela Jamil ? (@jameelajamil) May 13, 2019
Jamil concedes here that what she terminated was not a sack of cells. It wasn’t an insentient fetus incapable of pain. It wasn’t an entity devoid of a heartbeat.
She calls the thing she terminated a baby.
The shockingly less pernicious argument with this concession would have simply been to argue that her abortion was a trade-off. She could say that her abortion was the best decision for her, and the baby was just collateral damage. Slate’s Will Saletan frequently writes in this philosophical space, and while I disagree with him, he has a body of ideologically consistent and interesting moral cases for the pro-choice cause.
But instead, Jamil comes to a horrifying logical conclusion: that kids in foster care couldn’t possibly have a life worth living.
Jamil had a mealy-mouthed follow-up tweet, saying she wasn’t dissing all foster homes, but “if Georgia becomes inundated with children who are unwanted or unable to be cared for, it will be hard to find great fostering for them all.”
Her reasoning, that some kids in foster homes may not live a good life, should chill you to the bone for two reasons.
First, the logic inevitably extends to any potential life you could argue suffers more than average. Consider the leftist logic, that if straight, white men have it easier than anyone else and those on bottom of the intersectional hierarchy are oppressed for life, perhaps minorities don’t have lives worth living. The logical connection: If life is hard for anyone other than a straight white male, and if life is hard for people raised in foster homes, then why bring them into this world at all?
Second, Jamil denies that life itself is an inherent good. To the contrary, life is nasty, brutish, short — and the greatest gift we get. Sure, own up to your human sacrifice of a baby in exchange for ease, but do not deny everyone who has ever lived and suffered the one good that they got.
I’ve snarked about Jamil before, but this is simply too grotesque to mock. I can only hope that my pro-choice friends reject the madness of her logic and prevent our society from gradually embracing a utilitarian disdain for the value of human life.
