With yet another healthcare bill before Congress comes yet another argument about basic human rights: What is a human right? Life, liberty, happiness — healthcare? What about abortion? Lena Dunham, the country’s favorite feminist and star of HBO’s “Girls,” recently said abortion is “the most basic of all human rights.” Not only is this absurd on its face, but contradictory, hypocritical, and represents a terrible example to young people looking up to the Hollywood star.
In a brief video, Dunham and other Hollywood stars like Jennifer Lawrence and Jon Hamm urge concerned citizens to phone their senators and tell them to support Planned Parenthood. Of course, the House version of the healthcare bill eliminates almost $400 million of the yearly federal funding Planned Parenthood currently receives. The federal government is the largest source of funds for Planned Parenthood.
Liberals begging their representatives to support Planned Parenthood is nothing new. Seeing Hollywood stars do their bidding is a bit out of the ordinary, but what’s most extraordinary is Dunham’s insistence that abortion “is the most basic of all human rights.”
Call me pedestrian, but when I think of human rights, I simply recall the Declaration of Independence: life, liberty and that relentless pursuit of happiness. Those things are basic, yet essential: Imagine living here without that? Daily life would feel volatile, fleeting, and shrouded in anxiety.
But abortion as a basic human right? The language itself is a total contradiction and thus so hypocritical it’s hard to take seriously. Abortion, whether liberals admit this or not, takes the life of a human being.
So now it’s a right to take another life? If that were actually the case, anarchy would be so pervasive there wouldn’t even be time to watch “Girls.” Everybody would be watching their backs for anybody ready and willing to exercise their “right” to exact vengeance, settle a score, or just take a life in cold blood.
Of course, the broader picture of Dunham’s ludicrous comment is that she and many liberal Hollywood stars (but I repeat myself) believe healthcare is a human right. Since Planned Parenthood receives federal funding and provides healthcare, whatever else they do under that umbrella should be a right too.
Not only is abortion not care, but actually providing for the healthcare of other people isn’t a basic right either.
Disagree?
Think about it this way: Does someone else have to pay for you to have life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Not really.
Does someone else have to pay for your healthcare? There you go.
Finally, Dunham is a superstar to a whole generation of girls who love “Girls.” Telling them abortion is not only normal but a right is as illogical as it is immoral. It’s not enough for Hollywood liberals to push the pro-choice envelope. Abortion can’t just exist. It has to normalized, then cool, then hip, then a full-on right like the right to life.
Ironically, Dunham is promoting anything but the right to life, and that’s why her views on this should go in the trash with the rest of her feminist rubbish.
Nicole Russell is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is a journalist in Washington, D.C., who previously worked in Republican politics in Minnesota. She was the 2010 recipient of the American Spectator’s Young Journalist Award.
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