Gods of Suffering

Although I am hardly versed in the arguments against abortion, there is one such argument which is unavoidable. They are words which are almost always used against anybody supportive of abortion, and go something like, “It's life. I could never kill life.” These words, or words like them, were repeated yesterday and will be repeated today; they will also be repeated tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that. No doubt, they will forever be repeated, and repeated, and repeated, for as long as we inhabit the earth, and from the moment abortion was practised they have doubtless been spoken. Of course, the words have been vehemently contested and criticised, not in the least because pro-life supporters are socially irresponsible and irrational, and I have little interest in repeating what is obvious. But I'll repeat it anyway, because I often do things which I have little interest in doing, and who knows, perhaps I even enjoy it. These words, which criticise abortion on moral grounds, exemplify Pavlovian conditioning to the highest degree; anybody who utters them must be ignored, ignored because their reasoning faculties have seriously failed. There.

But that is not all. Suppose I am correct in what I'm saying, that those who utter such words utter them vacuously, vacuously because they have been conditioned to do so. They have used no logic or rationale; they are incapable of doing so; they have not considered the consequences, neither for themselves, nor for the child, not even for society. On this basis, we can forgive them simply because they are foolish; we can say to ourselves, “Never mind. It is not their fault. They are just a bit silly, that's all.” But what if their silliness, their irrationality, even their stupidity, is all of these things but something more, something far more ominous and malicious? What if their decision to ignore the logic of abortion and pro-create, what if their decision to give life is not an act of charity, but precisely the opposite: what if it is an act of thievery? Indeed, what if it is not simple thievery, but thievery and malice taken to the highest degree, an act of narcissism which directly produces another in the narcissists image – my little boy, my little man, my little me. Worse, what if it is worse than narcissism, because in behaving the way he or she does, the pro-creator produces another being without that beings consent. In a word, what if, in the moment of creation, the narcissist, so devout in his or her belief in pro-creating, becomes God, and pro-creates precisely because of this reason, simply because they have the power to do so?

In Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Idiot, Ippolit Terentyev, a nihilist who is dying from consumption, just before his failed suicide attempt, proclaims: “If I had the power not to be born, I would certainly not have accepted existence on these absurd terms.” Ippolit's claim stems from his disavowal of God. It is not that he doesn't believe in a future life or providence. “Most probably it all does exist,” he says, “but we understand nothing of that future life, nor anything of the laws that govern it." Obedience, he continues, and obeying “without question, out of pure decorum” is not only unacceptable; ascribing our conceptions to providence out of pique “greatly demeans” providence. Finally, he asks, “if it is so difficult, even absolutely impossible to comprehend, how could I be held responsible for failing to make sense of the incomprehensible?” Although today's pro-lifers no doubt come in various stock, as mentioned before, it is the act of destroying life which they revile most; the act of playing God, so to speak. Yet, the question I ask is: what is the difference in giving and taking, what is the difference between charity and thievery, when the end-result, the moment of being or not-being, is the source of unhappiness and misery? How can those who support pro-life on the basis that that they are not God and cannot play God, justify their decision to pro-create, when the act of pro-creation is itself an act of God?