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12/01/2004: "How to Talk to a Dittohead about Abortion"

If you’ve been successful so far in sticking knives into Dittohead arguments about Iraq and Moral Values using the natural inconsistencies and pretensions of their bizarre worldview, they will likely, in desperation, play the abortion card. Nobody other than a Dittohead would bring up this topic in family conversation. Dittoheads see playing the abortion card as their nuclear option, the equivalent of final defensive fire when an army platoon is being overrun. You should welcome the abortion gambit! View it as the opportunity to launch a devastating counterattack to a first strike that your opponent will mistakenly believe to be irresistible. Indeed, their overconfidence in “the overwhelming moral superiority” of their position will leave them highly vulnerable. So here’s how it will likely go down. Your Dittohead party guest will launch with a phrase along the lines of “it’s like the holocaust all over again.” Your innocuous answer should be “are you aware that many forms of contraception work by preventing a fertilized egg from implanting? If, as you’re saying, life begins at fertilization, contraception is a far greater evil, since there are thousands and thousands of non-implantations for every abortion. Are you advocating banning contraception?” Now that you’ve got them back on their heels, move to turn the tables. “Anti-abortion politicians want to imprison and even execute desperate women and their doctors. Is that really what you want?” Then, while they’re quibbling and qualifying, come back with “and isn’t this all about freedom? I thought conservatives support freedom so passionately that you want to go to war to bring it to other countries. Shouldn’t people who don’t interpret scriptures the exact same way you do to have the freedom to decide for themselves what is moral? If you truly had confidence in your beliefs, shouldn’t you be trying to convince them that they should live their lives by these beliefs, rather than trying to get cops and judges to lock them up? Doesn’t it show a very basic form of insecurity when you have to turn to civil power rather relying on prayer and witness? And isn’t turning to the civil authorities exactly what the High Priests did to shut Jesus up when too many people were listening to him? And isn’t that why the Gospels describe lust for civil authority as a temptation of Satan? And just who is telling you that the US should be creating entirely new classes of criminals, anyway? I’ll tell you who I think it is!”