kicking puppies is bad

I went to see Lake of Fire tonight:

Tony Kaye, director of the controversial American History X, spent 15 years researching and filming this extraordinary documentary exploring the abortion issue in America. Kaye devotes equal time to both sides, interviewing extremists and average citizens, as well as interspersing thoughtful commentary from political activist Noam Chomsky**. An intelligent and compelling investigation into a very complex topic, it also is very graphic in showing the physical and psychological realities of abortion and is not recommended for the faint-hearted. The Dryden’s special three-day run will qualify Lake of Fire for a Best Documentary Academy Award® nomination.

In some ways it was a beautiful documentary. And for those of you in the Rochester Area, it is playing here for a few more days and I mostly recommend seeing it. But I have to say I was a little disappointed. I was hoping there would be more time spent on the “why” issue (especially since one of my personal heroes, Noam Chomsky, was “interspersing thoughtful commentary”).

I really wanted to know why people hold the beliefs they do. What thought process led them to their beliefs? I already knew that the fundamentalist christians believe that abortion is wrong because the Bible says so. Interspercing clip after clip of crazy pastors condemning abortion didn’t provide me with new information. I want to know why abortion is such a big issue for them. Clearly shellfish is also condemned in the Bible. Why are some parts of the Bible more important than others? I wanted an explanation that went beyond, “God says so”. Because if you read the Bible carefully, God said a lot of weird things. And most christians ignore quite a few of those things.

I wanted explanations from the other side too. There were a plethora of clips from pro-choice protesters who critiqued the arguements of their pro-life counterparts. But they never explained why they felt abortion was OK (or possibly the lesser of two evils). They never explained why “life” starts at birth. Does it have to do with viability? Levels of cognizance? Or do they consider the fetus a life, but value the mother’s happiness more? Why do they feel the way they do?

I taught ‘Child Development’ at Purdue University for a semester. And for me, my tenuous stance on abortion deals with my understanding of fetal cognizance. And when I came to that realization, I also realized that a cow is more cognizant than a fetus at 8 weeks. After deciding that it is probably morally icky to kill sentient beings for no good reason, I became vegetarian. But I still don’t really understand my stance on abortion.

** Please note that while I refer to Noam Chomsky as a personal hero, I don’t necessarily agree with his political beliefs. And I definately don’t agree with his beliefs on language acquisition. I just really like the way he thinks and presents his arguements. And while I don’t agree with a lot of his viewpoints, he is a lot smarter than me. So I acknowledge that he is probably more often right than I am.