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The DePaulia

The Student Newspaper of DePaul University

The DePaulia

The Student Newspaper of DePaul University

The DePaulia

Ben Carson’s violent abortion comments are ignorant

(TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE)
(TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE)

Ben Carson’s stance on abortion is direct and uncompromising: all abortions should be banned, regardless the situation. If the woman was raped, if it is a case of incest, if the mother’s life is in danger it simply does not matter. Most recently, Carson has drawn an epic comparison between women who have chosen to undergo an abortion and slave owners whom he said “thought that they had the right to do whatever they wanted to that slave—anything that they chose to do.”

The comparison he draws between African-American slaves and unborn fetuses has a number of ethical and moral implications and no true base in logic or reason.

“We’ve allowed the purveyors of the vision to make mothers think that that baby is their enemy and they have the right to kill it,” Carson said.

But the argument that women see babies as an enemy is an unfair one to make. It ignores that there are situations in which a mother knows she realistically would not be able to provide for a child, either financially or emotionally. This violent image Carson creates between mother and fetus disregards circumstance and instead overgeneralizes a profoundly sensitive women’s issue. These kinds of comments are rooted firmly in ignorance and we have seen time and time again from the mouth of conservative Republicans, but Carson has enraptured the media with his uniquely intolerant take on the issues.

Nevertheless, “if you had to win a popularity and a likability contest he would probably come out on top,” Fox News host Neil Cavuto said of GOP presidential hopeful Carson. Carson is a renaissance man. He has mastered pediatric neurosurgery, insensitive references to the Holocaust and a general disregard of women’s rights to their bodies throughout his career.

These recent statements comparing pro-choice women to slave owners adds to the problematic discourse and opinions Carson has brought to the highly broadcasted political platform.

This is not his first reference to slavery. He also referred to Obamacare as “the worst thing to happen to our country since slavery” in 2013.

References to the Holocaust are also abundant in Carson’s political discourse. When discussing the issue of gun control after the recent shooting at a community college in Oregon, Carson said “the likelihood of Hitler being able to accomplish his goals would have been greatly diminished if the people had been armed.”

On defending the use of the Confederate flag, Carson said “swastikas are a symbol of hate for some people, too. And yet they still exist in museums.”

Carson broadcasts a healthy amount of prejudice, as proven when asked about the potential of a Muslim becoming president.

“I certainly hope it never happens,” Carson said. “And I certainly wouldn’t want to do anything to facilitate changing America to something else.”

These statements all disregard the historical and daily struggles of a variety of racial, social and religious groups. Specifically, most detrimental is his attack on Planned Parenthood and by extension women’s access to safe abortions, affordable birth control and STD testing.

Carson believes that abortion should be illegal, “even in cases of rape and incest” on the grounds that he “would not be in favor of killing a baby because the baby came about in that way.”

His views support the belief that life begins at the moment of conception and therefore “innocent life must be protected.” Over the years, he has donated to a wide spectrum of faith-based entities in order to preserve his oath of protecting life. The only validity to these points is their alignment with his religious beliefs, which can be interpreted as a violation of the separation of church and state, as discussed in the US Constitution. These should have no place in his intentions as a potential president. Discussing the morality of abortions is generally weaved with religious views on abortion. Roger Rosenblatt, a writer and essayist for TIME, confronted the issue of religious text in American government in his essay “How to End the Abortion War.”

“Americans are moral worriers,” Rosenblatt said. “We tend to treat every political dispute that arises as a test of our national soul. The smallest incident, like the burning of the flag, can bring our hidden religion to the surface. The largest and most complex moral problem, like abortion, can confound it for decades.”

But this vastly oversimplified connection between abortion and Planned Parenthood is what has fueled pro-life activists to defund Planned Parenthood. Their argument stems from the idea that their religious beliefs are being degraded through funding abortion through taxpayer’s dollars. In reality, abortion services make up only 3 percent of total Planned Parenthood services, which is minor compared to the 42 percent that goes toward STI/STD Testing and Treatment.

Carson supports plans to defund Planned Parenthood under the claim that he “knows who Margret Sanger is.” He said she was a racist eugenicist who premeditated Planned Parenthood’s “clinics in black neighborhoods” as a way to “find a way to control the population,” Carson said.

Margret Sanger was a birth control activist, sex educator and founder of Planned Parenthood. Incriminating documents have come out linking Sanger to eugenics and racist ideology, asking the public to “see what many people in Nazi Germany thought about her,” Carson said.

Most all these claims are falsely quoted, misread and due to the outdated nature of her work published in the early 20th century. In reality, Sanger was utilizing the popularity of pre-Nazi eugenic ideology to further her cause.

“Many historians now believe that Sanger opposed eugenics along racial lines,” according to the PBS feature “The Pill.” “Furthermore, Sanger opposed the belief of many eugenicists that poverty was hereditary, asserting instead that poverty, criminal behavior and other social problems were due to environmental factors and were not predetermined.”

Carson’s extremist views are not representative of the Republican Party as a whole but are instead a warped version conservative values. To overgeneralize Planned Parenthood as a means of controlling minority population and murdering fetuses funded through taxpayers dollars is not only unfounded factually, but harmful to the rights of all humans. His political rhetoric targets vulnerable women outright, but its implications expand much further than that. To use religion as a force of violence against others entirely discredits the doctrines wrapped up in empathy and compassion fundamental to that religion. The severity of his words do not allow for dialog or sympathy, instead takes pro-life ideas to a violent extreme. Through these attacks on the fundamental rights of women, Carson has proven that he is a presidential candidate of unparalleled ignorance.

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    Write my university assignment for meMay 3, 2019 at 7:55 am

    In an interview so peculiar and tangled that even David Lynch would battle to comprehend it, Ben Carson revealed to Chuck Todd that ladies who have premature births resemble slaveowners who “felt that they reserved the privilege to do anything they desired to that slave.”