My Facebook page has been exploding with pictures like that above. They are usually connected with some statistics about abortion killing 1.2 million per year whereas guns kill only around 2,000. The post then ends with challenging Congress or President Obama to fight the real war on women (or assault weapons).
I agree with the logic. I further understand the hypocrisy of turning a blind eye to the 55 million children legally aborted since 1973 while making it a mission to control guns which kill far less children per year. I get that.
But I’m not a big fan of these memes.
Mostly because I fear that by conflating these two issues we are minimizing both the atrocity of abortion and the tragedy of events like Sandy Hook. We are politicizing pain. It is using one horrible act to make a point about another. Regardless of which of the points you intend to make you are minimizing the other.
Abortion isn’t a statistic to be used to make a point about the lack of childhood death by guns. It’s an abominable practice that deserves its own hearing. It doesn’t need to have gun control as it’s bedmate. In fact it’s distracting to do so.
Furthermore, it is insensitive and unfair to minimize the 2,000 deaths that are by guns by comparing them to another evil. It communicates that the tragedy of Sandy Hook isn’t that big of a deal compared to the tragedy of abortion. Numerically, that might be true. But every human life is valuable. To turn people into statistics is practically becoming guilty of the necessary dehumanizing of children in the womb that one must do to agree with abortion.
Let’s mourn the loss of every human life and not use these tragedies to make a political point. The end result of these memes is to say, “your gun laws are dumb”. The heinousness of abortion deserves far more than that. And the victims of gun violence deserve far more grace and compassion.
