Construction sites, DDT, and abortion

I read a news story some time ago which made me chuckle. I can’t remember the details, but it was something like this: A Christian activist firebombed an abortion facility (I think it was in Wyoming or Utah or somewhere). She was accused of an act of political terrorism. Her conservative attorneys argued that the abortion clinic hadn’t opened yet, so she had only vandalized a construction site. The leftist attorneys prosecuting her argued that it was destined to be an abortion facility, so that meant that it was an abortion facility from the day they broke ground, thus she was a terrorist. I remember reading this, wondering if either side had considered that their argument was directly at odds with their views on the topic at hand: abortion. This reminded me, naturally, of DDT. And as it turned out, sorting that connection out in my head ended up helping me in just a few weeks.

A few weeks later, I overheard a discussion in the bleachers of a volleyball game about abortion. One person said that abortion was wrong, because it was killing a baby. The other person said that it was not murder, because it was not yet a baby. They were getting miffed at one another, so I tried to change the subject: “Hey! Did you folks know that they banned DDT back in the 70s?” They looked at me blankly for a second, then the pro-abortion lady rolled her eyes and said of course, so I continued: “Do you know why they banned DDT?”

The pro-abortion lady was all over it, and she pointed out that DDT made the shells of birds' eggs thinner and fragile, which led to decreased birth rates for birds. Thus, the name of Carson’s famous book, Silent Spring. I nodded thoughtfully then asked, “Well, yeah, but I don’t understand. If they were worried about not having enough birds, why did they care about eggs? Eggs are not birds, obviously. I don’t get it.” She knew she had a problem, and she looked very peeved, but she didn’t say anything for a second. So I continued: “Wait a second – I wonder if we protected birds' eggs, and increased their birth rates, I wonder if we’d have more birds? I wonder if that’s what they were thinking? Hmmm…”

She snapped, “You think you’re clever, huh?”

I responded, “If you understand that damaging eggs leads to less birds, and you still support abortion, then you are a monster. You don’t think that there are too many people. Otherwise you would have killed yourself already. You think that there are too many other people. Planned Parenthood was started by Margaret Sanger and other eugenicists who thought that there were too many of a very certain type of people. There’s no reason to support abortion other than to have less people. Not less of you. Less of other people. You’re a monster.”

She was yelling over my last few sentences, so she didn’t hear the witty conclusion that I had formulated a few weeks before. She was pissed. Really, really angry. But interestingly, she didn’t argue any of my points, or explain why I was wrong. She just called me a fascist and a Nazi. Which is pretty weird, considering our respective positions on population control.

I’ve spent a lot of time over the past 10 years or so, trying to understand the thinking of leftists. I figured that once I understood their thought process, I would become more sympathetic to them.

I was wrong.

I was very, very wrong.