By Hilary White
TORONTO, May 22, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Writing in this weekend’s National Post, columnist and author George Jonas decried what he identified as the intellectual dishonesty of the abortion movement’s arguments for “choice” and abortion as a woman’s right.
Comparing modern abortion supporters to the ancient warrior city state of Sparta, whose law allowed infanticide for unwanted children, Jonas wrote that the difference now is that while for Spartans ‘unwanted’ meant ‘substandard’, “for us it means ‘inconvenient.’
“We don’t want standard or even superstandard children if they cramp our style.”
Jonas, though not himself pro-life, slammed the abortion movement for trivializing abortion and exalting women’s quest for “self-fulfillment.”
“We invent euphemisms,” he wrote, “such as ‘choice’ for killing, and sophomoric dilemmas, such as pretending not to know when life begins, to ensure that nothing hinders Virginia’s quest for Santa Claus. No obstacle must interfere with her goal of self-fulfillment.”
He writes that, while he is not “necessarily” against abortion, it is because he is also not necessarily against killing, but insists that the abortion movement admit the reality of what abortion is and drop the pretense of ‘women’s rights.’
“I don’t particularly mind abortion on demand; I mind only the arguments used to support it. My quarrel is with those who would oppose abortion if they thought it amounted to killing.”
Jonas is one of the most respected political writers, poets and novelists in Canada. He has written 14 books, one play, and two operas. His 1984 book “Vengeance”, describing the retaliatory strike by Mossad agents against the perpetrators of the terrorist attacks on the Munich Olympics has been the basis for two films, “Sword of Gideon (1986), and feature film Munich (2005), directed by Steven Spielberg.
Jonas takes to task the mental evasions required of abortion supporters, “First…they must pretend not to know when life begins. They must pretend not to realize that life is an autonomous process, a continuum from zygote to old-age pension, a self-elaborating force that begins when it begins and keeps growing unless it’s vacuumed out first.”
Jonas is no stranger to the duplicity of ideological propaganda. He worked as a radio producer in communist Budapest before escaping after the 1956 Hungarian Revolution and for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation from 1962 to 1985 as a scriptwriter and producer.
He called a “legal fiction” the idea that a court can judge that a human life begins “at some arbitrary point”. He writes, “I think legal fiction should adopt the notion that life begins at 40 for the comfort of those who cherish their convenience but have no stomach for killing.”
He effortlessly picks apart the popular abortion slogan that asserts it is about the right of a woman to “control her own body.”
Speaking, he says as an “ex-fetus” Jonas says, “That would be valid enough in the realm of smoking, diet, liposuction, or sex—but abortion? Abortion means controlling someone else’s body.”
Read Jonas’ column:
https://www.georgejonas.ca/recent_writing.cfm?id=536