I've been watching Breaking Points since Krystal and Saagar left Rising to start it. I watched them on Rising before that. Although I do disagree with them pretty often, I find their commentaries refreshing sometimes. A big part of what they are about is shunning the divisiveness and lack of fairness and objectivity of legacy news organizations. Krystal is a liberal/progressive, and Saagar is a conservative, and they sometimes disagree with each other. But at least they allow both sides to be heard. Each of them will also critize politicians who happen to be on their side, which I also appreciate.
One issue Saagar is not conservative on is abortion. He's pro-choice. My suspicion is that most republican politicians are probably either secretly pro-choice or they just don't care about the issue. They're politicians, so they just do what politicians do, which is to support the team and say whatever they must to get elected. Although I disagree with Saagar's pro-choice stance, I appreciate that he's honest about his position.
The pro-life position has never, as far as I've known, gotten a fair hearing on their show. Today, Ryan and Saagar put out a video clip where they were talking about a video clip where Bill Maher said he agrees with pro-lifers that abortion is murder, but he's okay with that. After commenting on the video, Ryan and Saagar began to perpetuate two myths pro-choice people have about the pro-life position. I left comments about both.
One myth is that the pro-life position is strictly a religious point of view. I've met a lot of pro-choice people who are under this impression. Here's the comment I left about that:
Ryan and Saagar are both perpetuating the myth that the pro-life position is strictly a religious position. If it were, there wouldn't be such a thing as the Secular Pro-Life organization. While most pro-lifers probably are religious, and many of them have religious reasons for being pro-life, the primary argument made by the movement is entirely secular. The argument is simply that (1) It's wrong to take the life of an innocent human being, (2) abortion takes the life of an innocent human being, (3) therefore, it's wrong to have an abortion. Almost everybody agrees with that first premise (except maybe Bill Maher), so the issue comes down to whether or not abortion takes the life of an innocent human being, and THAT depends on whether or not it's a living human being to begin with. The primary defense of the fact that the unborn are living human beings is biology, not theology. There is so much ignorance on the part of the pro-choice community on this issue.
The second myth is that the pro-life movement is about controlling women, supporting the patriarchy, etc. Here's the comment I left about that:
3:44 "It [the pro-life position] is a fundamental part of upholding the patriarchy. And I think even most pro-life supporters would acknowledge that." Where on earth does he get that idea? I've met a ton of pro-life supporters, and I've never met a single one who would acknowledge that. Being pro-life has absolutely nothing to do with the patriarchy, or controlling women, or anything like that. It has simply to do with the life of the unborn. Until pro-choicers stop making stuff up and motive-mongering, they're not addressing the real issue. You can't persuade somebody of your point of view if all you're doing is making up motives and attributing them to those you disagree with. The other person always knows you're full of it when you do that.
Here's some other stuff I've written on this subject:
A quick and dirty argument against abortion - Here, I made the pro-life argument about as succinctly as I could. See if you see anything religious in there.
What is the unborn? - The humanity of the unborn is the primary reason people are pro-life. Many pro-choicers think the idea that life begins at conception is a religious point of view. See if there's anything religious in my argument.
Motive-mongering in the abortion debate - This is a complaint about the irrelevance of motive mongering both pro-lifers and pro-choicers engage in.
Two pro-choice myths - Here are two other myths pro-choicers believe.
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