Lifesite does it again

[pegkerr]

Get a load of this particular hobbyhorse.

Not content with the critical skills offered by Michael O'Brien, that "foremost Harry Potter critic" (see here) Lifesite helpfully publishes another essay with this fascinating hypothesis:

We wish to hypothesize that the popularity of the Harry Potter series is due to the fact that the themes and the main character strike deep chords in the minds of our younger generation because they are abortion survivors.

Read the rest here.

Really, there are no words.

(Well, maybe you have some. Let 'er rip.)

Comments

[lilisonna.livejournal.com]

Every so often, I am confronted with the bald fact that there are people out there who do not live in the same world as I. It always leaves me somewhat shaken and confused. This is one of those times.

[snippy]

People can and will stretch any story to rationalize their beliefs. It's clear that the appeal of Harry Potter is mainly attributable to it being the Chosen One version of the Hero's Journey; that kind of story has *always* had broad appeal among children and adults.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

For example: The Pooh Perplex.

B

[avengangle.livejournal.com]

I really don't think that 50% of first-world children (you know, the ones who can afford to read the HP books -- and can READ) are 'abortion survivors'. Even if there was an abortion in the family. As usual, the anti-choice people are making an assumption that all abortions are done for the same reason: people want to kill babies. (And I'm making an assumption that all anti-choice people are the same, but I am so sick of this black-and-white mentality which has nothing to do with protecting children and everything to do with punishing women for having sex and possibly even enjoying it.)

Also, I think there's a very good chance that a mother would not tell her child that she had an abortion prior to that child being conceived, if she could at all help it.

The authors of this article (and the pseudo-scientist who came up with PASS) are talking about such a minuscule subset of any given first-world population, if they are even talking about any people at all. They've decided that THIS is the reason for the HP phenomenon?

What a disgusting term and a disgusting hypothesis.

[skg.livejournal.com]

And are there really countries where "the majority of children are aborted"??

[alfreda89.livejournal.com]

I remember reading during the last years of the USSR, birth control was so unreliable (rumored to be so because white Russians were outnumbered and women could not be bribed to have enough babies to even up the numbers) that the average young Russian of a certain age had probably had 4 or 5 abortions. (even if married or in a long-term relationship). Because they had no food to feed that extra mouth.

Don't know if those numbers have ever been pinned down.

Abortion Survivors?

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

What the hell is an "abortion survivor"? It certainly can't be someone who has survived an abortion.

B

Re: Abortion Survivors?

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

Yeah, no kidding. Talk about Procrustean beds.

Re: Abortion Survivors?

[psychic-serpent.livejournal.com]

Isn't everyone ever born sort of like an "abortion survivor"? Or are planned kids exempted. I know ONE PERSON whose mother seriously considered aborting him, but instead married the father and then divorced him ten years later after a totally sucky marriage that her father talked her (and her husband) into. Does that make HIM an abortion survivor? I think he'd only deserve that label if she'd actually gone to the illegal abortionist (it was 1969) and then she was still pregnant after the procedure. THAT'S an abortion survivor (either that or a woman who has an abortion but nearly doesn't survive it, which was definitely a possibility with backstreet abortions in 1969).

[sternel.livejournal.com]

I wish to hypothesize that these people are so busy bashing Harry Potter because they're deathly afraid their kids will find it more interesting than their own drivel.

No wait, I don't wish. I do. Try claiming your ideas, guys.

(AND. "Abortion survivors?" What useless phrasing. Since I was not aborted (says she, obviously, as she is here to type this), does that make me an "abortion survivor?" Wouldn't that mean anyone drawing breath is an abortion survivor? Including the authors of this ridiculous phrase? And since they, abortion survivors all, are demonstrating with all this flailing that they are not in fact deeply struck by HP, their hypothesize fails. Sorry. Better luck next time.)

Whew. After all that I need more coffee.

[sternel.livejournal.com]

*hypothesis. See? I do need more coffee!

[skg.livejournal.com]

In the same vein: I was also not exterminated in Nazi Germany (having not been born yet) so does that make me a Holocaust survivor?

< /tongue in cheek>

The whole thing is the most bizarre explanation for the HP phenomenon I've ever heard.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

Maybe they're right. After all, if you were born after abortion was legal (I wasn't, my brother was) you have at least some more assurance that your parents wanted you. Wouldn't that give you a bit more kinship with Harry, whose parents loved and wanted him so much and yet couldn't stay with him?

(I'm pretty sure this isn't what O'Brien is getting at. On the other hand I have noticed that people who are parents now seem in many ways to be emotionally closer to their kids than almost anyone I remember from my youth or have heard about from older times. You yourself are a prime example. No, I *don't* think this is because the parents had the option of abortion - but if up against Mr. O'Brian, I might enjoy setting forth that argument.)

[malinaldarose.livejournal.com]

Um. *points to icon*

[dreamflower]

0_o

*blink*blink*

Of all the stupidities I have ever heard of, this one has to be in the top ten of stupidities!

Everyone who is alive is an "abortion survivor" in that anyone who is born was not aborted. *shakes head*

Ridiculo!

What a boggart!

[dreamcoat-mom.livejournal.com]

These people really, truly scare me, because they so completely believe what they're saying, and they're programming raising their children to think in the same extremist way. Their numbers are growing, and I find it worrying.

That said, I'm noticing more and more fundamentalist families who were death on Harry Potter coming in to check out the books, one after the other. There is plenty of good stuff in there on which even the most devout Christian can hang his hat. The problem is that one has to read beyond the first book, which the author of the aforementioned article failed to do. (Funny how that seems to be the case--that these so-called lit critics either fail to read the entire series, or "skim" the books for "textual evidence" they can cite out of context.)

Dipsh**s.

[barondave.livejournal.com]

Well, G_d is the biggest abortionist, so we are survivors in the sense that we have survived the natural odds which are against us. That's not what he meant, of course, but it's one way of looking at it.

These people are clinically insane, and just don't live in the world G_d created. Sad, really.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

Uh...er...but...that's...

You're right. There are none.

[angevin2.livejournal.com]

*blink*

*blinkblink*

Okaaaaaaaaaaaay!

[kijjohnson.livejournal.com]

...because they are abortion survivors."

Sickened as I am by the general statement, I also laughed hard at the end. WTF? "Abortion survivors?"

[pennswoods.livejournal.com]

Oh, that gave me a good laugh. The world really is full of all sorts. Man alive!

I expect if they're practicing Catholics then they consider anyone who is the child of parents who practiced any sort of birth control an abortion survior ('cause life begins at erection, you know).

[jennisis.livejournal.com]

*shakes head*
What sheer nonsense!

[wintersweet.livejournal.com]

I just totally boggled my entire household by reading that aloud. The last two words have just made everyone else's brains seize, cramp, and implode.

[joelrosenberg.livejournal.com]

"Post-abortion survivors are all those individuals who could have been aborted, but mere chance or the fact that they were wanted saved them from termination."

By that definition, almost all people born in the US in 1973 or later are "post-abortion survivors."

Doesn't sound to me that it's a terribly useful definition of a class, beyond "Americans who were 34 or younger in 2007," but, sure, the Harry Potter books seem to be popular among Americans who are 34 and younger. And also among those who drank milk in school at an early age.

"Post-abortion survivors", we learn from this helpful essay, have a "fear of death," (as opposed to folks 35 and above, who fear death not at all, presumably). In his next installment, perhaps the helpful Dr. Ney will tell us that post-abortion survivors often wear shoes, and listen to music.

[aeditimi.livejournal.com]

Your comment cracked me up beyond belief! But of course, I drank milk and wear shoes.

[aeditimi.livejournal.com]

wow. the Drs. Ney got all that from reading *just the first Harry Potter book*? How good of them to delve so deeply into a literary canon before attacking it (says the woman who read *all* of the Left Behind series in rapt horror at the bad writing and worse theology, just so I could answer questions on it; if I had to read 12 Tim LaHaye books, they could read seven Rowling books). I bet they also gleaned all that about households where there was an abortion without actually growing up in one.

Also, my favorite part about anti-Potterites is that they always quote "there is no good and evil, only power and those to weak to seek it" without bothering to mention that *Voldemort* says it. That's like saying that the Bible says, "there is no God" without bothering to mention the preceding words ('a fool says in his heart').

Uh, yeah, I think we're pretty much all abortion survivors in that we made it into this life. We're also stillbirth survivors, by the way. And SIDS survivors. If the good doctors think a household with an abortion or contemplated abortion in it is traumatic, I suggest they do a little research into houses where children are born and neglected or abused. I humbly suggest that that might be a better use of their time and care.

It couldn't possibly be that fear and struggle and that feeling of being left out and awkward and sometimes in danger and struggling to overcome all that are just part of the human condition sometimes, and a pretty good author is able to capture that? Nah.

[nmalfoy.livejournal.com]

Hm. This abortion survivor mentality might explain our collective love for coffee.

MY ABORSHUN SURVIVORZ LET ME SHOW YOU THEM

So does "abortion survivor" mean our mothers tried to abort us but were unable to do so?

[wild-patience.livejournal.com]

wow, I guess that when you only have a hammer, everything really does look like a nail.

This web site should make up its mind: is Rowling eeevil for writing pro-witch fiction or is she not evil for rallying all those poor little abortion survivors?

As someone above noted, the writer of the article quotes something that Voldemort says and, giving no context, implies that it is Rowling's belief. I can't decide if that's more dishonest than lazy or more lazy than dishonest.

[kokopoko.livejournal.com]

WTF?!? That is unbelievable. Really, some people are just plain cuckoo.

[auriaephiala.livejournal.com]

So I checked with Google: "As many as 30 percent of all pregnancies end in miscarriage, half of them before the woman even realizes she is pregnant. [http://www.healthsquare.com/fgwh/wh1ch27.htm ]"

Seems to me this would imply that we're all "miscarriage survivors" -- as though that would be in the least relevant.

Really, this page is a perfect example of illogical reasoning from questionable "facts". The writer needs a good course in critical thinking and essay writing.

[elthionesse.livejournal.com]

Given that the authors of the article are also the developers of the PASS theory, I think that this is obviously less a case of people trying to legitimately criticize Harry Potter than it is a case of people trying to ride J.K. Rowling's coattails in order to publicize their own "work."

[oursin.livejournal.com]

Abortion didn't suddenly come into existence c. 1970 - it became legal and safe. There were significant numbers of deaths from illegal, 'backstreet', and even medically performed abortions before then, particularly pre-antibiotics and blood transfusion. During the early C20th many women habitually took what they believed to be pills to 'bring on the period' (these were 99.999 recurring % scams), sometimes even before the period was actually late, because they were so scared of another pregnancy in times when birth control was hard to obtain and not very reliable.

And I could go back a lot further, e.g. to ancient Egyptian texts which detail supposedly abortifacient procedures.

Women's desire not to be pregnant in particular personal life-circumstances has immensely deep historical roots. And women used to die horribly in great numbers, or suffer serious lasting effects to their health, for that reason.

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