Obama Declares Gitmo Detainees ‘Fetuses’

Scott Ott‘s latest parody news story:

In an effort to shut down the U.S. Naval Detention Center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, thereby restoring America’s moral standing in the world, President Barack Obama today declared some 240 enemy combatants held at Gitmo to be ‘human fetuses’.

In an executive order, the president said, “Since I ordered Gitmo shut down, and people don’t want us to bring the inmates here, the only way to extract them from the facility is to change their legal status to one that offers us more choices.”

More at the Examiner; the rest is rather less funny given the nature of abortion.  Personally, I support human rights for both fetuses and accused terrorists but Scott’s juxtaposition about the blithe acceptance of one and the frenzied reaction to the other is apt.

Photo by Flickr user AmnestyInternationalNorthernIreland under Creative Commons license.

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James Joyner
About James Joyner
James Joyner is Professor and Department Head of Security Studies at Marine Corps University's Command and Staff College. He's a former Army officer and Desert Storm veteran. Views expressed here are his own. Follow James on Twitter @DrJJoyner.

Comments

  1. Herb says:

    Apples and oranges.

    If we’re concerned with exposing pro-choice anti-torture types as hypocrites, great. If we’re concerned with exposing philosophical weaknesses in the pro-choice, anti-torture position, there’s more work to be done.

  2. FranklinTest says:

    This is similar to an argument presented in our college daily years ago that mocked pro-life people for generally being pro-capital punishment. A letter to the editor a day or two later simply asked, “would you rather kill fetuses or convicted criminals?”

    But I agree with Herb in general that these issues are so different that there’s very few overlapping arguments to be used. While I’m somewhere in the middle on the abortion issue (if it’s possible to be so), I’m convinced that torture is ineffective, immoral, and illegal, in addition to stoking anti-Americanism unnecessarily. Only one or two of those arguments could apply to abortion.

  3. JKB says:

    Being declared a “human fetus” by Obama would give a whole new and terrify aspect to the promise of universal healthcare.

  4. Rick Almeida says:

    Out of curiosity, James; at what point in fetal development would you (personally) say that human rights attach to the fetus?

  5. James Joyner says:

    Out of curiosity, James; at what point in fetal development would you (personally) say that human rights attach to the fetus?

    No later than week 5, certainly. By that point, there’s no real question that a human being exists.

  6. Rick Almeida says:

    Thanks for the reply.

  7. G.A.Phillips says:

    “would you rather kill fetuses or convicted criminals?”

    You can only kill a fetus by accident.

    Why are people who go to college so dumb, oh ya cause they been taught by liberals.