Actress Anne Hathaway joined the ladies of “The View” this week and shared a passionate appeal for legalized abortion that echoes some of the most popular pro-abort arguments yet woefully lacks any sound basis in reality.

Praised by the mainstream media for her “powerful” appeal, Hathaway defended abortion with many eloquent, emotive words that ultimately said nothing at all.

Observe:

“When you are a young woman starting out your career,” Hathaway explained, confidently reiterating the longstanding pro-abortion argument that unplanned babies can “ruin” a woman’s career potential. “Your reproductive destiny matters a great deal.”

This is itself predicated on the assumption that a woman’s “career” is not necessarily worth avoiding sexual contact with members of the opposite sex, but is worth poisoning or dismembering an unborn baby in the womb.

Hathaway does not, however, consider herself to be callous towards unborn babies. She also echoed the arguments made by the racist, eugenicist members of the early 20th Century Progressive movement by continuing on to say that it can also be an act of “mercy” to destroy unborn life in the womb.

“My own personal experience with abortion, and I don’t think we talk about this enough, abortion can be another word for mercy,” the actress told the all-woman panel.  

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She continued on to argue that this is because “no two pregnancies are alike.”

So, “it follows that no two lives are alike, it follows that no two conceptions are alike. So how can we have a law, how can we have a point of view on this that says we must treat everything the same?”

"When you allow for choice, you allow for flexibility, which is what we need in order to be human,” she declared.

“By the way, this is not a moral conversation about abortion,” Hathaway also said. “This is a practical conversation about women’s rights … and the freedom we all need to be able to choose and build our lives.”

These are the sorts of comments that I frequently get on social media when I post anti-abortion messages, and many American women would nod emphatically along with Hathaway as “The View” hosts undoubtedly did as she declares “flexibility” is “what we need in order to be human.”

Yet do they stop to consider if it is remotely true?

It takes no great intellectual prowess to refute this flimsy argument, as “flexibility” is not what we need to be human; this is simply not a thing.

What is a thing, however, is the postmodern moral truism that “choice” and “freedom” are necessary human rights, at least when it comes to abortion, a woman’s role in her home, and alternative sexual lifestyles.

We have collectively accepted as a modern people the fiercely protected taboo that it is fundamentally wrong to inhibit another person’s life, that morality is relative, and that no one has a right to “tell anyone else what to do” (sexually, at least, they seem fine inhibiting all sorts of other aspects of our lives, as seen over the last two years).

Yet all law and order and social structures meant to protect the vulnerable and hold the strong accountable for their actions and responsibilities are entirely based on inhibiting human choices that might be destructive to other human beings, to some degree at least.

So it’s ultimately a total non-argument to say something should be legal because, “choice.”

“Flexibility” is no great virtue in and of itself. It’s certainly not cherished by progressives when confronted with the possibility that white people might not want to take personal responsibility for systemic racism, for example, and it wasn’t that long ago that the vast majority of morally convicted Americans would all agree that there should be no flexibility when it comes to sexually assaulting women and children.

I must note that, far too often, Christians end up defending this same kind of “flexibility” when it comes to issues clearly outlined by Scripture; while Christian liberty is very real and can be nuanced as far as what it looks like in the lives of individual believers, it has become all too common to extend this argument of personal conviction to suit the world’s idea of dangerously subjective moral standards, particularly when it comes to sexual and reproductive ethics.

At the end of the day, Anne Hathaway may be a well-known actress, but she is just another American woman who has swallowed and now promulgates the nice-sounding, but logically baseless arguments that lawmakers whose campaigns are supported by Planned Parenthood repeat to preserve the institution of government-sanctioned abortion.

“Flexibility” is not what makes us human. In fact, I doubt Hathaway or anyone else who supports abortion can satisfactorily define what it is that makes us human — because when you refuse to acknowledge that it is the fact that we were created in the image of a perfect almighty God that makes us human, anything goes.

And that’s the kind of moral flexibility that could quickly lead to “mercy” killings of the physically unfit, terminally ill, mentally deficient, or even (hello, Nazi Germany?) those perceived as dangerous or antisocial to the status quo.

You simply cannot bank your entire argument defending the deliberate taking of a human life on “flexibility.”

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