I admit I wasn't overly worked up either way about U.S. Olympic gymnast Simone Biles dropping out of the team competition in Tokyo a couple weeks ago, thereby costing her team the gold medal. I thought it was a little weird to call one of the most decorated gymnastic champions of all time a "quitter," and I thought it was even weirder to call someone a "champion" or "hero" for dropping out of a high-pressured event.
My overall attitude when it happened was something along the lines of, "Biles dropped out, U.S. took silver, let's get on to water polo."
But with her final games in the rearview mirror, Simone Biles has decided not to let her name slip from the headlines or her identity from the public consciousness. To ensure that doesn't happen, the Olympian has opted to begin weighing in on extraordinarily divisive cultural and political issues via her social media accounts. What could go wrong?
Biles decided to author the epitome of a shallow, selfish, and stupid take on abortion that has America's former sweetheart encouraging the systematic elimination of babies bound for the foster care system.
Why do so many of us get frustrated when athletes and entertainers post their political hot takes for the rest of humanity to see? It's not because we think those people have no right to their own opinion. It's because we are collectively dumber as a society when exposed to ideas akin to, "I think if we just murdered more kids in the womb we'd have less social problems."
If you missed it, here's what Biles posted:
Last week, I applauded how God has so effectively used the current debate over COVID vaccines to expose the fraudulence of the "your body, your choice" canard. Social liberals like Biles often push for vaccines on the premise that not getting one endangers the health of another person's body. Remember this recent gem from the New York Times:
Yet Biles and the left bizarrely and curiously dismount their human rights high horse when the "other people" in question are tiny babies who can't speak for themselves. The issue with abortion is, and has always been, that the "body" dismembered by the violent procedure isn't the one who sought it. That little body is given no choice. In a demonstration of profound moral cowardice, Biles runs away from that inconvenient reality and leaves it unaddressed.
For the sake of her intellectual and ethical credibility, she probably should have taken that same approach when it came to her thoughts about the foster care system. Cowardice is a more admirable trait than cruelty, after all.
But anticipating appeals to the compassionate alternative to abortion, adoption, Biles foolishly attempted to explain why death in the womb was preferable. Her justifications for that macabre position were three-fold.
- The foster care system is broken.
- The foster care system is tough.
- Adoption is expensive.
To a mind operating with even the slightest bit of moral grounding – one that hasn't been conformed into the prideful, self-worshipping spirit of the age – those are reasonable arguments to (1) improve the foster care system, and (2) lessen the costs associated with adopting kids. They are, however, despicable justifications for exterminating children.
What Biles implicitly advocates here is the moral equivalent of proposing the answer to global poverty is to nuke the third world. Murder is not ever an appropriate solution to our social problems.
When others noted the horrific implications of her ill-advised post, it provoked an embarrassed defensiveness from the gymnast, who objected that she did not imply what she unquestionably implied.
After declaring she supported the choice to execute a baby in the womb, Biles used 12 eyeroll emojis to scoff at the idea that placing a child up for adoption was a preferable option. Doing so, she explained, often results in a young person placed in the "broken" foster care system. The obvious implication, intended or not, was that abortion was a reasonable, morally equitable, and sometimes even pragmatically preferable path.
What's telling is that from the agitation evident in her Twitter response, it's apparent that Biles' own conscience knows how appalling it is to suggest that killing a baby is ever a morally justifiable proposition. As one who rose from being an "unwanted" foster care child herself to becoming one of America's most decorated Olympians, that makes logical sense. Which makes her claim to be "very pro-choice" all the more disappointing.
To that end, it may be Biles' intention to parlay her gymnastics notoriety into a career of social commentary. If this recent post is any indication of logical acumen, here's to hoping she'll voluntarily withdraw from this arena as well.
—
P.S. While you're here, treat yourself to our latest awesome video about Rashida Tlaib getting busted partying maskless with tons of people after flaming Rand Paul over the same thing 👇
