Nathan W. Pyle is the acclaimed creator of the ‘Strange Planet’ series of comics that have taken the world by storm this year.
Praised for his simple artwork with brilliantly-captioned conversations, his comics feature ‘aliens’ that function and interact the same way humans do, but through expressing their feelings and actions in a robotic way. These comics have a satirical, ironic slant to them, and have been a source of immense enjoyment for many, me included.
Recently, an old Tweet of his from 2017 surfaced, where he showed support for #MarchForLife, an explicitly anti-abortion movement in the United States.
Twitter and the Internet were outraged, and understandably so, because prior to this revelation, many were fans of his comics, but learning that his values are against their own have caused much distress for many. As such, they have since started to reconsider their support for him and his problematic beliefs.
On Facebook, I’ve seen a lot of responses against the collective outrage. Some of them include:
“It’s amazing how people have twisted a pure tweet from the artist essentially saying “I’m glad my girlfriend was born” to “I’m opposed to abortion in its entirely and I’m a hardline pro-lifer”
“Imagine being such an avid death cult you take offense to someone saying he’s glad his wife wasn’t murdered in the womb”
“Its hysterical that people will actually allow personal politics to affect their friendships, romances, and what content they allow themselves to enjoy.”
I’ve personally debated this issue with friends as well, and was similarly rather shocked at first by the very strong response on Twitter towards Nathan, with many choosing to ‘cancel’ him. Thankfully, however, many others took a less aggressive approach and parodied his comics instead.
Here are three of my favourites:
Source
Granted, we could give Nathan the benefit of the doubt that he did not know what exactly he was supporting, and it would be good if he actually came out to clarify it.
However, he deliberately dodged the issue and spoke about how he supports democrats rather than republicans, which has nothing to do with confirming his stance on abortion. This was what he tweeted today in response to the outrage online:
Transcribed:
“My wife Taylor and I have private beliefs as they pertain to our Christian faith. We also believe separation of Church and State is crucial to our nation flourishing. Our votes go towards the Democratic Party. Additionally, we are troubled by what the Republican Party has become and do not want to be associated with it”
You see, the thing is, supporting movements like March For Life means one is supporting the removal of a woman’s agency, and her choice with regards to her body.
This is obviously detrimental to women in general, because it seeks to control rather than liberate women. Additionally, proponents of anti-abortion are saying that women who cannot otherwise carry a foetus to term, cannot under any circumstances, abort the foetus.
This applies to all women, whether they had an accident, were raped, or even if the child would grow up with genetic disorders such as Trisomy 18 or 21.
In fact, March For Life propaganda uses women with such stories, with nary a proper argument proferred for their choice to bring children with genetic defects to term.
This movement ignores individual agency and choice, and wants to force people to “respect” life (they insist foetuses are human beings) even though it comes at the mother’s expense, and none of these advocates have shown to be willing to put in any real life effort, money, time or support to these women they want to force giving birth on.
Abortion should be a right for all people, for whatever reason. The responsibility for bringing a life into the world does not end at the hospital. It starts from the moment of conception, to carrying it to term, and all the way until the human is able to fend for itself.
Sometimes, people are just not ready to take on these responsibilities, and that choice should not be removed from them, just because of your personal or religious beliefs.
In fact, they are already exercising responsibility by choosing NOT to take on a bigger responsibility that they cannot handle.
In many instances, for example, it prevents the human that is born from a life of hardship, pain and suffering, which is arguably far more humane than deliberately bringing a life into the world with suffering waiting for them.
Advocates against abortion essentially want to lobby their governments to force or coerce people who are not ready or unable to care for a child, into bringing that child into the world.
This is a violation of human rights, the same way preventing people from giving birth to a child is.
The right to one’s body should be one held in high regard. If it is wrong to force someone to have sex with us, eat something, or do something, similarly, it is wrong to force people to give birth to a human being against their will.
And if Nathan W. Pyle supports that, then it is utterly regrettable (although he has the right to his opinion and beliefs, of course) and many of us simply cannot, in principle, support someone who espouses such views.
As such, we may choose not to follow his work, or not to financially support him. We may however, still enjoy his work, because enjoyment of a problematic person’s art is different from supporting them. Some may choose not to do so, and that is completely their prerogative.
With all these said, though, I don’t agree with resorting to attacking him online for his views, because that’s just cheap, nonconstructive and harmful.
But I do hope Nathan, and other anti-abortionists or pro-lifers, rethink their positions on abortion and reconsider their support of dangerous movements that detrimentally impact the lives of real people.