While it was refreshing to see the turnout for the March for Women's Lives on Sunday, it was also sobering to read the New York Times story yesterday about the change in tactics by anti-abortion organizations. The blockades of the late '80s/early '90s, while not completely gone, have largely given way to legislative efforts and "family friendly" attempts (web sites, literature) to win younger people to their cause. The Bush Administration is loaded to the gills with people who, as Sen. Clinton put it, "consider Roe v. Wade the worst abomination of constitutional law in our history." Even so, opponents have been backing away from the idea of an outright ban and instead have been lobbying for laws and regulations that gradually erode the right to choose. The whole frog in a pan of water concept keeps springing to mind.
Of course, none of this is news to anybody who follows the issue. And while the "mainstream" anti-abortion contingent insists they have no connections to violence or illegal activities, clinic workers and doctors continue to be harassed and threatened. The "pro-life" movement may have begun to adopt a friendlier façade, but it's still fueled by the same anti-woman rights agenda that's always lurked at its core. They can afford to appear magnanimous now that they have like-minded and equally intolerant allies in the White House, is all.
It took a while, but hopefully the march this weekend is indicative of a reawakening for women's rights supporters. And while photo ops with Ashley Judd and Heather Thomas are fine and dandy, none of it means dick if people don't vote this fall. Supporters had eight years of Clinton to grow apathetic with the assumption that women in this country would always have access to safe, legal abortion. Since Bush took office, however, we've seen the ban on so-called "partial birth" abortions, the passage of the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, and the imposing of waiting periods on women seeking the procedure. Meanwhile, the judicial appointments stack up, and a whole generation of Americans are growing into adulthood who have never known what it was like to live without reproductive freedom.
Something else stood out about the Times article. It quoted somebody in the anti-abortion movement as talking about how all they want to do is limit the number of abortions. First, well gee, that's all anybody wants - abortion rights supporters don't want the U.S. to become like Russia, where having an abortion is a kind of birth control. Second, whoever they quoted is lying, because if the anti-abortion movement really only wanted to limit the number of abortions, they wouldn't block attempts by Planned Parenthood and other groups to educate young people about birth control and prevent unplanned pregnancies in the first place. The fight against abortion is still just one facet (albeit a pretty hefty one) of the Christian right's attempt to advance their fundamentalist dogma. Enough is enough.
What kills me about the Bush administration's stance on abortion is this: Bush, while Governer and while campaigning for president, was not secretive about his desire to shrink the federal government and put more power in the hands of the states. Fine. That is a legitamate policy agenda. Except that he does a 180 on issues like abortion when it serves to pander to his core political base. That kind of policy reversal - based on little more than self-proclaimed religious and moral superiority - gets my goat.
Furthermore, health, police, and education are those powers constitutional law has traditionally carved out for state regulation. Abortion clearly falls under health, and partly under education. So unless the branch of the federal government happens to be the US Supreme Court, I'd much rather see the Feds defer to the states on such issues. Ideally I'd love to see the right to choose protected in all the 50 states. But the global attempt to quash that right at the federal level gives me hives. I mean, what's the point of having different states if the powers traditionally reserved to those states become little more than vestigal appendages based on the whims of an idiot?
Here's what gets me about the pro-lifers: they usually also are pro-gun, pro-death penalty, and anti-welfare. And if you really want reduce abortions, why be anti-RU486?
What bugs me is that the people who are anti-abortion are the cause of many abortions themselves. Stay with me here.
With their abstinance only education goals, and focusing on how "wrong" pre-marital sex is, they have caused a stigma of shame to be cast upon the unwed mothers. Who among us hasn't made a mistake and wondered how to make it go away? It's human nature not to want to get caught. Unfortunately, the easiest way out of this particular accident is the ugliest. But in a morally oppresive society like ours, many women opt for that way. And it's a damnable shame.
So if the pro-lifers want to be truly pro-life, they need help create a culture much more accepting of pre-marital sex and support educating children about the proper use of birth control. If you take away the shame aspect of pre(or un)-marital pregnancy, the pressure to have an abortion will largely disappear.
Having worked on a campaign for a pro-choice candidate, I became an enemy of the anti-abortion movement by association. I had my tires slashed five times in three months; I had a protester waiting outside our offices toss red paint all over me (thus ruining the only suit my 23 year old ass owned); I had some of my high school volunteers harrassed on the grounds of their school, with "(name) works for a baby killer" flyers placed on the windshields of cars parked near them.
I received nightly phone calls at around 11:30 pm (I was always the last one in the office because it was my job to collect and analyze the nightly tracking polling data) telling me that my car was the only one left in the lot, and what a shame it would be that no one would find my body until the morning. And I've been followed home from the office and had an aggressive driver run me off the road and onto a shoulder -- nearly into a ditch -- shortly after receiving one of those calls.
When we reported the incidents to the police and identified the group we believed responsible, the pastor of the big Catholic Church in the area granted all members of said organization sanctuary.
Yeah, they're "pro-life," all right. To quote Barney Frank, their concern with life begins with conception and ends at birth.
Much has been discussed here about the behavior of the Christian right/Pro Life movement regarding their efforts to ban abortion. What has not been mentioned is the crux of their cause, which is that a fetus is an actual human life, killing it is the moral equivalent of killing an innocent baby. Disagreeable tactics of pro-lifers aside, this is something worth reflecting on and shouldn't get lost in the debate.
Abortion makes a lot of people, including me, uncomfortable for this reason. I find it difficult to support nearly unrestricted abortions when it is used as birth control.
Although if there are dire medical reasons for an abortion, that is a different story.
Since the state/defintiion of an unborn child is debateable in this society, and there are some less morally ambiguous reasons where abortion is needed, I find myself on the pro-choice side of the debate. I think the government should leave big decisions to individual citizens in cases like this.
Having grown up in a conservative Christian home and community, I can say that there wasn't much for birth control education in churches or homes of friends I knew. At least in the '80s. But I doubt that it's such kids like we were that are responsible for most abortions anyway. I have a feeling its the kids who never got any kind of guidance/advice at all, except for what they saw on TV.
Charlie, you speak with a voice of reason, logic, and clarity. If only everyone - on both sides of the issue - would follow your lead.
(blushing) Oh Denny...stop!
Thanks.
Charlie: Thanks for providing balance and reason.
I love to see that in the view of some commenters who would paint with such broad brushstrokes how evil I am for not being ardently pro-choice -- that I have secret agendas, that I want to wreck constitutionalism, that I cause abortions, that I secretly want to bomb abortion clinics and hurt workers, that I really want to enslave women, and the like.
Some people believe those things, I guess. But guess what, folks -- there are nuts in your midst too! Still, we probably won't get very far as a society if I just decide Ginger and Pete and Denny and the rest of you are all just a-holes because sometimes you might agree with nuts on specific issues. Will we?
I know political issues can get emotional and I know many of us (US -- I include myself) become personally invested in those issues, but we ought at least to try not to vilify everyone who might disagree with us. Some of those folks might have legitimate reasons to do so, and might not be monsters. Really! :)
Kevin, the problem is that too many mainstream (non-"monster") pro-life supporters have allowed the fundamentalist hatemongers to control their side of the debate. Where are the moderate pro-lifers speaking out? Where are the pro-life web sites that don't scream about babykilers and Sodomites? I'm honestly curious, because I've never seen any.
I accept that there are people out there with moderate pro-life opinions, I've just met precious few of them. Like it or not, the present-day anti-abortion movement is being steered by the same extremists from whom you're seeking to distance yourself.
Because linking is easier than writing: I like APCB's take on the women's march last weekend: While it was refreshing to see the turnout for the March for Women's Lives on Sunday, it was also sobering to read the New......
| --Posted to Supafine! on Apr 28, 2004 1:06 PM:. |
REASON I am all for the right of women to make the choice for their reproductive freedom and choose life over death. Even Teresa Heinz Kerry says she's pro-choice but believes abortion is "stopping the process of life". That sounds......
| --Posted to Now I don't want to get off on a rant here... on Apr 29, 2004 9:41 AM:. |
Moderates don't speak out pretty much because they're moderates--they have mushy opinions that balance competing priorities. Makes awful bumper stickers and boring speeches.
Anybody who believes the "pro-life" movement's line about what they want should go to one of their rallies. They spend a lot more time talking about people's shabby sexual morals than they do about just about anything else, including abortion.