“Pro-Punishment”: Right-To-Lifers Are Hypocrites — And Here’s Why
A caveat: I don’t include nuns in this formulation, simply because “right-to-life” has come to mean the anti-abortion movement exclusively. Nuns have the ethical and spiritual integrity to be consistent in their belief that all life (as they define it) is sacred. In fact, that consistency is what illuminates the hypocrisy of the anti-choice movement.
Right-to-lifers (unlike many nuns) do not hold candlelight vigils outside prisons when a death row inmate is about to be executed. No buffer zone needs to be established, corrections officials don’t have to worry about their personal addresses being posted, or their facilities being bombed. Wardens are not shot by those who insist “Thou Shall Not Kill” is a commandment that must be respected no matter what the circumstances. In fact, these Biblicists are just as informed by the Hammurabi code: “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” They adhere to the notion that the “right” to life can be revoked; it is conditional on one’s actions.
This tacit admission that life is not universally deserved is a crucial crack in their stance against abortion. They don’t decry our military engaging in “just” war, in the execution of murderers and terrorists. Ironically for the Tea Party libertarians among them, they don’t even object to the right of the state to determine whether some citizens should forfeit their lives for some crimes. But they object to the right of a woman to decide for herself whether her fetus, or even a fertilized egg not yet attached to the uterine wall, should be carried to term. In their thinking, fetuses have done nothing to “deserve” their fate.
You can’t, on the one hand, claim that all life is sacred, and then remain silent when men and women — some later determined to be innocent — are executed. That silence is a concession to the principle that the right to life is conditional. One can see this psychology of “deservedness” in the present humanitarian crisis on the border. The angry anti-immigrant placard-wavers are overwhelmingly rightwing, of the very same ilk that decries abortion. The right-to-lifers ringing abortion clinics have not abandoned their posts to run to the border in defense of real woman and children. For “they” do not “deserve” a chance at life in the United States, free from the violence and deprivation they are fleeing. They are “illegal.” They “bring disease” (an absurd charge that has become ubiquitous.) By extension, those yearning masses puff up the inner contention of the flag-waving nationalists that being born here is some sort of accomplishment instead of an accident of birth. As if learning English as a toddler was an extraordinary feat of patriotism: Congratulations, your racism comes without an accent!
If we concede that some life is deserved and some not — after all, very few liberals cried at the death of Osama Bin Laden — then we can confront the thorny question of whether some fetuses somehow deserve to live while others do not. I would reframe the issue as whether every child deserves to be wanted, to be welcomed without resentment, to have a mother who doesn’t consider her offspring a burden. How many millions have to grow up in poverty, fill our foster care systems, endure sexual, physical and emotional abuse, end up in prison or even on death row for the right-to-lifers to acknowledge that life without sufficient love or resources breeds despair without hope?
Let me state, for those who are prone to confuse “unwanted” with “unplanned,” that I fully support the decision of all women who may have conceived accidentally to bring the birth to term — whether she brings up the child herself or chooses to provide a loving family with an adoptive gift. Pro-choice does not mean pro-abortion. The irony, of course, is that those who support a woman’s right to choose are also the most fervently pro-access-to-contraception while the right-to-lifers are the most hostile to it, as evidenced in the recent Hobby Lobby decision. This has always made no sense. Those who oppose abortion should be the most passionate in making it as rare as possible.
The truth is that it is not the right of the fetus to life that really drives them. It is their belief that woman who have sex for pleasure should bear the “consequences” of their decision. The hostility is tangible — I have the hate-tweets to prove it. For men, not so much. Hobby Lobby had no objection to reimbursing Viagra and Cialis, made no stipulation that it be made available for married men only. The sole purpose of these two drugs is to facilitate sexual pleasure in the male. For those men who wish to procreate, an additional benefit is the ejaculation only an erection allows. I have heard of no right-to-life organization offering to pay for paternity suits to force men to bear the consequences of not using contraception. Practically speaking, a man who doesn’t want to take responsibility for a child he has sired rarely has to.
Many of course, do the “right” thing. And therein, I suspect, lies the true source of the hostility toward woman who wish to have sex without risking having a baby. Shotgun weddings are practically an institution in the states where the fever against reproductive rights runs hottest. How many unhappy marriages have resulted from a hormonal impulse between teenagers? How many unions of obligation have turned into nightmares of incompatibility, ending in divorce, custody battles or worse? How many husbands and wives caught for life in unplanned parenthood would do it all again if they could relieve the moment they chose passion over purity?
They aren’t pro-life, they are pro-punishment. Murderers must be executed, the undocumented must be deported, and women who dare to control their destiny as they themselves did not cannot be allowed to get away with it.
By: Mark Olmsted, The Huffington Post Blog, July 11, 2014
“The Right’s Cynical Wordplay”: ‘Women’s Safety’ Means Absolutely Nothing Anymore!
The most direct consequence of Thursday’s Supreme Court ruling striking down Massachusetts’ buffer zone law is that the people working and accessing care at abortion clinics will be less safe. Lawmakers in Massachusetts and municipalities across the country with similar measures in place will now have to figure out — once again — how best to ensure that the people who need to enter and exit clinics can continue to do so without being harassed, threatened, harmed or worse by antiabortion protesters. There have been nearly 7,000 incidences of clinic violence since 1977; history teaches us that safety is never a given when walking through those doors.
The second thing that the opinion in McCullen v. Coakley reminds us is how empty — how absolutely devoid of meaning — the notion of “women’s safety” has become in politics. Hardly a week passes without some measure advancing through a state legislature that will have devastating consequences for women’s health, but these bills are nonetheless cloaked in the language of women’s safety. Put those words in front of almost any piece of legislation and it seems like most lawmakers just nod their heads.
Texas comes to mind. We’re one year out from Wendy Davis’ historic filibuster, and the status of access in the state has gone from bad to utterly catastrophic. Nearly half of Texas’ abortion clinics have closed since 2011; it is estimated that come September, there will only be six abortion providers left in the second most populous state in the nation. The Rio Grande Valley has lost its last remaining abortion clinic, and now women in the region must travel 300 miles round trip to access care, including routine services like mammograms, cancer screenings and birth control. A recent study found that 7 percent of women in Texas have attempted to self-induce abortion. The number jumps to 12 percent for women who live along the Mexican border, and it is expected to grow. Women who have the luxury of crossing border checkpoints without fearing deportation or worse have been traveling to flea markets in Mexico to buy drugs from unlicensed and unregulated vendors in order to terminate their pregnancies.
But state Rep. Jodi Laubenberg called the passage of HB 2 a victory for women’s safety. In reflecting on the year that was, she commented, “Authoring and passing House Bill 2 was one of the most rewarding and challenging accomplishments of my legislative service. […] It was worth it. I will continue to fight for both the safety of Texas women and the pre-born.” Her Republican colleagues echoed the sentiment. Republican state Rep. Jane Nelson said, “I am proud to support House Bill 2, which not only protects innocent life but also ensures that abortion facilities are safe for Texas women.” And state Rep. Patricia Harless used the same language to justify her vote. ”I proudly voted for House Bill 2 because I believe Texas women deserve more than the bare minimum, lowest level safety standards,” she said.
These talking points have been parroted by lawmakers in Louisiana, Utah, Oklahoma, Arizona, Mississippi, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and virtually everywhere else that laws like these are being enacted. It’s never about abortion. It’s always about safety — women’s safety.
Now the Massachusetts law was also about women’s safety. The kind of safety that 35 feet of distance between yourself and someone willing to spend their Saturdays outside an abortion clinic calling women murderers will provide you. The kind of safety that state lawmakers recognized was urgently needed after an antiabortion activist opened fire on a clinic near Boston and killed two people and injured five others.
The violence isn’t unique to Massachusetts; the threat is national. As Robin Marty wrote this week, if you want to understand why buffer zones matter, spend some time at an abortion clinic without one:
In my time working with abortion providers and abortion rights advocates over the last few years, I’ve seen first hand what is considered “counseling” by abortion opponents at unprotected clinics. In Louisville, Kentucky, one of only two clinics left in the Bluegrass state, I witnessed over 100 abortion opponents lining the sidewalk leading up to the clinic, stopping just at the property line in front of the door, chanting rosaries, calling to patients, preaching sin and eternal damnation through a microphone just a few feet from the waiting room window. I watched a woman shout through the window that the patients inside would die on the exam room table, that they would bleed to death inside, and no one would help them because the money was already paid up front. I saw protesters with bloody, graphic signs swarm patients just trying to get out of the car door and cross the mere 10 feet from curb to clinic property.
That’s what it is like at a clinic with no buffer zone.
And that will be the scene at more clinics in the wake of the Supreme Court’s unanimous finding that while it sees no problem with the buffer zone around its own building, it believes that a 35-foot barrier — the length of a school bus, a walk that will last approximately 7 seconds — is an undue burden on the First Amendment rights of the “peaceful sidewalk counselors” stationed outside. Not being able to follow women to the doors of the clinic apparently limits their ability to “persuade.”
But the burden that removing that buffer will place on women’s safety? Well, what do those words even mean anymore?
By: Katie McDonough, Politics Writer, Salon, June 27, 2014
“Liberal Republicans–They’re Alive!”: The Fractures In The GOP Aren’t Just About Tactics
Until not long ago, we tended to think of Republicans as unified and focused, and Democrats as inherently fractious (see, for instance, the evergreen “Dems In Disarray” headline). These days the opposite is true—or at least it’s the case that Republicans have become just as divided as Democrats. But how much of that is about Washington infighting and intraparty struggles for power, and how much is actually substantive and matters to voters? This post from The Upshot at the New York Times has some provocative hints. Using polling data from February that tested opinions on a range of issues, they found that Republicans are much less unified than Democrats when it comes to their opinions on policy:
On these seven issues, 47 percent of self-identified Democrats agree with the party’s stance on at least six of them. And 66 percent agree with at least five. Republicans were less cohesive, with just 25 percent agreeing on six or more issues, and 48 percent agreeing on five.
Piling on more issues showed similar results. To check our results, we also created an 11-issue index that added four topics: federal funding for universal pre-kindergarten, the distribution of wealth in the United States, the minimum wage and abortion. A majority of Democrats—61 percent—agreed with at least eight Democratic positions, compared with 42 percent of Republicans who agreed with eight or more Republican positions.
Even though you have a relatively large number of issues being tested, it could be a function of the particular ones we’re talking about. For instance, minimum wage increases are hugely popular and always have been, so it isn’t surprising that plenty of Republicans break with their party on that, and it doesn’t necessarily signify a fundamental and meaningful fracture. So I went over to the original poll, which has a nice interactive graphic you can use to see crosstabs on each question, and there are some interesting signs of dissent within the GOP. For instance:
20 percent of Republicans say their party is nominating candidates who are too conservative, compared to only 9 percent of Democrats who say their party’s candidates are too liberal. At the same time, 32 percent of Republicans say their party’s candidates aren’t conservative enough, compared to 18 percent of Democrats who say their party’s candidates aren’t liberal enough.
29 percent of Republicans say they have an unfavorable view of the Republican party, compared to 14 percent of Democrats who have an unfavorable view of the Democratic party.
On many issues, there are between a quarter and two-fifths of Republicans who disagree with the party’s position. 34 percent think marijuana should be legal, 33 percent think gun laws should be more strict, 28 percent support federally funded universal pre-K, 24 percent think global warming is caused mostly by human activity, 36 percent support a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, 40 percent support same-sex marriage, and 37 percent think the distribution of wealth should be more fair.
The Tea Party gets all the press, and not without reason, but there is obviously a significant bloc of Republicans who are displeased with their party’s right turn in the last few years. We’re talking about more than just a few disgruntled Rockefeller Republicans bemoaning it after 18 holes at the Greenwich country club. We’re talking about as much as a third of the party’s voters.
Of course, issues aren’t everything, and these days, conservatism is defined in many ways. It’s a set of policy positions, but it can also be measured by the depth of your loathing for Democrats in general and Barack Obama in particular, or by the kinds of political tactics you embrace. But this is a good reminder that there are significant numbers of Republicans out there who, if you just look at what they think about issues, actually look pretty liberal.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, May 15, 2014
“Fetal Personhood Ploy”: Anti-Choice Lawmakers In South Carolina Want Pregnant Women To Arm Themselves To “Protect The Unborn”
A state Senate panel in South Carolina advanced legislation Thursday that states a pregnant person has a right to use deadly force to protect the “unborn … from conception until birth.” The measure is called the “Pregnant Women’s Protection Act,” and it is model legislation written and disseminated by Americans United for Life.
As usual, the words “pregnancy” and “protection” are red herrings.
First, South Carolina’s “stand your ground” law already allows for the use of deadly force anywhere a person claims to fear for their lives or the life of someone around them. (It is a terrible and dangerous law.) So opponents of the “Pregnant Women’s Protection Act” have rightly pointed out that this measure is entirely redundant.
But the bill does serve a serious purpose for anti-choice policymakers and activists working to endow fertilized eggs with personhood status and legal rights, a move that would suppress the rights of pregnant people and likely ban abortion and most forms of contraception. The measure tries to accomplish this — or at least open the door to these possibilities — by defining life as beginning at conception.
Here’s the language from the bill:
(1) ‘Pregnant’ means the female reproductive condition of having an unborn child in the female’s body.
(2) ‘Unborn child’ means the offspring of human beings from conception until birth.
The measure also pays considerable lip service to the very real threat of violence faced by women and pregnant people, but does nothing to strengthen existing anti-violence laws, create additional funding for domestic violence service providers or increase actual resources to aid people in violent situations.
None of this was lost on the opponents of the measure. “No one disputes that violence against pregnant women is a concern in our state and few would deny the need for swift action to stop any instances of further violence,” Emma Davidson, spokeswoman for South Carolina Coalition for Healthy Families, told the Aiken Standard. “But it is hypocritical to introduce legislation claiming to protect victims of domestic abuse, rape and violence while simultaneously outlawing emergency contraception, a key treatment option for those victims.”
And for those looking for further proof that the “Pregnant Women’s Protection Act” is just a fetal personhood ploy, the committee also debated a fetal personhood measure during the same session.
The “Personhood Act” would outlaw abortion outright by granting legal rights to fertilized eggs and fetuses.
By defining life as starting at conception, Davidson explained, the measure could also outlaw birth control and emergency contraception. And as University of South Carolina family law professor Marcia Zug told the Aiken Standard, the bill could ban abortions without exception. “A fetal personhood bill which would outlaw abortions in even the most life-threatening of circumstances has never been an option with the Supreme Court. It is clearly unconstitutional,” Zug said.
And if lawmakers are really interested in reducing rates of domestic violence in the state, they may instead want to focus their efforts on funding domestic violence service providers who have had to reduce services in the face of budget cuts. According to a nationwide survey on domestic violence service providers, in a single day in South Carolina, 16 requests from domestic violence victims were turned down because programs did not have the resources to provide them emergency shelter, housing, transportation, childcare or legal representation
More women are killed by men in South Carolina than any other state in the nation; the rate of women killed by men in South Carolina is more than double the national average.
By: Katie McDonough, Salon, April 11, 2014
“A Particularly Cruel Joke”: Texas Lawmakers Celebrate “Achievements” In Women’s Health As Thousands Go Without Care
The consequences of Texas’ sweeping new abortion restrictions are now being felt across the state, but the status of reproductive healthcare in Texas had been dire long before conservative lawmakers passed the omnibus measure to shutter reproductive health clinics, restrict safe abortion services and leave thousands of women without access to necessary care.
Texas lawmakers passed a two-year budget in 2011 that cut $73 million from family planning programs; the following year, Rick Perry dissolved the state’s partnership with the federal Women’s Health Program, forfeiting millions in Medicaid funding for low-income women’s healthcare. Lawmakers restored some of this funding in 2013, but reproductive health providers like Planned Parenthood are barred from receiving it. That Perry has refused the Medicaid expansion has further compounded the crisis that has been building in the state, the blunt impact of which disproportionately impacts low-income women of color.
Republican “reforms” to the system have resulted in a 77 percent drop in the number of women being served by state health clinics at an additional cost of around 20 percent. The maternal mortality rate — particularly among women of color — is on the rise, and Texas has the highest uninsured rate in the nation.
It is in this context that the Texas Health and Human Services committee’s decision to hold a hearing on the “progress” the state has made in women’s healthcare seems like a particularly cruel joke. The committee intends to “build on previous legislative achievements in women’s healthcare,” according to a statement on the hearing.
Activists in the state, who have remained focused on challenging the rollback of reproductive rights in the months since Wendy Davis’ marathon filibuster, descended on Austin Thursday to provide testimony and protest the show hearing.
“When I heard about the hearing — well, I felt like if the Daily Show was going to create a parody, they couldn’t have done a better job,” Amy Kamp, one of the women providing testimony at the hearing, told ThinkProgress. “If Texas wants to protect women’s health, I have a helpful suggestion. Just reinstate the old program we used to have!”
“It’s laughable that the same politicians that have devastated Texas women’s access to healthcare — cancer screenings, birth control, and safe, legal abortion — are now touting their so-called achievements in women’s health,” said Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Action Fund. ”If that’s what they call help for Texas women, we’ve had quite enough of it.”
By: Katie McDonough, Assistant Editor, Salon, February 20, 2014
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