Trojans And Horses

by digby

I’ve been hearing a lot of rather unfortunate push back from some liberals to the idea that anyone would be upset by Obama’s appointment of the anti-choice Alexia Kelley to head the Department of Health and Human Services’ Center for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. (I think Sarah Posner, whose views about the Religion Industrial Complex’s phony infiltration of the Democratic Party is the same as mine, is correct here.) The argument goes that these are good allies in the newfound “common ground” abortion reduction movement, to which all liberals are assumed to have happily signed on. I’m not particularly interested in abortion reduction myself — I’m in the woman’s right to make her own reproductive decisions and own her own body camp although unwanted pregnancy reduction is certainly something I’ve been for for as long as I can remember. And that’s where toe problem comes in. Alexia Kelley and the Catholic group she represents wants to ban abortion and birth control.

Here’s Francis Kiesling in Salon:

That’s right — Kelley’s group of self-described progressive Catholics takes a position held by only a small minority, that the Catholic church is right to prohibit birth control. Were there no qualified religious experts who hold more mainstream views on family planning and abortion, views that are consistent with those of President Obama?

The HHS budget for family-planning services grants to faith-based and community groups is more than $20 million. Can pro-family-planning religious groups expect a fair deal from a director who believes that birth control, even for married couples, is immoral? Will programs that provide contraception to adolescents get funded? Obama’s Feb. 5 Executive Order establishing a new Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships gave the office and its 11 satellites in federal agencies a policy role on the issues that are at the core of HHS’s sexual and reproductive health work: addressing teen pregnancy and reducing the need for abortion. How can an opponent of the single most effective way to do both — contraception — lead that effort in HHS enthusiastically and effectively?

Through Catholics in Alliance, Kelley has sought to narrow the interpretation of common ground on abortion to efforts to reduce the number of abortions by providing women who are already pregnant with economic support for continuing the pregnancy and making adoption easier. While pro-choice advocates have been in the forefront of efforts to increase funding for women and children and for pre- and postnatal care, few researchers believe that if pregnant women get the level of support common grounders are talking about, they will jump at the chance to have babies. If one is really serious about making it possible for women to avoid abortion, contraception is the single most important component of any program.

Kelley and other moderately progressive Catholic and evangelical groups owe their pull in the Democratic Party to the disappointment of 2004. They seized on the Democratic defeat in the 2004 elections as a means to push the party to the right on sex and reproduction. Democrats, stung by their near miss in Ohio, desperate to attract swing voters, eager to prove that they were “sensitive” to religion, took the bait.

(Read on to see how our vaunted “common ground” allies are relying on the social conservatives’ favorite backstop: junk science.)

Now, some of this is being characterized as internecine arguing between Religious Left groups jockeying for power, and that’s probably true considering the factional arguing going on in the liberal Catholic community over this. But the fact remains that the RIC did, in fact, move quickly after the 2004 election to solidify its influence in the Democratic Party and mainstream its extremely tepid, if not outright hostile, to abortion rights. It serves as a pincer to squeeze women from bioth te left and the right.

I wrote about this back in 2006 when this strategy first became obvious:

If the Democrats need to sacrifice something on the alter of “bipartisanshipandcentrism” it’s looking like they are prepared to negotiate away ever more pieces of the right to choose.They have decided that being pro-choice, despite being a majority position and one based on fundamental principles, is not “mainstream.” It’s now a bipartisan poker chip and NARAL is apparently willing to ante up.

If you want to see what’s really up behind the scenes, check out the 95-10 plan which came out of the Third Way and Democrats for Life camp and is being endorsed by good guys like EJ Dionne. (This evangelical outreach plays into it too.)

The problem is that tucked in the details of their compromise plan that features all kinds of neat stuff about providing contraception for poor women and better sex education, there are a bunch of pernicious anti-choice and anti-science elements like federal money for ultrasounds in clinics and (incorrect) information about fetal pain among other things. (And you certainly see nothing about expanding beyond the 14% of American counties that now provide abortion services.)

There’s no free lunch, right? Acces to birth control and sex ed comes at a price and that price is the idea that women can make this decision without first being forced to sit through a bunch of propaganda designed to make her feel ashamed and then being “offered” an ultrasound that shows the adorabletinybaby inside her tummy begging for its little life, after which they will also “offer” her some anesthetic for the poor little tyke before they go ahead and kill it. (If she’s still selfish and cruel enough to go through with it, that is.)

What we are seeing is a new pincer strategy, with a slow, relentless mainstreaming of the liberal pro-life(and cowardly politicians’) rhetoric which is intended to make abortion a source of shame and guilt so they can tut-tut about it in church — and the ongoing onslaught of the conservative anti-choice agenda which is intended to enshrine the fetus as a full human with rights that trump the irrelevant vessel it lives inside of. The woman with an unwanted pregnancy is getting squeezed by everybody now.

And I concluded then and now:

Abortion is a messy fight, nobody disputes that. I’m all for contraception and sex education and all the other things that these abortion “reducers” are pushing. But it appears to me as if that’s mainly a political ploy to appease the pro-choice crowd into believing that if they just give up a little here and there, the basic right will be preserved. It will not happen that way. With all this talk of “reducing,” and “rare” and fetal pain and snowflake babies and all the rest, they are helping the right prepare the ground for a full outlawing of abortion if Roe is overturned. They aren’t even trying to make the fundamental argument anymore.

I’m a good Democrat and I’m also someone who likes to think strategically. As I argued above, I think it’s a huge mistake for advocacy groups that represent fundamental rights to ever negotiate (leave that to the politicians.) But I could theoretically support any strategy that would ensure a woman’s right to choose. On the substance, however, this is no more subject to compromise to me than habeas corpus or torture or slavery. It defines what it is to be an autonomous human being. If every woman in this country doesn’t own her own body then she is not free.

I know that principles are “out” these days and pragmatism is all the rage. And when it comes to horse trading on government projects that’s just the way it’s done. But for some time it’s been clear to me that this “common ground” strategy signaled that the Democratic Party had decided that abortion rights are a second tier issue, subject to negotiation and compromise for political purposes, and that just isn’t acceptable. Appointing someone who is anti-choice and anti-birth control to head an office that will dispense millions of dollars for HIV/AIDS and family planning reinforces that view. The Religious Industrial Complex is a Trojan horse and it’s inside the gates.

h/t to KG