It’s The Women, Stupid

by digby

Following up on tristero’s post below, and those of others in the blogosphere today, notably Scott Lemieux, about Melinda Henneberger’s egregious piece in today’s NY Times on abortion, I just have one question: If abortion was such a slam dunk political winner for the Republicans, and even more importantly, such a sincere matter of morality and political principle, then why in the world, when they had a majority in both houses of congress and a conservative born-again president in the white house, didn’t they pass a federal law outlawing Roe vs. Wade abortion? Certainly, once they had Alito and Roberts on the court you would have thought they’d be rushing to get that law enacted and on its way for final adjudication to end to the Democrats’ “culture of death” once and for all.

It’s funny, but I don’t even remember them discussing it, do you? Instead, they continue to “send signals” and dance around the issue, even having George W. Bush (like Poppy and St Ronnie before him) only appear by phone at their big forced childbirth marches on the mall.

There’s a reason for that. The majority of this country doesn’t agree with them on this issue and politicians who have to win nationally know this very well. They are more than willing to pander blatantly in every other way to their base. But he has never once said he thought Roe vs Wade should be overturned.

And there’s also a good reason for Democrats to stop listening to the religious industrial complex that works both sides of the aisle on this issue. When it comes to matters of principle, trying to finesse differences makes you look worse than if you say nothing at all. Paul Waldman at TAPPED puts it well:

Ultimately, what Henneberger, like many before her, is asking Democrats to do is to betray some of their most fundamental values in a cynical and doomed attempt to grab a few votes. Doing so would be politically stupid and morally repellent. The fact is that the Democrats are the party that favors reproductive rights, and the Republicans are the party that opposes those rights. On the fundamental question, two-thirds of the public agrees with the Democrats. They only lose on the issue when they listen to people like Henneberger, who tell them that they should act like they’re ashamed of what they believe.

I realize that it’s a tough issue, and that many people find it “icky” and wish it would just go away. But I have news for them. Even if we repeal Roe vs. Wade tomorrow, the issue ain’t going away. Women will always have unwanted pregnancies, as they have since time began. It is a biological certainty. The question is whether they have a right as human beings to determine for themselves when and if they are going to turn their bodies over to the process of gestation and childbirth. If the state determines that they do not, then women are not free. It’s that simple.

I am completely comfortable with the idea of arguing about this with people who are anti-choice until the day I die. They have every right to try to persuade me that I am wrong, and to try to persuade every woman who is pregnant that she should carry that child to term. If religions wish to teach that it is wrong and require that its adherents follow its teaching I would never argue that they couldn’t.

But I will never concede that the state has a right to intrude on something so intimate and personal that it actually requires a person to give up her bodily integrity, submit herself to the judgment of strangers and give birth against her will. It’s hard to imagine the difficulty of making such decisions, but it’s safe to say that judges and legislators and priests from afar are not the ones who should do it. The state is simply the wrong venue for such a complicated issue that requires such a delicate balance of interests. Only the woman, consulting if she wishes with those who know her and have a real interest in her life and the potential life inside of her, can possibly have enough information to make a moral decision like this.

The pro-choice movement has never made a moral judgment against any woman who chose to bear a child. In fact, we worked hard to allow her to be able to make that decision freely by working to eliminate the stigma that was once attached to divorce, out of wedlock births and other social restrictions on motherhood. We support every program out there that will help her raise her children if she decides to have them. We believe that women and men alike should be able to make enough money to support a family with a decent wage.

The other side treats women with unwanted pregnancies as either selfish sluts or childlike innocents who can’t be trusted to make moral decisions at all. They would deny women birth control to help them avoid such circumstances and they believe the traditional nuclear family is the only legitimate way to raise children.

In other words the anti-choice movement makes it simultaneously more difficult for women to have children and more difficult for them to avoid it. So let’s not fool ourselves. It’s not about children. It’s about women. And that means it is simply more conservative resistance to the long march of progress this country has made toward equal rights for all its citizens. The same philosophy that fought tooth and nail against every advance made to ensure that this is truly a free country by denying equal rights to all its citizens also animates those who argue that the rights of the fetus are paramount. It’s just another way of ensuring that the rights of women aren’t.

And once you recognize that you realize that there is no way to fudge this or work around the edges. Every time you forget that you create the rhetorical space for the other side to make their argument more explicit — which is now happening in all its full frontal glory on the Supreme Court of the United States. Women are either free citizens or they’re not.

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