Choice Quotes
by digby
Due to unavoidable problems I was unable to “blog for choice” today as I would have liked. But I have written reams about the issue over the years I’ve been doing this blog and my views are well known.
I come at it first from a fundamental belief in civil liberties. It’s clear what the “right to life” agenda is and it has nothing to do with the fetus these people pretend to care so much for (until its born.) It has to do with sexual behavior. I wrote back in 2005:
I believe that a woman’s right to choose gets to the very heart of what it means to be an autonomous, free human being. Control of one’s own body is fundamental to individual liberty. If the church believes that abortion is morally wrong it should instruct its voluntary membership not to do it. Individuals must always be allowed to follow their own consciences. But there should be no legal coercion on such a morally complex personal matter.
The government could be called upon to arbitrate this complicated issue only if the fetus had an absolutely equal right to life as the woman in whose body it lives. But there is no argument about that. There is almost nobody who believes that an abortion is wrong if the life of the woman is at stake. Indeed, the vast majority (80%+) of Americans believe that abortion should be available at least in cases of rape or incest, so it is clear that the “abortion is murder” argument is illegitimate. No one can believe that it is moral to murder a person because of the way he or she was conceived, or by whom.
Therefore, the right of the fetus is not the real issue — the reasons a woman wants an abortion are the issue. This leads us to ask which particular circumstances are so difficult for a woman that she may be allowed to have an abortion. 80% or so of Americans think that rape or incest are such circumstances. But how about a failing, abusive marriage? A terminal illness? Five other children and no job? Being 43 years old and carrying a child with serious birth defects? Being a foolish 15 year old girl in love? Should we make exceptions for some of those? Any of them? Who decides? You? Me? John Roberts?
This isn’t about murder and it isn’t about the right of the fetus. It’s clearly about controlling women’s personal moral behavior. I don’t think the government has any business doing that.
This is actually a fundamental principle of the Republican party. I wrote back in 2003:
The GOP is revealing itself as the anti-privacy party. They are enabling the state to rummage through everybody’s medical records, they want corporations to be allowed to buy and sell your purchase records and any other information they may have, they are more interested in medical marijuana than the serious issue of identity theft, and they want to make permanent the ill considered Patriot Act which gave the government vast new surveillance powers.
Now, along comes Lil’ Ricky telling a reporter outright that he doesn’t believe there is any right to privacy (an article of faith in the anti-abortion cult), that he thinks gay civil rights are a slippery slope to perversion and that he further believes his view of sexual morality should be enshrined as the law of the land for everybody.
This desire and ability to invade the homes and private lives of our citizens is UnAmerican. It goes against every tenet of freedom that George W. Bush constantly preaches about, particularly the All American belief in individualism and the inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Who the hell gave John Ashcroft and Rick Santorum and Jack Welch and Dick Cheney the right to information about me without my permission, to investigate me without probable cause or to tell me what I can do in my own home?
The Republicans do not believe in freedom any more than they believe in equality. This negation of the right to be left alone is coming from all GOP quarters — religious, government and corporate and it is a potent example of their lack of patriotism and any sincere belief in traditional American values. Just what do they think liberty consists of? The freedom to be harassed and coerced by every interest group in the Republican Party until you either join up or shoot yourself in the head?
Sometimes, I think that last isn’t so far fetched. I see a lot of danger ahead for a woman’s right to choose, coming not only from the right but from the Democratic party. And some of it, I think, comes from the fact that the right has simply worn down the establishment elites (who never cared that much about it in the first place) with such an incessant uproar about sex and ickyness and embryos, that they are now ready to throw in the towel. It’s an emerging rightwing model for rolling back progress.
Sadly, I think a powerful new interest group of anti-abortion crusaders in sheep’s clothing are at work within the Democratic Party. I wrote last month:
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.
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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 big believer in the fundamental argument which is that if women don’t own their own bodies they are not free. It’s just that simple.
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