A Win For Moderation

by digby

This is what it’s come to:

Despite his work for a Christian pregnancy counseling group that opposes contraception, the physician who yesterday began overseeing federal family-planning programs has prescribed birth control for his patients, a Department of Health and Human Services spokeswoman said.

Out of all the doctors in the country they had to pick one for whom it was necessary to issue a statement like that one. I never thought I’d live to see the day when birth control would once again be a subject of controversy. It’s quite stunning. After all, I’m old. This one, at least, seemed settled.

This is a classic Overton Window deal where it sounds completely out to lunch at the moment but soon will have made its way into mainstream dialog. But it also serves the dual purpose of putting abortion on the negotiating table at a time when all the “reasonable” people are getting together to talk about the need to drastically “reduce” abortion.

There are moral and practical reasons for members of both parties, and combatants on both sides of the abortion question, to embrace this approach.

Liberal supporters of abortion rights should be eager to promote a measure that does not make abortion illegal but does embrace goals, including help for the poor, that liberals have long advocated.

In the meantime, the victories that opponents of abortion rights have won do little to reduce the number of abortions. As Rachel Laser, director of the Third Way Culture Project, points out, even those who would ban late-term or “partial-birth” abortions need to acknowledge that very few are performed, meaning that these laws do little to reduce the overall abortion rate. According to one study cited by Laser, only 0.08 percent of abortions are performed in the third trimester.

The problem is that the forced pregnancy forces are dedicated to a long term process whereby they whittle away at abortion rights. They move the goal posts, little by little with outrageous stunts at the far fringe which allow the “reasonable” people to negotiate away things like parental notice and “partial-birth” abortion. This is where the birth control issue comes in:

Anti-choicers: “Birth control is just like baby killing”

Reasonable Dupes: “Not true! It’s nothing like baby killing. We are against baby killing!”

Anti-choicers: “We don’t believe you. You just want the freedom to put little girls on the pill and when that doesn’t work, you want to yank unborn babies from their wombs against God’s will!”

Dupes: (rolling eyes) “Ok, ok. We’ll prove it. We are willing to outlaw abortion, but you will pry our birth control from our cold dead fingers.

Anti-choicers: “heh”

Moderates and centrists of good will often try to split the difference and find ways to appease all sides when it comes to civil rights and liberties. And they almost always screw things up because fundamental rights are called fundamental for a reason. Once you let go of them all sorts of other things become possible.

I’m reminded of Martin Luther King’s letter from a Birmingham jail. He was, of course, talking about the necessity of activism to gain civil rights for African Americans, but I think the sentiment applies equally well to those who allow the rights and freedoms women already have to be whittled away over time in political negotiations.

I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

Like those white moderates of yesterday, the social moderates of today think they can finesse the issue with appeals to change around the edges. But they can’t. I’m sorry the culture war is unpleasant. But it’s happening whether we like it or not. Resolving the issue is not a matter of finding some middle ground or splitting the difference. This is not finesseable with neat slogans or nice little agreements to try to “reduce” the ickiness. Women either own their own bodies or they don’t.

The new, fiercely anti-choice, head of HHS family planning programs has agitated against birth control for years. But it turns out that he “has” prescribed it for some of his patients, so he’s not really outside the mainstream after all. Another win for the voices of moderation.

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