The Lie Of “Equal Extremism”

by tristero

So I’m reading this NY Times article on the attempts by South Dakota’s fine citizens to repeal the pro-coathanger legislation foisted on them by radical christianists when I came across an interesting little rhetorical construction.

The author tried to compare the tactics of the South Dakota pro-coathangers to the pro-choicers, trying to make them out as equally guilty of extreme rhetoric. So I thought I’d propose a little guessing game this morning.

Now don’t cheat and click on the link before you’ve taken the time to guess how to finish the second sentence. You want to illustrate that both sides are equally inflammatory:

For that, the most extreme arguments are nowhere to be found. No bloody fetuses fill billboards…[INSERT HERE EXAMPLE BY PRO-CHOICERS OF EQUALLY EXTREME AND SICK TACTICS]

So how does this sentence finish up? What tactics can “the other side” deploy that are as extreme an argument as filling billboards with bloody fetuses? Lesseee:

For that, the most extreme arguments are nowhere to be found. No bloody fetuses fill billboards, no posters of hemorraghing 14 year-old girls passed out in a filthy alley.

Not bad. That would show that “both sides” – hereafter abbreviated to BS – are prone to equally revolting demagoguery. But the problem is the pro-choice movement never has done anything remotely like that.

So let’s try again:

“For that, the most extreme arguments are nowhere to be found. No bloody fetuses fill billboards, no graphic tv commercials showing a 50-year old degenerate raping a 13-year old at knife point.

Hmm…Well, again, it does meet the BS criteria, but come to think of it, there isn’t a tv station in the country that would ever show such a commercial.

Wow! I guess it’s harder than you might think to find equally extreme tactics when you’re trying to use BS in an article on abortion. Can we come up with anything the pro-choice crowd has used that’s as dramatically disgusting as billboards filled with bloody fetuses?

One more try:

For that, the most extreme arguments are nowhere to be found. No bloody fetuses fill billboards, no trucks with billboard-sized pictures showing deformed progeny of third generation incest, either.

Nah. no pro-choice group has ever done anything like that.

Okay, give up? How does the NY Times balance the extremism of the pro-coathanger crowd by showing “the other side” can get equally inflammatory and out-there on the cultural margins? Here’s what the reporter actually wrote:

For that, the most extreme arguments are nowhere to be found. No bloody fetuses fill billboards, no absolute claims are being offered about women’s rights.

And that’s the reason, ladies, gentlemen, and Republicans, why I say that the culture war in this country isn’t between the left and the right, or the religious and the secular.

The culture war is really between extreme rightwing fanatics and the rest of us.

Special note: Some of you might point out that my use of the phrase “pro-coathanger” to describe the anti-choice gang is just as extreme as calling pro-choice people “baby-killers.” Well, yes, of course it is. And that is the point. I’m using the term deliberately here to shock you into realizing that that is how perverse our rhetoric has to get even to begin to come close to matching the revolting rhetoric of the far-right that we take for granted as normal discourse.

For example, to counter the inaccurate term “pro-life” with the accurate “pro-choice” is to cede the rhetorical advantage to the extreme right by permitting them to lie about their position. There is nothing even remotely pro-life about insisting that poor girls who get pregnant without wanting to must suffer the horrors of an incompetent medical procedure. And yet, every day, this is how the mainstream discussion of abortion is conducted, even by liberals who really ought to know better.

Well…what about using “anti-abortion” and “pro-abortion” to label the “two sides?” That seems fair, right?

It does not. There are very few people, even those of us who insist that the state has no right to tell a woman what to do with her body, who go around saying, “I’m pro-abortion. Every woman should have one. Men should try them, too!” The pro/anti-abortion construction grossly distorts the complex positions that nearly everyone has.

So…what is the best way to characterize the “two sides?” Well, the advantage of “pro-choice” is, as mentioned above, that it is accurate. I suppose you could characterize the nutjobs as “anti-choice” and be technically correct. But that doesn’t capture either the Puritanism or the explicitly punitive element of their opposition to decent healthcare for poor women. They want raped teenagers to suffer unspeakable additional shame should they choose to terminate a pregnancy. And they certainly want all women who fuck for pleasure – ie, all women except for Phyllis Schafly wannabes – to be ashamed of themselves, and if they get pregnant, to “suffer the full consequences of their sin.”

So, while I admit it’s nauseating and extreme, “pro-coathanger” has the distinct virtue of being a 100 percent accurate description of the far-right’s position on whether women have the right to choose. And I will persist in labelling them as such for as long as they feel they can get away with labelling those of us who want poor women to have equal access to competent healthcare “baby killers” or even “pro-abortion.”

Oh, and one final thing. Perhaps you think that the far-right hasn’t done anything so sick as to promote billboards of bloody fetuses. You would be wrong:

Two 8-by-22-foot rolling billboards displaying extremely graphic photos of aborted fetuses are expected to travel state Route 8 and interstates 76 and 77 in and around Akron this morning and afternoon. The trucks, which critics are calling “deplorable,” will cruise through downtown Akron during the rush hour today and head to Canton on Thursday

And if you click, you’ll be taken to a site that collects articles from many states where this tactic was used. That’s right, folks. The use of trucks with billboard-sized pictures of fetuses was part of a well-funded national campaign.

But of course, calling for women to have an absolute right to do what they want with their body is an equally extreme tactic.

NOT.