Hullabaloo

Friday, June 22, 2007

 
Should Democrats Endorse Coathangers As Moral?

Updated

by tristero

Melinda Henneberger says yes. She is wrong, mistaking spin for reality.

She calls a D&E, a procedure used rarely, and often to save a mother's life, by a deliberately repellent and medically worthless name dreamed up in a christianist think tank. She mentions that Democratic opponents spin abortion as "a human rights issue comparable to slavery." Apparently, she doesn't agree with this nonsense. But disgracefully, she fails to note that this is an outrageous comparison that should be dismissed as hyperbole and fear-mongering, not soberly noted or discussed. She merely notes that that is how people talk and urges Democrats to adjust their views accordingly.

No.

The moral high road is our side. We know there is no virtue in forcing the poorest women to endure the dangers of medical procedures performed by coathangers and lye. And that is the major moral issue at stake here, once you clear away the carefully market-tested language of the right. Make no mistake: Regardless of the law, middle-class and richer women will always have plenty of access to a range of contraceptive, prophylactic, and abortive techniques to use or not use, as they see fit. If this country legalizes back-alley abortions - which is what Henneberger is suggesting that Democrats support - the rich will pay more and only the poorest women - will not have access to decent medical procedures and care.

I fail to see how, by any stretch of the imagination, proactively denying adequate medical care to poor women is morally defensible.

This issue is not about, and never has been about, "when does a human life begin?" That simply is not an appropriate question for a government to answer; indeed, to answer it "officially" is tantamount to a religious establishment. And clearly, these are decisions which are quite rightly left to the individuals involved.

No, the advocacy of government-approved coathanger abortions is a rightwing tactic in class warfare. It is also, since there is so much overlap with money, a race issue. But the moral issue is really quite simple. A woman has the right to control her body. No one, and certainly no government, should ever force her to have, or not have, children. How she chooses, what she chooses, when she chooses, are private choices.

---

Now some of you will surely object that my language above is just as overheated as the christianists. Calling opponents of legalized abortions "pro-coathanger" is deliberately antagonizing. And you would be right. The language of this post is extreme, hyperbolic, over the top. Knowing this, why did I write it the way I did, knowing it would antagonize? To make a point about this kind of language.

The language of the far right is, as it is so often, the lingua franca of discussions of this issue which finesses and often buries reality under a pile of malodorous, sophomoric philosophizing. These heartless bastards, whose policies will inevitably lead to the grueseome, painful deaths of poor women, have dared to call themselves "pro-life." Incredibly, not only the media but Democrats and even liberals have agreed to label these people such. By contrast, those of us trying to prevent the murder of innocents are called "pro-abortion." And "pro-choice" is even worse. What are we supposed to be choosing? Well if the "other side" is "pro-life," then we are presumably advocating the woman choose either life or death. So much for the language of neutrality.

So I say, let's recognize this as a battle by the right to restrict decent healthcare to the upper classes and simultaneously inflict punishment on the poor. And, if the extreme right chooses to deploy inflammatory rhetoric, and that rhetoric gets widely adopted, it is important to confront such rhetoric in kind, but without their propensity for deception.

The worst thing to do is to mistake the rhetoric of the right as reality. We all know what happens when this country adopts the hallucinations of these extremists.

[Edited slightly immediately after initial posting.]

UPDATE: In comments, Susan S. makes an important point, but I don't think her conclusion follows:

I think you're missing Melinda's point. I recently saw her at a Planned Parenthood luncheon in Tampa where she made the same arguments that she makes in her op-ed. She's merely saying that there are a lot of Democrats who don't see abortion in the black and white terms most of us do. We ignore that at our peril. We have to find a way of talking to them that shows we recognize their concerns, and not automatically dismiss them...

She doesn't disagree with us. She's saying that there are many Democrats who can be brought back into the fold if we stop automatically dismissing them and equating them with the right-wing crazies. For whatever reason (possibly because they've been manipulated) their views on abortion are more complicated than ours. We need to educate them, but we can't do it by talking down to them.

I completely agree. That is exactly the issue. There are a lot of people who don't see abortion as black and white.

But the issue is not abortion but government regulation of abortion. The fact that so many of us see the abortion issue differently is precisely at the heart of the fight against the right.

They, not Democrats and liberals, want this country to see the issue in black and white. The effect, if they win, will be catastrophic. And the catastrophe will fall predominantly on poor women.

That's why Henneberger is not only wrong, but completely wrong.

One more thing: While I think Susan S. is quite mistaken in defending Henneberger, I hope my saying so directly is not perceived as a personal attack. It certainly is not meant to be.

Again, to be clear, this is not about personal opinions about terminating or completing pregnancies. This about demanding the government regulate pregnancy and reproduction in accordance with one specific ideology.

Possibly no one feels the same as another about abortion itself. But that is not the issue. It's the extreme right forcing people to adhere to their, and only their, morality that is the issue.

tristero 6/22/2007 05:31:00 AM |