Women are the real fascists, don't you know
by digby
You really need to read this petulant piece at National Review to understand the misanthropic right wing view of American progress, as seen through the eyes of a critic of Obama's Second Inaugural. There are numerous points with which to argue, but I'm just going to pick this one since it's the Roe anniversary and all:
And as we grew to understand the virtues of such common efforts of containment and direction of the modern economy, we also advanced the struggle against those vestiges of backwardness that have raised obstacles to inclusion, scoring victories for justice in “Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall.” Never mind the 50 million human beings deemed insignificant because they were unwanted and snuffed out over the last four decades in the cause of choice. Indeed, the freedom to remorselessly exterminate these innocents, rather than the struggle to protect the life and dignity of the weak who dared by their existence and their neediness to disrupt the plans of the strong, is somehow given a place of honor in the register of social progress.
I don't suppose these people ever consider just how insulting that is to the very real, fully formed, sentient human beings to whom they are comparing a fetus, which is nothing more than a potential human life at best. After all, if a "holocaust" of this magnitude is taking place, you'll have to blame nature or God for most of it:
Determining the prevalence of spontaneous abortions is difficult. Many happen very early in the pregnancy, before a woman may know she is pregnant. Treatment of women without hospitalization means medical statistics misses many cases. Prospective studies using very sensitive early pregnancy tests have found that 25% of pregnancies abort by the sixth week LMP (since the woman's last menstrual period), however, other reports suggest higher rates. One fact sheet from the University of Ottawa states, "The incidence of spontaneous abortion is estimated to be 50% of all pregnancies, based on the assumption that many pregnancies abort spontaneously with no clinical recognition." The NIH reports, "It is estimated that up to half of all fertilized eggs die and are lost (aborted) spontaneously, usually before the woman knows she is pregnant. Among those women who know they are pregnant, the miscarriage rate is about 15–20%." Clinical abortions (those occurring after the sixth week LMP) occur in 8% of pregnancies.
Of course, these folks won't blame nature or God. They'll blame the woman. They always have.
The idea that fetuses are fully human and should have all the same rights as those who actually are is completely ridiculous in light of those statistics. Obviously, the fetus is a very tenuous stage of human development subject to spontaneous abortion for any number of reasons. To confer it with personhood can only lead to the absurd conclusion that all pregnant women are potentially guilty of manslaughter by the very nature of the condition of pregnancy. That is insane.
And to compare a stage of human biological development to fully formed human beings who have been denied their ability to live as equals among other fully formed human beings is as fatuous as it gets. Indeed, it's beyond fatuous. It's sick.
Here are some good pieces on the Roe vs Wade anniversary that ought to wake up the American media if they care to read them:
The People's Choice
Roe and the law
Before (and After) Roe v. Wade: New Questions About Backlash
.