Straw man on fire alert: Even-the-liberal Kirsten Powers makes a really stupid analogy
by digby
The lengths to which "even-the-liberals" will go to insult real liberals is always amazing. But Powers takes it to a new level with her latest unctuous screed about the Goslin horrors, the atrocity that made her a star:
Speaking as a liberal who endorses more government regulation of practically everything—banks, water, air, food, oil drilling, animal safety—I am eternally perplexed by the fury the abortion rights contingent displays at the suggestion that the government might have a serious role to play in the issue of abortion, especially later-term abortion. More and more, the abortion rights community has become the NRA of the left: unleashing their armies of supporters and lobbyists in opposition to regulations or restrictions that the majority of Americans support. In the same way the NRA believes background checks will lead to the government busting down your door to confiscate your guns, the abortion rights movement conjures a straight line from parental consent to a complete ban on abortion.
Such an attitude makes having an honest conversation about abortion almost impossible. That is just one of the many reasons I hate talking about it. Additionally, there is no upside in our media culture to challenging this sacred cow. More likely, there is a price to be paid, which is why so few people take it on. However, I cannot legitimately say I am a person who cherishes human rights—the animating issue of my life and a frequent topic of my writing—and remain silent about our country’s legally endorsing infanticide.
Poor Kristen Powers. Like all members of that scrappy, beleaguered band of anti-abortion zealots, she's been silenced. Except for her constant TV appearances and columns expressing her anti-abortion views, she might as well have a gag order against her.
I do have to wonder what "liberals" she's talking about, though. It certainly isn't abortion rights activists who were every bit as appalled by the illegal, back alley Goslin hellhole. It's exactly the kind of horror show they're trying to prevent. I cannot think of one person who has ever defended his actions or who thinks that what he did was legal or proper.
But she's not arguing a real point is she? She's carving out a little niche for herself as the "Even-The-Liberal" Fox News scold, a lucrative position an excellent wingnut welfare career move. Defining her alleged "liberalism" as an obsessive regulator is just a teensy bit of a giveaway, though. Liberals don't define themselves that way. While we do believe in the common good, we don't worship regulation for regulation's sake. If the corporate community polices itself and doesn't pollute, poison and steal from everyday people with impunity, regulations aren't necessary, are they? But somebody needs to at least try to keep the air breathable, the water drinkable and the bank accounts safe from predators. I'd be thrilled if government didn't need to do that. I don't enjoy having to pay taxes either. But I do like to breathe and I think it would be nice if little kids born in 2013 could breath when they're my age too. If the rapacious greedheads could be persuaded to stop counting their money long enough to take on that responsibility I couldn't be happier.
But liberals also have a strong belief in individual and civil rights, the chapter on which Powers apparently skipped over in the liberal indoctrination manual. Therefore, when it comes to reproduction, we tend to believe that the fully formed human in whose body this "life" resides is not merely a gestation vessel whose agency is irrelevant, but rather someone in whom the rights of personhood are already fully vested. Therefore, liberals don't find it a simple matter of flipping a switch to completely divest a woman of her autonomy the minute she become pregnant and assume that she must adhere to a certain subset of society's beliefs. Her right to make decisions about her own reproduction is fundamental.
Unlike Kristen Powers and her ilk, most liberals also tend to understand that there are no easy answers and that a question as intimate and personal as when to give birth and raise a family is best answered by the person who is charged by nature with giving birth. But since we understand that this is a uniquely complex matter, very few people object to the Roe vs Wade formulation which never allowed late term abortion on demand. It was only legal in the case of a woman's life or health being endangered and there are extremely few instances of anyone having them for other reasons. Nobody wants women to be in that position --- and no woman wants to be there. Indeed, it's why abortion rights activists always favor easier access to birth control and early abortion.
All of that means that the offensive comparison between the NRA and the pro-choice community is just plain wrong. Abortion rights advocates haven't been making some slippery slope argument about late term abortion. They argued the case on the merits --- that it should be legal under the original Roe vs wade framework in the rare situations where it was necessary, such as when a fetus was already dead, so severely malformed that it will not survive outside the womb or when a woman's health and possibly her life is on the line if she is denied the procedure. Nobody in the pro-choice camp ever argued that something like the Goslin clinic should be legal or that regulation of such clinics would lead to the usurpation of abortion rights. The abortion rights movement has spent decades fighting to keep clinics like Goslin's from ever existing.
It's the same with parental permission. Abortion rights advocates don't oppose parental control because it's a slippery slope to abolition, it's because they worry about the poor teen-agers who cannot talk to their parents and are too immature to understand the ramifications of waiting too long. They want teen-agers to talk to their parents if possible. But we live in the real world and know that many of them will not and will end up bearing children at much too young an age or harming themselves trying to deal with it on their own.
By contrast, the NRA refuses to allow even the slightest regulation of guns. In fact, they actively encourage people to own more of them, to carry them in public, to use them in dangerous situations when bullets are flying. They are even threatening armed insurrection if anyone even tries to regulate them. The abortion rights movement doesn't ever tell people they must get abortions. Indeed, Planned Parenthood is dedicated to helping prevent pregnancy, which people like Kirsten Powers' allies would deprive women of having access to in their simple-minded quest to end legal abortion at all costs.
It's the anti-abortion folks who are like the NRA, I'm afraid, with their history of resorting to violence to get their way and their relentless attempts to ban abortion while simultaneously opposing birth control. It's clear that they believe that women have no right to avoid pregnancy and childbirth, period. And sad truth is that if these extremist anti-abortion zealots and gun advocates have their way, we'll be living in a world that features many more Newtowns --- and many more Goslin clinics. That's not freedom or morality --- it's dystopia.
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