Evidently, some anti-abortion groups are working to curb sales of birth control pills. Lisa Boyd, of Planned Parenthood, summarizes the situation in Wisconsin:
“They’ve done so much with outlawing and restricting access to abortion that they’ve set their sights on birth control because there’s nothing else really they can do to further restrict abortion here in Wisconsin,” Ms Boyce says.
“Which is counter-intuitive because if you’re against abortion in the least you’d think you would see the value in enhancing access birth control, the very means women look to preventing pregnancy and the need for abortion.”
For more, read this BBC news report.
You seem to have forgotten that I, in my younger days, was pro-life. So I know what they’re like, thankyouverymuch, and the horror of the innocents is not quite the central belief you think it is.
Yes it is.
As for control, you betcha that part of the “benefit” and “subtext” of the pro-life movement is control. Prevent abortion, punish the immoral who behave bad sexually, keep more babies up for adoption for people like us.
“Punish the immoral” — this isn’t a motive for opposing abortion. It may be part of how some people feel — i.e., they think, “Isn’t it awful that some people are immoral, and isn’t it a thousand times more awful that they want to kill human life that results from their actions.” But it is NOT as if anyone thinks, “I don’t see anything wrong with abortion. But maybe if I pretend to be against abortion, I could somehow use that as an excuse to gain control over sexual immorality, which is the real thing that I care about.”
Surely you know that Operation Rescue was started by Randall Terry’s then-wife, who had fertility problems and was angry about all the babies who aren’t getting adopted.
Well, I can’t blame infertile women for resenting the hell out of women who get pregnant at the drop of a hat but then have the fetus killed. “Why should they get pregnant — they who don’t want a baby and who don’t mind killing it — while I, who would love a baby and give it a good home, can’t get pregnant at all?” It’s totally understandable that a few people would feel that way.
But at most, that accounts for a handful of pro-lifers, compared to the millions of perfectly fertile people who are pro-life. Whereas the pro-choice motivation of satisfying one’s own selfish desires is a motivation that affects everyone to some extent.
The pro-life view says, “Look, fellow, you impregnated a woman. It may be a hard thing to do, and it may be totally against your selfish desires to do it, but your responsibility is to provide for that baby and give it a good home.” The pro-choice view says, “Hey, fellow, so you impregnated a woman. No problem. No difficult duties involved here, no need to be unselfish. All you need to do is tell the woman to get an abortion! That’s it! And you’re done, man, you can move on with your life unencumbered by a bothersome little baby.”
The natural instinct to be selfish is what the pro-life view has had to overcome in every single pro-lifer who ever exists. But the pro-choice doesn’t have to overcome any such selfishness — instead, it satisfies whatever selfishness is there.
It’s totally understandable that a few people would feel that way.
There’s a difference between having understandable, if irrational, feelings and trying to make those feelings public policy.
See, Joe, you do such a lame view of portraying the supposed pro-choice view, that even if I had never met a pro-lifer, I would be dubious. And having been one, and having met them, I know what you’re saying is sugar-coated.
Example: “Punish the immoral” — this isn’t a motive for opposing abortion. Of course it is. That’s why you see arguments on this very blog about how abortion is OK in cases of rape but bad if the sex was consensual. It doesn’t take deep philosophical thought to realize that this is not about “innocent babies” at all.
Pro-lifers are perfectly capable of being selfish, and indeed, that’s exaclty why you have so many who prefer exemptions (rape, incest, contraceptive failure) that they themselves might want. And why abortion clinics are never shocked to see pro-life women come in for an abortion and walk right back out again making the same pro-life comments as when they came in. My Abortion Is Different–condeming everybody else’s in order to make your actions OK is about as selfish as it comes.
Of course, the root of your argument is that abortion is selfish, because only carrying every pregnancy to term is unselfish.
It’s totally understandable that a few people would feel that way.
There’s a difference between having understandable, if irrational, feelings and trying to make those feelings public policy.
See, Joe, you do such a lame view of portraying the supposed pro-choice view, that even if I had never met a pro-lifer, I would be dubious. And having been one, and having met them, I know what you’re saying is sugar-coated.
Example: “Punish the immoral” — this isn’t a motive for opposing abortion. Of course it is. That’s why you see arguments on this very blog about how abortion is OK in cases of rape but bad if the sex was consensual. It doesn’t take deep philosophical thought to realize that this is not about “innocent babies” at all.
Pro-lifers are perfectly capable of being selfish, and indeed, that’s exaclty why you have so many who prefer exemptions (rape, incest, contraceptive failure) that they themselves might want. And why abortion clinics are never shocked to see pro-life women come in for an abortion and walk right back out again making the same pro-life comments as when they came in. My Abortion Is Different–condeming everybody else’s in order to make your actions OK is about as selfish as it comes.
Of course, the root of your argument is that abortion is selfish, because only carrying every pregnancy to term is unselfish.
Joe M:
No need to address Don P.’s refusal to mention even a single poll to which I had linked.
I’ve “mentioned” them about six times now.
Guess what: None of those other issues result in the death of another entity
So what? The point is that those movements all had a record of steady achievement towards victory, changing hearts and minds, winning battles in courtrooms and legislatures. The anti-abortion movement has no such record. It’s a failure. The side of the abortion issue that parallels the history of the civil rights movement, the women’s rights movements, the gay rights movement, etc., is the pro-choice side, not your side.
1) Progress in civil rights took time. There was 100 years between the Civil War and the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
But the rights of black people steadily increased during that time. Racial segregation was gradually eliminated in the north, and by the time of the 1964 Civil Rights Act was largely restricted to the southern states. Racial segregation in the military was eliminated in 1948. Racial segregation in public education was eliminated in the 1950s. The civil rights movement had achieved a long series of judicial and legislative successes, and a huge change in public opinion amoung whites towards black Americans, long before the federal Civil Rights Act. Your movement has no such record of success. The movement that parallels the successes of the civil rights movement is the pro-choice movement.
2) “No such victories”? That’s not what the pro-choice people said when 30 states and Congress passed partial-birth abortion laws.
Those laws have been struck down by the courts, and the final blow to the federal law is imminent. Even if the PBA Ban Act had survived judicial scrutiny, it would have been unlikely to prevent even a single abortion, because abortion providers would just have substituted a different procedure for the banned one. Your movement has wasted millions of dollars and a decade of effort on a law that has no substantive effect. If you really think that’s some kind of victory, then you’re in even greater denial than I thought.
It’s over. You’ve lost. The whole arc of history is against you, the whole sweeping pattern of change in the world is against you. Abortion rights have been recognized as a fundamental component of liberty and equality for women throughout the industrialized democracies, save for a couple of holdouts such as Ireland. Wake up and smell the placenta, Joe!
Joe M:
You’re doing nothing more than projecting your own hypothetical feelings. In the minds of actual pro-lifers, abortion is wrong because it kills innocent life.
Nonsense. The popularity amoung anti-abortionists of the rape/incest exception, their indifference to embryos lost to spontaneous abortion, and their indifference to embryos destroyed through assisted reproductive technology all attest to the fact that protecting “unborn” life is not the central concern of the anti-abortion movement. It’s about control, it’s about compelling and coercing women to conform to a repressive sexual and reproductive morality rooted in religious teachings.
The popularity amoung anti-abortionists of the rape/incest exception.
Wrong. Already addressed this point above. There’s nothing incoherent or inconsistent about saying, “A fetus has some value, and it shouldn’t be killed unless there is a damn good reason not to continue the pregnancy — like rape or incest or the life of the mother.”
their indifference to embryos lost to spontaneous abortion
Still harping on that subject? Aren’t you aware of how many times this has been refuted on other threads? Can’t you ever type anything that you haven’t typed before?
Anyway: 1) There’s no evidence that anyone CAN do anything to prevent most miscarriages. 2) Accidental death at a time when it can’t be prevented is wildly different from deliberate killing that can be prevented.
their indifference to embryos destroyed through assisted reproductive technology
There isn’t “indifference,” but there should be more attention to this. Anyway, one inconsistency (as seen by Don P.) in no way proves that pro-lifers are somehow unable to perceive their own motives/beliefs. At most, it merely means that they haven’t all thought through every related policy issue with full rigor/logic. But their motive is still undeniably focused on the wrongness of killing human life.
There’s nothing incoherent or inconsistent about saying, “A fetus has some value,
Some value? Now you’re contradicting yourself. If a fetus is an innocent baby, how does it have “some value”? No, as you admitted, the core of the pro-life movement is that human life begins at conception, and that abortion is murder. Not that abortion is like trashing somebody’s Jaguar or shooting their pet dog.
There is indeed contradiction in saying “Human life begins at conception, and a woman who gets an abortion because she doesn’t want stretch marks is a murderess. If she gets an abortion because she was raped, though, that’s OK.”
“Some value,” by the way, is very much a pro-choice position. The vast majority of pro-choice advocates are happy to recognize laws punishing forced abortion, and recognizing that a miscarriage is a loss. Welcome to our side, Joe!
Well, myth, a fetus has “some value” and a woman just has a little less. I guess that’s not all that confusing. ;)
Which makes one wonder–does a female fetus have less value than male fetuses, or are female fetuses equal in value until birth, at which time his stock goes up and hers goes down?
Mythago — Don’t be dense. As I’ve said before, a fetus with no brain functioning may not be as “valuable” as an adult, but killing it is still as wrong as animal cruelty, or killing an endangered species, or any of the instances where we make it a CRIME to kill something that most definitely isn’t human. Thus, it should be illegal. If it’s “pro-choice” to say that the fetus has enough value to make abortion illegal in 99% of all cases, then that makes me a “pro-choicer.” In any event, it’s not incoherent or inconsistent in any way to allow a few exceptions for very troubling circumstances.