Thanks to Dan Savage for this excellent editorial inspired by a recent Gallup poll that showed for the first time that a majority of Americans considered themselves "pro-life":
...I don't consider a fertilized egg the size of the period at the end of this sentence to be the equivalent of the Gerber baby, and find people who do to be curious, especially for the anger they bring to the debate. If being pro-life meant an across-the-board reverence for life -- if pro-life activists were also Human Rights Watch members, also fierce opponents to capital punishment and vigorous battlers of AIDS in Africa, and of course anti-handgun and anti-war -- then I could almost understand the compressed rage that pro-lifers often exhibit.
But they aren't. Nor are they in favor of the contraception that would prevent abortions, a tipoff that this -- at its core -- is not about preventing violence to the unborn so much as it is about unraveling a modern society where women are able to plan their pregnancies. Stealing is bad, and religion speaks against it, but no congregation ever took to the streets to protest theft. There is an intensity -- at times a frenzy -- behind the abortion debate, which hints that something else is going on, that religion is attacking modern sexually open society at its weakest point, taking a stand that requires them to not only see abortion as a morally significant act, which it is, but to insist that morality cannot shift under any circumstance, and that having an abortion is the same if you're 14, or 24, or 64.
The "abortion is murder" line is just that -- a slogan. The people saying it obviously don't really believe that, in their hearts, because otherwise they'd be even more extreme than they already are. If it's murder, then why aren't they talking about, not only banning abortion, but also conducting enormous public trials to prosecute the millions of women who have had one? That doesn't seem to be on the table.
...If you believe that sex is for procreation and nothing else, then a pro-life stance flows naturally. If you believe it's for procreation, at certain times, but also for fun, then you're pro-choice. Don't hate me for bringing the news, but the for-fun element seems to be winning, no matter what last week's poll numbers say.
Seems to sum it up pretty well. And let's remember that, of the people identifying themselves at "pro-life," only a small subset of that group wants to outlaw abortion in all cases. Most people want abortion to remain legal in some capacity.
It's ironic, then, that while the anti-abortion rhetoric over the decades has created doubt about abortions, especially in the later stages of pregnancies, that this propaganda hasn't changed many people's views about sex or women's rights. That's probably because all the ire and signs and videos and pictures have concentrated on pregnancy and the fetus; little of it has attacked sexual mores. When it does, it turns people off.
This is something I write about a lot, but there are ways to reduce abortion. Real sex-ed (which, by the way, should tout abstinence). Access to birth control. Accessible and affordable health care. Accessible and affordable day care. Continuing ed classes, more drug treatment programs, etc & co. But, oddly, you don't see many hardcore lifer activists working on any of those issues. In fact, many of the extreme anti-abortionists are expressly opposed to any of those reforms.
Reminds me of an encounter I had during last year's primaries when I was collecting signatures for the CHIP expansion at the Lolo polling place. There was a signature-gatherer for Rick Jore's anti-abortion constitutional amendment there - you remember, the one that would define life as starting at conception, the initiative that was too much even for the Catholic church - so I sauntered over for a chat and to ask her to sign my sheet, and maybe let folks signing her petition know we were there...
Only instead of a signature, the woman - I swear - burst a blood vein in her forehead while yelling at me, calling me a "socialist" and a host of other names unfit for this fine publication. Never mind that extending health care coverage to children of low-income families might actually sway some would-be mothers to carry to term. Never mind that her initiative, if passed and written into the Montana constitution, might cause some low-income families to sink into poverty (because abortion bans always impact the poorest among us the worst - a rich woman can always find a way to safely end her pregnancy).
Confronted with a choice between her ideology and the children she ostensibly was campaigning for, she chose her ideology. |
