The Biggest Anti-Choice Lie
Republicans claim abortion is brutal and dangerous. That lie is getting much harder to tell.
I’m in the The New York Times today on what medication abortion by mail means for the anti-choice movement. (Hint: It ain’t good) It’s much harder to make Americans believe that abortion is dangerous and brutal if people can end their pregnancies safely at home.
A snippet here:
What’s most troubling is that because the anti-choice movement relies on a grisly political message, it would seem the movement has a political interest in stopping the safest and earliest kinds of abortion. In fact, the kinds of procedures Republicans claim to be the most appalled by also happen to be the abortions their policies are most responsible for. These are hurdles put in place by lawmakers who block Medicaid funding for abortion and put clinics out of business through onerous and arbitrary regulations, such as mandating that clinics have specifically sized hallways.
And according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the two of the three states with the highest percentage of abortions performed after 15 weeks also happen to have some of the toughest anti-choice laws in the country: Arkansas’s governor signed into law a near-total ban on abortion in March, even in cases of rape and incest; Missouri has only one abortion clinic left in the state.
If conservatives truly wanted to curb later abortions, they wouldn’t make it so incredibly difficult for so many women to get earlier ones. Of course, if their concern were actually about women’s health and safety, they wouldn’t be trying to make abortion illegal at all.
I just can’t get over how pretty much the same people who think a fetus is more important than a woman’s life also believe in capital punishment. It just demonstrates how little we are valued. I’m not in love with abortions but I think they should be legal and safe for whoever wants one. And yes, I said “want.” And I also think the make half of the procreation act has no say in the matter.
In other news I just found out I had a great-aunt who was apparently disliked because she was always ready to help a woman get an abortion (and did). She had lots of children, which is just to say that even if she wanted to bear her own children she obviously thought it wasn’t everyone’s choice to do so.
I'm sure lots of people are against abortion for religious reasons* but I often wonder if many Republicans in (or running for) office give much of a damn about abortion itself**.
Their vehement opposition seems performative, a ritual not in any positive sense but a matter of demarcation: we are against, because 'they' are in favour.
*and that's fine. If your God/Holy Book says abortion (or wearing wool and linen fabrics in one garment) is sinful, then we will support your right to choose not to do those things; we simply demand that you don't try to tell others what they can & can't do.
**apart from the fact that it serves an overall misogynistic agenda. To many Republicans Atwood's 'The Handmaid's Tale' is anything but a dystopia; for them it's a cross between a manual and a wet dream.