Pro-Life My Behind

The Republican Party--pro-life until the precise moment someone is born. Then they don't give a shit what happens to you.

Roe and Dred Scott

Man-on-Dog Santorum is taking a lot of heat for this statement:

Potential 2012 presidential candidate and former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) doesn't understand how President Obama could not answer whether a "human life" is protected by the Constitution from the moment of conception: "The question is -- and this is what Barack Obama didn't want to answer -- is that human life a person under the Constitution? And Barack Obama says no. Well if that person -- human life is not a person, then -- I find it almost remarkable for a black man to say, 'we're going to decide who are people and who are not people.'"

Jamelle Bouie is dismissive of Santorum drawing a straight line between slavery and abortion, writing:

Of course, it should go without saying that this is unadulterated bullshit. It's one thing to oppose abortion -- reasonable people can disagree -- it is something else entirely to compare the practice to chattel slavery, or worse, the Holocaust. Even if you grant fetal personhood, there is nothing in the "experience" of a fetus that compares to the extreme violence and depravity of slavery, and its effect on people -- children, teenagers, and adults -- with hopes, dreams, and desires.

On some level, anti-abortion activists know this; otherwise, they'd be in armed revolt. That they aren't is revealing; far from an accurate take on the situation, the abortion/slavery analogy is a fantasy for self-righteous ideologues, who want to believe that theirs is a great moral crusade, when in truth, it's nothing of the sort.

But while I agree that the moral equivalence is false, I also recognize that this is nothing more than my personal opinion. I'm not sure how many pro-life fanatics that Bouie or other progressive writers know, but I have known more than a few, now and going back to my childhood. And Bouie sells them short when calling this "unadulterated bullshit." Santorum may be doing this cynically. But most certainly there are millions of Americans who do believe it.

In fact, there's a lot of similarities between abolitionists and anti-abortion fanatics. Progressives don't like to admit this because we revere one group and loathe the other. But it's true. Like abolitionists, anti-abortionists believe in the deepest part of their soul that abortion is the greatest evil the world faces, an abomination in the face of God. Moreover, they believe that those who are pro-slavery or pro-choice are facing an eternity burning in the fires of Hell.

This is why I'm so ambivalent about John Brown and outright scared over how people use his memory today--those who love John Brown today aren't usually my friends.

Moreover, the idea that if anti-abortionists really believed their rhetoric that they'd be engaging in violent insurrection both misremembers the Civil War and doesn't provide a very subtle understanding of human nature. With the exception of John Brown, no abolitionists committed violent actions to overthrow the slave power before 1861. Moreover, it was the South who committed violence against the nation to protect slavery, not the North invading the South to end the peculiar institution.

For the vast, vast majority of abolitionists and anti-abortionists, personal violence is beyond the pale of acceptable behavior. They might support other people doing it. They might even give money toward it. But they are not going to pick up a gun themselves.

It does progressives no good to ignore the fact that anti-abortionists are in fact engaged in a moral crusade. It's not up to us to decide what is a moral crusade and what is not. I think they are crazy and that Santorum's statement is offensive, but that's beside the point. Anti-abortionists do in fact believe in their own rhetoric. For them, this is the greatest moral crusade since abolitionism. And we need to deal with this.

I Know This Is How I Want My Congresswoman Talking to My 6 Year Old

Mean Jean Schmidt is awesome in her brazen tastlessness. Schmidt spoke before a class of 1st graders recently. At the end of it, she decided to tell the kids about abortion. The letter from the school to parents:

"Unexpectedly, towards the end of her address, Congresswoman Schmidt brought up the topic of abortion, and I am writing you to make you aware of this. Your children may come home with questions, especially if this is a topic that has not been broached in your home. I do not recall the exact words she used, but she paused towards the end of her speech and stated that this would be the only time when she would be ‘political’ in her address. She defined abortion as the taking of a child’s life in the mother’s womb. She indicated that abortion involves the killing of a child before it is born. She was not graphic or any more detailed in this regard. Later, when a child asked about it, she indicated that an abortion is something that a doctor does when a mother requests this. It was not a particularly long segment of her address (1½ minutes or so), and these words may not match the exact words she used, but this description does, I believe, express what your child heard. Her point was to address the increase of governmental activity in the abortion issue and her political resolve to fight against this."

Wow. Of course, as you can see from the letter, the kids didn't even know what abortion was. Nor should they. And Mean Jean will be elected once again to represent the fine suburbs of Cincinnati. 

William Harrison, RIP

Dr. William Harrison, heroic abortion provider, dead at 75.

The Kind of Ideological Consistency Only Antonin Scalia Can Provide

Since the Supreme Court has ruled 5-4 that state and local governments cannot restrict the 2nd Amendment and must fall under federal law, I look forward to the 5 conservative justices also throwing state abortion restrictions out as unconstitutional.

It's all about rigorous intellectual consistency with these guys, right?

Protecting the Unborn and the Molesters of the Postborn

It's a rare event that I bother to read Maureen Dowd, more the less that I'll actually agree with here. It happened in today's Op-Ed, Dowd comments on the pervasive crisis caused by the Church's global protection of pedophiliac priests, a practice that runs straight to the present Pope. I don't find this pope's actions, as an archbishop or as the doctrinal hammer in his days as cardinal, all that surprising. As Dowd says, news like this is shocking, but not surprising. As a colonial Latin Americanist, I can attest to the long history of the Church overlooking acts it morally condemns in order to protect its power- jurisdictional, political, economic. And, this Pope is well versed in the practice.

As Dowd notes,

The sin-crazed “Rottweiler” was so consumed with sexual mores — issuing constant instructions on chastity, contraception, abortion — that he didn’t make time for curbing sexual abuse by priests who were supposed to pray with, not prey on, their young charges.

American bishops have gotten politically militant in recent years, opposing the health care bill because its language on abortion wasn’t vehement enough, and punishing Catholic politicians who favor abortion rights and stem cell research. They should spend as much time guarding the kids already under their care as they do championing the rights of those who aren’t yet born.

The observation is a prescient one this week. On Friday, for example, a priest from the Archdiocese of Santa Fe will give mass on the street outside of the Planned Parenthood of New Mexico clinic and administrative offices in Albuquerque. It's an annual event that caps off forty preceding days of harassment. As many as 500 people will show up for this mass. As it stands right now, the medical procedures Sheehan and his followers are protesting in Albuquerque are legal in the United States of America. Pedophilia isn't. And it isn't legal in Ireland, England, Germany, Italy, any country I know of in Latin America, etc. Yet, the church has maintained an institutional policy of protecting pedophiles, a policy it appears this Pope is intimately familiar with. It's the typical hypocrisy of the "pro-life" movement - concern for fetuses, and ambivalence at best for really existing women and kids.

Edited to correct the mass giver. I had heard the Archbishop would be there, but was wrong. He has come to other events/protests before.

Uteruses Aren't Political Footballs

Watching the Super Bowl today? Think women have the right to control their own damn bodies? Or just hate Focus on the Family and James Dobson?

Join the Super Bowl Tailgate for Choice party.

Donate at least $5 to a prochoice organization today in honor of the Focus on the Family anti-abortion ad and stick it to Dobson.

In addition to the big ones, there are some good smaller orgs that could use your cash: NLIRH, and SisterSong.

Offensively Wrong Analogy of the Day

ESPN's Jemele Hill compares Tim Tebow's anti-choice ad to Muhammad Ali protesting the draft and Tommie Smith and John Carlos raising their fists at the 1968 Olympics.

Good News for American Justice

Fortunately, walking into a church with a gun and shooting a man point-blank in the head is still considered murder.

roeder and roe

The opening statements in the prosecution of Scott Roeder for the murder of Dr. Tiller began this morning. Nice bit of irony that Roeder's trial opens on Roe Day. I just want to echo Sarah J's post below and say that it is a shame how quickly the Dems were willing to trade on reproductive rights in the abomination of health care reform they've produced. The historical memory of life before Roe has faded so, so much.

There is no true equality between the sexes without complete reproductive control. So, I pitch my hat in with free abortion on demand for all too.

For those interested, @rsylvester and @roeder_watch are live tweeting the trial.

Free Abortion On Demand

It's Blog for Choice Day. And this year, a year many of us thought might actually be a good one for sexual and reproductive rights, has turned out to be a very lousy one indeed. We saw Democrats force the Stupak amendment into an otherwise fairly decent House health care reform bill, and do nearly the same thing in the Senate onto an already-pretty-crappy health care reform bill.

We saw the murder of Dr. George Tiller, abortion provider, in cold blood.

We like to talk about choice. We fight over terminology. But what have we really done, in the years since Roe v. Wade, other than hold the line and nervously try not to lose what we've won?

We criticize Democrats for not supporting us, we who put them in office. But what are we pushing for? When my Democrat Congresswoman from my quite Democratic district (BROOKLYN, people) sends me a form letter in response to my calls and emails about Stupak, reassuring ME that there won't be any federal money spent on abortion, what does that mean for us? Even the Democrats are more worried about antichoice arguments than they are about people like me bailing on them. Where are we going to go, after all, right?

Well, I'm tired of it. It's 2010. We need to be fighting for more gains, not hiding in a defensive crouch and praying we get to hold on to what we've got. Rights are not granted, they are taken.

Right after Stupak, I wrote:

Not enough. I want positives. I want to use this moment to affirm our right to a healthy, joyful sexuality and to talk about how we can achieve that. A messy, unruly sexuality—hell, part of the beauty of it is that it’s not clean and neat. It is like eating a peach, in the last lines of Prufrock, juices running down your chin, sweet and tangy. Those decisions that happen in a minute are sometimes wrong, and sometimes unplanned things come out of them, but we don’t need to be saved from it, we need to have resources and support to deal with it, from a relationship gone sour to unfortunate STIs or Plan B for a birth control failure—or, whether Congress likes it or not, safe, legal, insurance-covered abortion.

I want to come out of the closet and say yes, we like sex, and we have the right to have it. To say that if the government spends millions of dollars every year on technologies that are only good for killing people, it can include abortion in a health care plan.

We didn't get to the point of Roe v. Wade by having nice polite arguments. We got there by being angry, and demanding, and pushing. We got there by staking out a firm position: that our bodies are our own and we have the right to do what we want with them. We got there by calling for free abortion on demand.

So this year I don't want to hear any sugarcoating. I don't want any dancing around the words. Abortion. Sex. Pregnancy. There it is. "Choice" means a lot of things, it's true. But this year we should all remember at bottom what it is we fought for.

Tim Tebow, Right-Wing Extremist

And I thought Tim Tebow was a sanctimonious prick before.

The former Florida quarterback and his mother will appear in a 30-second commercial during the Super Bowl next month. The Christian group Focus on the Family says the Tebows will share a personal story centering on the theme “Celebrate Family, Celebrate Life.”

The group isn’t releasing details, but the commercial is likely to be an anti-abortion message chronicling Pam Tebow’s 1987 pregnancy. After getting sick during a mission trip to the Philippines, she ignored a recommendation by doctors to abort her fifth child and gave birth to Tim.

Doctors later told Pam that her placenta had detached from the uterine wall, a condition known as placental abruption, which can deprive the fetus of oxygen and nutrients. Doctors expected a stillbirth, Pam said, and they encouraged her to terminate the pregnancy.

“They thought I should have an abortion to save my life from the beginning all the way through the seventh month,” she recalled.

Pam said her decision to sustain the pregnancy was a simple one - because of her faith.

“We were grieved,” she said. “And so my husband just prayed that if the Lord would give us a son, that he would let us raise him.”

In her seventh month of pregnancy, Pam traveled to the country’s capital, Manila, where she received around-the-clock care from an American-trained physician.

For the next two months, Pam - steadfastly praying for a healthy child - remained on bed rest.

I am going to root for an end to Tebow's career like I have rooted for no other NFL player, well, ever. Though no doubt, he'll embark on a political career centering on the worst of the American character.

Pro-Choice License Plates

Virginia Planned Parenthood's attempt to get pro-choice license plates in Virginia is a great idea whose time has come. I've often complained of the left ceding rhetoric to the right--"tax burden" and the like. In no place has this caused more damage than the pro-choice movement. Bill Clinton talking about abortion being "safe, legal, and rare," defends the principle of abortion, but not on the merits and as an unfortunate last resort. It's hard to rally people to defend a practice when your leaders won't even defend it vigorously. It allows anti-woman activists to claim that even pro-choice people don't really believe in the procedure and gives credence to their extremist rhetoric.

So something as small as a license plate is a step toward taking back the narrative.

Around Latin America

-The Honduran Supreme Court has appointed a judge to investigate a prosecutor's filed case against the military for its role in forcing Manuel Zelaya from the country on June 28. No warrants can be issued until the judge rules on the filing. That may sound nice, but given that this is the same Supreme Court that upheld the illegal removal of Zelaya, I don't think much will come from this. Still, if something is to happen, it has to start somewhere.

-Additionally, the Micheletti regime is apparently broke: "The Finance Minister for the de facto government, Gabriela Nuñez announced today that she does not currently have access to sufficient funds to pay government employees for January. It all boils down to cash flow. She said she has access to about 400 million lempiras, and needs a total of about 1,500 million lempiras. In addition, she noted that the government has run up large debts with suppliers, including 450 million lempiras for medical supplies, and a further 700 million lempiras owed to road construction and paving contractors." I don't know to what extent international reaction to the coup and reduction of financial support has played a role in this, but I suspect it must be at least somewhat significant, and nothing less than what the Micheletti has brought upon itself.

-Is Peru's economic star rising in Latin America? A road between Peru and Brazil and a growth in GDP of 9.8% last year indicate Peru may be in for a brighter future.

-Not as bright for Peru's future: illegal gold mining in Peru's Amazonian basin is causing long-term environmental damage : "it takes about five grams of mercury to extract a gram of gold. That mercury is usually tossed overboard, poisoning one of the world’s most biodiverse rain forests. And Borian’s form of mining is among the most benign. Illegal cartels with heavy equipment clear-cut and mine huge areas of virgin forest, alarming environmental activists."

-In response to Mexico City legalizing abortion, surrounding states are making it increasingly difficult to obtain an abortion in the rest of the country:

In response to a Mexican Supreme Court ruling in August 2008 upholding a Mexico City law permitting abortion during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, 17 of 32 Mexican states have approved amendments to their constitutions declaring that life begins at conception and granting legal rights to fetuses, the Chicago Tribune reports. Veracruz, which in November 2009 became the most recent state to enact an antiabortion-rights amendment, has called on the federal government to consider adding a similar amendment to the national constitution.

It's hard to be surprised by this. Anti-choice sentiment stemming from conservative social values and Catholicism made any kind of response in Mexico likely. Still, this particular response from other state governments, and the pressure for a national law banning abortion, is very unfortunate. While each state can do what it wants (in the same way the D.F. can and did), it would be very bad of there were a national law enacted in Mexico.

-According to Venezuela's state-run National Electric Corporation, the country could be facing a major power outage nationwide in the next 3-4 months if water levels in the reservoirs continue to drop. Weather is funny, so there's no way of predicting accurately what will happen in that time period; still, power loss for an entire country would be tough to deal with politically, socially, or economically.

-While the recent massive rainfall in Brazil has led to the deaths of dozens, it may have the opposite effect in terms of agricultural production, as "Brazil’s coffee crop may beat the 48.48 million bag record this year, the country’s crop supply agency said in a report which also raised forecasts for the newly-begun soybean harvest."

-Finally, Lula is expected to decide soon which company he will contract for the a $4.4 billion U.S. dollar fighter jet order. In addition to Boeing (a U.S. company), France's Dassault and Sweden's Saab are in consideration. If Boeing is selected, it would create thousands of jobs for the struggling U.S. economy, a fact that didn't deter Republican Senator George LeMieux from doing all he could to damage U.S.-Brazil relations prior to the approval last week of Thomas Shannon as ambassador to Brazil.

Around Latin America

-In good news from Guatemala, this past week, an army officer was convicted for his role in the disappearance of eight indigenous villagers in 1981. Colonel Marco Antonio Sanchez was sentenced to 53 years in prison, and three of his subordinates also received prison sentences. While this isn't the first incident of conviction in an "enforced disappearance" case, it does mark the first time that a high-ranking military officer has been convicted in such a case. Meanwhile, lawyers entered damning evidence from secret Guatemalan military archives in the case of charges of genocide against former dictator Efraín Ríos Montt, who seized power in 1982 during Guatemala's 36-year civil war and who oversaw some of the worst crimes against humanity during the war. While Montt is far from conviction still, the fact that a jury has found Sanchez guilty, combined with the horrible details of the military documents in the Montt case, allow hope that Montt finally pays for his crimes. And while an acquittal would be an injustice, the simple fact that formerly-secret military documents have now become public, revealing just how horrible Montt's "administration" (and others during the civil war) were will deal a major blow to any efforts to rehabilitate Montt or the right in this war.

-In bad news for women's rights in Brazil, a Brazilian doctor who performed abortions was found dead in her car last week. Authorities are investigating whether Dr. Neide Mota Machado's death was a murder or a suicide. Machado had had her medical license stripped earlier this year, after she was accused of performing nearly 10,000 abortions in Brazil (where abortion is illegal save for cases of rape, severe deformation of the fetus, or of a threat to the life of the mother). For those who feel that making abortion in the United States legal only in the cases of rape, incest, or health risks to the mother, it is worth pointing out that over 230,000 women entered hospitals due to complications from botched illegal abortions in 2008 alone.

-Finally, one of the darker aspects of the U.S. embargo on Cuba emerged in a recent story that alleged that "a dozen Cuban children with heart defects were forced to endure unnecessary surgery because the U.S. embargo blocked them from receiving American-made catheters." While the U.S. apparently made such exports to Cuba legal back in 1992, the paperwork is enough of a "hassle" that medical companies have little reward in going through all the bureaucracy imposed by the limited embargo, which allows medicine to get to Cuba. Even so, after $142 health care items were approved to go to Cuba in 2008, only $1.2 million worth of goods actually reached the island, according to this report. While I question the use of the term "genocide" to describe unnecessary surgeries on 12 children, there is no denying the fact that the embargo has very real consequences upon the daily lives and even survival of many Cubans, and this story just offers one more very stark reminder of that fact.

Why I Hate Notre Dame Football

There's actually many reasons. But this, from the Chicago Sun-Times, is one really good reason:

Notre Dame fans want the best coach possible, yet they keep scratching all the top candidates off their list. Mike Leach is a Mormon. Jim Harbaugh is divorced. Jon Gruden had a DUI. Randy Edsall hasn't won enough, Pat Fitzgerald isn't old enough and Skip Holtz doesn't recruit well enough. Then there's the latest controversy that's lighting up the message boards of what might be the most plugged-in fan base in the nation: Cincinnati coach Brian Kelly is said to be pro-choice. Where precisely Kelly stands on what should be a private issue is uncertain, and frankly nobody's business, but if true it could be a deal-breaker for many on the Catholic university's campus.

God, I hope they fail forever.

Abortion Doctors--American Heroes

Meet Dr. LeRoy H. Carhart, late-term abortion doctor in Omaha, Nebraska and American hero.

The Ambivalence of the Democratic Party

Jeffrey Toobin gets to the heart of the Democratic Party when it comes to fighting the Stupak Amendment.

The President is pro-choice, and he has signalled some misgivings about the Stupak amendment. But, like many modern pro-choice Democrats, he has worked so hard to be respectful of his opponents on this issue that he sometimes seems to cede them the moral high ground. In his book “The Audacity of Hope,” he describes the “undeniably difficult issue of abortion” and ponders “the middle-aged feminist who still mourns her abortion.” Elsewhere, he announces, “Abortion vexes.” The opponents of abortion aren’t vexed—they are mobilized, focussed, and driven to succeed. The Catholic bishops took the lead in pushing for the Stupak amendment, and they squeezed legislators in a way that would do any K Street lobbyist proud. (One never sees that kind of effort on behalf of other aspects of Catholic teaching, like opposition to the death penalty.) Meanwhile, the pro-choice forces temporized. But, as Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg observed not long ago, abortion rights “center on a woman’s autonomy to determine her life’s course, and thus to enjoy equal citizenship stature.” Every diminishment of that right diminishes women. With stakes of such magnitude, it is wise to weigh carefully the difference between compromise and surrender.

I completely agree here, but I'd go a bit further. I think these apologetic and therefore weak arguments of Democrats apply to all of liberalism. Republicans have held the rhetorical high ground since the late 1970s. They continue to do so today despite the upsurge of progressive rhetoric between 2006 and early 2009 because leading Democratic politicians came of age in a Republican dominated period. They constantly fear conservative backlash, think (perhaps correctly though I don't think so) that they need corporate funding to survive, and therefore fear defending their beliefs. Obama is unique in that he recognized the progressive uprising and used it to his advantage, but his governing style very much reflects typical Democratic unwillingness to yell as loud and organize as intensely as Republicans for his values.

The antidote to this is actively defending abortion, health care, the environment, the welfare state, and every other lynchpin of modern liberalism. We should never apologize for abortion. We shouldn't say that we want to make it rare. Instead, we should stand on the rooftops and shout to the world that abortion needs to be legal, accessible, and without moral approbation. We are losing the abortion battle. There's no question that Obama will sign a health care bill that contains the Stupak Amendment. I'm not sure whether he should or not if it comes to it, but what's disturbing is that such language would be in the bill in the first place.

Sexism and Stupak

You know, over and over, lefties and liberals have told feminists that they have to look beyond sexism and abortion rights. Hell, I've been one of them. I criticized feminists during the primaries who seemed to excuse blatant racism from the Clinton campaign while freaking out about Obama calling a reporter "Sweetie." I've noted that historical feminism was a white middle-class movement with white middle-class goals.

But right now, I'm really, really pissed about this Stupak amendment (as if you couldn't tell). And yes, this is an issue that is personal for me: I'm a cisgender woman, heterosexual and of childbearing age, and I have no desire for kids.

And I'm sick and tired of hearing that I should look at the broader picture, that there are worse issues than sexism, blah blah blah.

I've heard this from well-meaning "liberal" men, but I've also heard it from activists I admire, who are usually RIGHT when they point out the myopia of much of the feminist movement (such as it is).

But this is the thing: millions of poor women, many of them women of color, will be hurt badly if this amendment stays in the bill. Shit, it'll affect me, but I can probably still get an abortion if I need one. This isn't a bourgeois issue and we're not being myopic or selfish assholes to be righteously, ferociously angry and ready to fight this tooth and nail.

This is women's lives. I care about race and class issues, poverty and health care and immigration and transgender people's rights.

There are lots of lines in the sand that I'll draw. One of them has been crossed right now, and yes, it's personal. Because over and over again our issues get written off as things that should be compromised for the greater good, or we're made to feel guilty because we're worrying about something silly when there are worse oppressions out there.

I'm not going to play oppression olympics or other such bullshit. I'm just going to keep fighting this with every breath I've got, and I don't care who you are, if you tell me I'm wrong for that, you can kiss my ass.

Bart Stupak Thinks He Knows What I Can Do With My Body

And Congress is voting to let him make that choice.

The amendment, which you can download and read in full here, would do three things.

First, it would codify the Hyde Amendment provisions in the bill so that the ban on federal funds being used for abortions besides those resulting from rape or incest, or in cases where the mother’s life is endangered would remain intact regardless of Hyde being reauthorized. As it’s currently written, the bill’s restrictions on the use of federal funds for abortion coverage would end if the Hyde Amendment, which has been reauthorized by Congress on an annual basis since 1976, is not reauthorized.

Secondly, it would not allow individuals purchasing insurance at least in part with federal affordability credits to buy a plan that covers abortions. The bill as currently written would allow individuals to use affordability credits to buy insurance that includes abortion coverage, but it requires any such plan to segregate the credits from individual premium payments and ensure that only the premium payments are used to fund the abortion services portion of the plan.

Affordability credits are available under the bill to people who don’t get insurance from work and earn between 150% and 400% of the Federal Poverty Level. The Stupak amendment would bar all people in this income bracket from purchasing insurance that covers elective abortions unless they can afford to pay for a separate abortion coverage plan on their own. People earning below 150% of FPL would already be ineligible for abortion coverage because they will be on Medicaid, which does not cover abortions under Hyde. There are no concrete numbers for how many people would be denied an abortion-coverage option under the amendment, but it would likely be at least 20 million.

Thirdly, the Stupak amendment would dictate that the government-run public option does not provide abortion coverage. The bill currently leaves the decision of abortion coverage in the public option up to the Secretary of Health and Human Services. Allowing the public option to cover abortions would not violate the Hyde Amendment because the public option is not government funded; will be entirely financed by individual premiums, just like the private plans.

You better be contacting Congress and letting them know that you're pissed. This is ridiculous. This is NOT what we voted for in giving the Democrats huge majorities and this is NOT what we wanted in health care reform.