Disdain for Women Who Choose to Have Abortions

While Ross Douthat's hardly a conservative favorite for me, I definitely appreciate his latest New York Times essay, "Not All Abortions Are Equal." I appreciate it not so much for his argument, but for the reaction it has engendered among radical abortion rights commentators.

There's a decent-sized thread in response at Memeorandum. What's interesting is the essential refusal of the pro-aborts to engage the most devasting aspect to Douthat's piece: that the pro-choice movement supports all manner of unlimited fetal termination; that pro-aborts not only advocate elective partial-birth abortions, but they'll fight to the death to preserve a woman's right to choose/kill.

I wrote on the renewed abortion debate the other day, "Late-Term Abortions Get New Scrutiny." Here I'm just providing a roundup of leftist opinion so readers can get an even fuller sense of not just how morally bereft are the pro-aborts, but also how abortion - along with gay marriage - really is the decisive sociopolitical issue of our time. How do we want to define society? As one that fails to protect its most vulnerable?

Note first that Scott Lemieux, at Lawyers, Guns and Money, is left impotent by Douthat's moral case for greater regulation. He's reduced to quibbling with what's essentially a debateable legal technicality rather than the larger existential issues at hand. I'm not even quoting Lemieux. The guy's questionable recent writings on abortion and public opinion have actually forced a spotlight on his competence.

So let's see what the netroots pro-aborts have to say ...

The left's overarching ideological (gendered) foundation is captured in this hypothetical scenario at Firedoglake:

Imagine a matriarchal society where, for example, men are expected to stay home and raise the children and keep the house, are paid 75¢ on the dollar, are continually passed over for promotions because they're not part of the "girls' club," and are solidly underrepresented in state and federal legislative bodies. Imagine a world where men's bodies are still considered chattel, and are subject to archaic and inhumane religious beliefs costumed as "law." And yes, it's a cliche, but imagine a world where men could get pregnant. Then imagine a world where a doctor is murdered for performing an abortion that man sought because he didn't want to carry the child to term for any number of reasons.

All this counterfactual does is play the pity-poor-me-oppressed-woman-tearjerk game. It avoids anything substantive on the moral depravity of baby killing. TBogg, a Firedoggerel member, titles his post thus, "Hand Over Your Uterus and Nobody Gets Hurt."

Also classic is the brutal clarity in Mahablog's post advocating the case for choice. Rejecting Douthat's suggestion that there are exceptional circumstances that may arguably necessitate abortion, Maha writes:

No, the argument for legal and medically safe abortions — which would still be regulated, as is any medical procedure — is that there are times when pregnancy and childbirth would place an unbearable burden on a woman’s life, and so women will seek abortions. Their reasons are as infinite as the details of their lives. If abortions are not legal, they will either abort themselves or they will find underground abortion providers, medically trained or not.

Nope, don't want to be "punished" with a child! Kill 'em!

And this notion of "underground abortion providers" is a myth in the U.S. There are untold clinics in the U.S. providing abortion services. Planned Parenthood's so hard up to kill babies that they refuse to report statutory rape in favor of pushing "choice" on a minor.

But check out Echidne's post, "Every Sperm Is Sacred." As you can tell, there's a religious angle here:

So Ross Douthat has written a beautiful, almost elegiac, column on abortion, with the title "Not All Abortions Are Equal." The title is meant to make you subconsciously think that women's equality is irrelevant for this topic which is defined by Mr. Douthat and concerns the way we can save people like Dr. Tiller from getting murdered.

That way is to give in to the demands of extreme anti-abortion fanatics so that they stop killing people:

If abortion were returned to the democratic process, this landscape would change dramatically. Arguments about whether and how to restrict abortions in the second trimester — as many advanced democracies already do – would replace protests over the scope of third-trimester medical exemptions.

The result would be laws with more respect for human life, a culture less inflamed by a small number of tragic cases — and a political debate, God willing, unmarred by crimes like George Tiller's murder.

God willing, indeed. Let's apply the same arguments to the Islamic terrorists: If we only gave them what they want they would stop terrorist acts against the West! Let's do that! Surely Osama bin Laden would allow us to micromanage some parts of our own lives as women? Surely?

Hmm, more with the "terrorist analogy." That's pretty sick.

Now, there's not much argumentation at Athenae's post, but she does call Douthat a "sanctimonious garden weasel"!

But let me conclude here with Kathleen Reeves' longer discussion. To be fair, it's probably the more thoughtful of the bunch. But utlimately, Reeves' critique is just one more example of how leftists, in their abortion-as-gender-equality-meme, cannot appreciate the beauty and sanctity in the lives of the unborn:

The pro-life movement wants abortion gone not only from our health clinics, but from our memories. The movement focuses, at times, on late-term abortion because it’s easier to sensationalize and mischaracterize. For example, the PR genius who came up with the phrase “partial-birth abortion” ensured that in addition to the originally targeted procedure, intact dilation and extraction, all late-term abortions are now legally questionable. With a clever turn of phrase—calling it something that it was not—the pro-life movement attached a gruesome association to an entire set of procedures, all of which are employed to save women’s lives.

But again, the pro-life movement wants abortion gone, and it sees late-term abortions as a promising inroad. Douthat argues that our laws on abortion can avoid the all-or-nothing question, “Either a fetus has a claim to life or it doesn’t,” and can be more responsive to the many different types of abortion in America. He writes that the law is “the place where morality meets custom, and compromise, and common sense.”

While Douthat takes a well-considered, cool-headed tone in his writing, and while he implies at the beginning of the op-ed that he identifies with abortion rights supporters, his disdain for women who choose to have abortions is fairly apparent. It’s all too clear that the “common sense” he’d like to see in our abortion laws is Ross Douthat’s common sense, which makes little room for experiences that aren’t his own.

I can't speak for Douthat, although I must admit that I share this "disdain for women who have abortions." Well, not so much all women (there may indeed be medical circumstances whereby fetal termination should be available as a last resort). I'm disdainful of women who talk about abortions as happy day sharing opportunites. I'm disdainful of women who make decisions about pregnancy as if the "choice" at issue is no more significant than "paper or plastic." And I'm disdainful of women who advocate a feminist totalitarianism that demonizes men as "forced-childbirth barbarians."