I never explicitly posted about it, but I have mentioned it several times on FaceBook, the actual agenda behind the pro-life argument.
It doesn’t stop with abortion. That’s just a red-meat issue to get people to jump in line and follow the anti-choicers without thinking. The truth of the matter is this:
The anti-choice movement isn’t about babies, or abortion. It is about dis-empowering women and the poor, about rolling back the progressive change that has brought women forward from the times when they were simply nominal slaves to their father or husband. They are considered reproductive apartment buildings for the children of their male masters.
I have made the error of not pointing it out often enough when discussing the issue, but it’s time to correct that error. I suspect, thinking about it in a two-bit psychoanalysis of the Conservative mind, a lot of other issues tie into this underlying impulse for control over women’s reproductive choices.
Observe the controversies of the current day. Today, the Republican Party is fighting to end birth control. Not just abortion, but birth control.
Pardon me, but if someone’s going to go out of their way to deny birth control to someone else in law, there is absolutely no justification outside of a religious one to explain their reasoning. None. Nada. Zip.
And this has been the aim all along. The Catholic Church couldn’t give two shits about the lives of babies. As far as they’re concerned, outside of the cynical question of who’s alive to tithe a few pennies, their job is to save souls. NOT to make people’s lives better. Remember, dying of AIDS is considered a preferable fate than using a condom in their book. So while abortion makes a convenient topic that can be over-dramatized, their ultimate goal is to get birth control off the table for as many people as they can manage.
And that’s why now they’re getting jiggy with birth control. If they can make this discussion mainstream, they get to call into question the accepted norms of society and make that an uncertainty again.
Personally, they jumped the gun BIG TIME with this move. It shows an enormous disconnect with the will of the American people, to try to deny people the birth control pill. We’ve had that long enough, and it’s recognized as such an enormous enabler for not only women, but their partners as well, that to present its removal as a plank in a political platform is sheer suicide. Speaking in terms of the political fight ahead of them, they didn’t even have security on the abortion front – there’s just too much opposition to consider that a won battle. To conjoin it with something as thoroughly mainstreamed as the pill jeopardizes an enormous space of ground they have managed to win over the last couple of decades. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge proponent in favor of choice, so I’m thrilled to death to see them whip out this straight-razor and take it to their own throats.
I suspect they have been sleeping in the Fox News bubble long enough that when they saw the Shit Stain Rick Santorum get delegate votes the way he has, they mistook that for being at some level connected with the will of the American people. What they failed to recognize is that Santorum is a frothy outlier in American politics, only rising to the top because of the scarcity of candidates (I almost wrote “qualified”) there in the party. The Republicans have already self-marginalized, showing themselves further and further from the will of the country with each passing day – and Santorum is the favorite of the religious whackos who stuck around in that tent.
Now, lest you think I’m going to be entirely anti-Republican here, I’ve got a little jibe against the Democrats here as well.
Democrats: we wouldn’t be having this debate AT ALL if you dumb asses had simply put Single-Payer Medicare for All as the front-and-center candidate for health care reform. As good as the benefits we’ve already gained from the Affordable Care Act are, they’re a weak, paltry few compared to what we could have gained by getting single-payer. Which, I remind you, a majority of Americans were lined up to support back when you started the effort. Single-Payer would have made it the government’s role, a non-religious-affiliated group, to provide coverage. No one would be turned away, no employer would be forced to concern themselves with ensuring their employees any longer. And no religious institution would have found itself in a position to try to pretend that their spiritual sensibilities – such as they are – were offended by being required to toe the line of the law when providing insurance.
Because in the end, that’s what this is about: religious institutions are providing healthcare insurance. They don’t want to supply certain services, because they claim they violate their religious mores. Except because they’re performing the role of an insurance provider (and notably NOT those of a religious institution), so they’re forced to obey the law. Which means no discrimination on race/sex/creed, and no imposition of their religion onto the health care choices of others.
Single-Payer would have ended that discussion before it ever got a chance to start. Imagine all the batshittery I wouldn’t have had to see parading around on the news if you’d just gone there. Democrats, consider yourselves shamed for having left the door open for the dumber-than-a-bag-of-hammers Republicans to drag you into a stupid, shitty argument.
Oh, and special note to Mitch McConnell, after watching that video – do us all a favor and go leap off a tall bridge or building or something. Edit yourself from the gene and idea pool, please. You’re a sad example of how utterly fecal a human being can be. Preferably while bear-hugging Rick Santorum and giving him something to be frothy about.
Update: Rick Warren, famous for his anti-gay crusading in Uganda, demonstrates his worthlessness as a human being again.