On the subject of Reproductive Freedom, there can be no common ground between the militant anti-abortion religious right, including the Roman Catholic Church (RCC) and those of us who believe that people have the right to use any method of birth control they choice, up to and including safe, legal abortion.
I agree and I'm getting damned sick of all the triangulation and Third-Way hand-wringing bullshit over reducing abortion.
Or, looked at another way, we pro-choicers already occupy that middle ground. Most of us support all the measures that have been bruited about to reduce abortion.
Wide access to affordable, safe birth control, check.
Age-appropriate, fact-based, comprehensive sex ed, check.
Financial and other support for pregnant women, check.
Financial and other support for individuals and families with children, check.
Quality, affordable daycare for parents who want to or have to work or go to school, check.
Making adoption easier, sure, why not?
If the militant anti-abortion religious right won't budge on so-called artificial contraception and fact-based sex ed -- and I highly doubt they will -- there is NO middle ground.
In related news, there's a search for common ground elsewhere. SUZY ALL-CAPS takes issue with those uber kool kids at The Signal Hill, a.k.a. Pro-Life BC. SHE asks: What about common ground on fetal rights?
See, in the attempted rebranding of Pro-Life BC into something normal people would pay any attention to, the Signalers claim to be moving away from trying to legislate restrictions or prohibitions on abortion and moving towards changing the 'culture'. You know, that Culture of Death we sensible people supposedly inhabit.
Well, they might be claiming that -- and in the process getting up the noses of militant anti-abortion fundies, wot fun! -- their website contains links to all the usual bullshit, like 'abortion causes breast cancer' and a newish site set up to whine about 40 years of sexual liberation in Canada. There, the splash page has a photo of a very pregnant woman with ghostly fetus showing through her abdomen and clothes with the timeless shrieeeeek 'Have we gone too far?'
Nope. We haven't gone far enough. When every woman in Canada -- I'm looking at you, New Brunswick -- has access to safe, legal abortions, then we'll have gone far enough on the abortion issue.
2 comments:
The good doc is right--there is no middle ground here. You're either for choice or not. Their side won't even promote the use of birth control (which COULD have been common ground, in a rational universe) because they've been inoculated with the false belief that the Pill kills fetuses. How it can kill them when all it does is prevent ovulation, I don't know...but that's the extent of their sickness. It's not a question of who's for abortion and who's against it; it's not even a question of when life begins. It is a battle between the rational and the insane. And it's a battle that the insane, at any rate, are determined to fight to the bitter, bat-shit crazy end.
You're right, Your Majesty. Insane v. not insane. But I think we win. Eventually.
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