I came across this article about Hobby Lobby being forced to close all its stores by Obamacare's mandate that health insurance must provide coverage for birth control. I've seen comments claiming it's a fake, that closing the stores was never under consideration, but Hobby Lobby is fighting the mandate in court on grounds of restricting religious freedom. To be fair, while the Right wing has been guilty of taking this same stance on plain old birth control pills, this protest is specifically about what they call "abortion causing drugs" like the morning after pill, emergency contraception and the week after pill.
Christians being persecuted for standing firm on religious principle
1) I'm not up on the details of all these contraceptive drugs but I know at least Plan B, the morning after pill, does not work by inducing a post conception abortion. It works by suppressing ovulation during the one or two days after sex when there may still be viable sperm in the area. I hope it turns out that none of these pills technically causes an abortion so that these self-righteous priss-buckets will have spent tens of thousands in legal fees just to go to court and get educated about the biology of emergency contraception, completely flushing their entire legal position and hopefully making them feel just a little bit silly.
2) Employers provide benefits to compensate their employees. One benefit is health insurance. Another popular benefit is a paycheck. If a Christian employer claims the right to censor what can be purchased with one kind of benefit, why not the other? The employee's paycheck comes directly from the employer's funds, so it is employer money being used to pay for whatever the employee wants, why doesn't the employer get to use the same argument and restrict what can be purchased with his funds? Health insurance claims are paid by the insurance company, not the employer, so coverage for contraceptives would not be funded by the employer. No threat to the good man's religion at all, see? The insurance itself is what's provided and funded by the employer, and to say that providing insurance that could be used for abortion drugs but most likely will not is no different from providing a paycheck that could be used to buy human babies for use in satanic rituals but most likely will not.
3) I believe the courts have already sorted out the legal position on these conscience claims. Since Hobby Lobby is a privately owned company, it is a separate entity from its owner and cannot itself hold a religious belief. Hobby Lobby is not a Christian, then, so the company is free to obey the coverage mandate with unmolested conscience.
4) I have always wanted a Christian to explain this to me. I am puzzled by the Christian anti-abortion stance. On the surface, it seems obvious, if they regard abortion as murder then it is the same stance they take on murder, don't do it, it's immoral. But if an unborn fetus, even an embryo, even a cluster of dividing cells a few hours post conception is a human being with a soul, then it is subject to the same Christian rules as all humans. If it is born it will be immediately guilty of original sin and will be "of this sinful world" until such time that it is saved by accepting Jesus as savior and repenting of sin. Just by being born it assumes the unbearable, deadly burden of human sin, through no choice of its own, and now must make the right steps to rectify the problem and save itself from eternity in hell. Am I right so far, Christians? Some believe that infants and children are free of the consequences of sin until they reach an age of mature understanding, so if a toddler dies before it could possibly find Jesus and get saved, no foul, it gets a free pass to salvation and heaven. So, clearly an unborn human qualifies for that deal, too, since it is understood that we are "born" into sin, not conceived into it. If abortion (murder) sends the unborn human soul directly to God without suffering temptation, free will, sin, and the ever so twisty path that may lead to redemption but may wind up eternally damned instead, why isn't abortion the single greatest gift anyone could give to a human being? It's a free pass to be with God, who wouldn't want that for their child?
I expect the answers would be something along the lines of God intended for us all to experience birth and have free will and find our own path to his Light, so abortion is directly opposed to the will of God. Well, yeah, I get that, it's wrong to deny a human the chance to be born and have free will and all that because it's not God's will, but we already established abortion is wrong, right? It's murder, we started there, so the woman is guilty of murder and opposing God's will for the unborn child. Fine. But the kid still gets a free ticket to heaven and doesn't have to be dirtied by the sinful world, so it's still a great deal for him! Wouldn't any mother be willing to sacrifice her own soul and commit murder so that her child could be guaranteed a place with God?
Doesn't this say, at least, that abortion is like every other sin, it cannot be distilled into a simple, compact little tablet to swallow as part of a simple moral code.
5) Which is another problem with this Christian conscience issue. Without context, it isn't proper to judge the absolute right or wrong of any action. Christian self-righteousness makes it very easy for them to see that what other people do is immoral and crank out the standard righteous condemnation for it. But I guarantee there is a situation where, if the Christian truly has a soul, he would concede that abortion (or murder, or any other sin) is the right thing to do, sin or not. God will forgive, the Christian would believe. And that is where this ridiculous notion of religious freedom should end. No sin is absolute, and Christians do not implicate themselves in others' sin when they step back and just live and let live. God wants free will choices, right? You interfere with God's will when you deny people their right to their own moral code.
So anyway, I dove down into the comments at the bottom of the article, and I became most awfully afraid. There are people there who believe "Christians are being trampled underfoot" because they can't exercise their religious belief in controlling what other people do with their employment benefits. Satan's children and his minions are in control and only God can save us. Please, God, come now! Save us, oh Lord, save us from government mandates that protect evil sluts from Your righteous fury when they fornicate and mock Your law!
Seriously, it's a level of hysteria I'd expect to see from someone who, maybe, is forced to watch her little girl die slowly in agony because the government has mandated that Christians may not receive medical care in our society and must wear a yellow cross sewn to their clothes to identify them as lesser citizens. Or maybe if Christians were being herded onto reservations and forced to livein squaller without adequate food or shelter. Or maybe if the Christian slave trade had just been legalized and all of Jesus's followers had been taken into captivity to be sold as slaves. But what is this about, this babbling jumble of terror wrapped up in a persecution complex? For God's sake, it's about health insurance!! It's about Christians being forced---shudder!---against their religious convictions to live and let live.
You know, I get carried away with hyperbole when I'm really into making a point. But when I do, I'm fully aware that I'm blowing it up, pressing it out, for full dramatic effect. Are these people aware at all of how hysterical they are? Over health insurance coverage for people they don't even know for procedures they don't even understand? When they cry out to God to return and save his people from this misery, do they realize that God was around when people in this country were literally bought, sold, and owned as property by other human beings? Do they know he watched while terrorists flew our own airplanes into our own buildings and killed a bunch of our own people in front of our helpless eyes? And God was here when our ancestors showed up on this continent and began doing a real "Satan's children and his minions" number on the native Americans living here? And back in the glory days in the mother land, God saw Catholics burn Protestants alive and then saw Protestants come to power and do the same to Catholics?
And without irony they will cry out to God to save them from this bitter, evil time in which we have "crashed down to rock bottom." Literally, this is the lowest we could ever go, the absolute maximum value of despair, the darkest depths of depravity and oppression. For Hobby Lobby yea verily may rise up upon its Christian principles only to fall down upon the ruins of Christian civilization, and lo the craft stores shall pull shut their doors and shut out the wicked world that hath gravely wounded them.
Read the comments and weep for the lost for they have no hope of finding their way. What in the world do you do with people like this who are so wrapped up in unhappy delusions of their own creation that they can't find their way to reality anymore?
Wednesday, October 2, 2013
Tuesday, September 24, 2013
Republicans, why do you hate us so?
Update: Here's another article that illustrates my point beautifully:
After denying you the right to an abortion, Republicans are outraged that they have to pay for your childbirth. No Medicaid coverage for childbirth, they say. If women had to give birth in a ditch more often, maybe they'll think twice about opening their legs.
Take in the Republican position on this, close your eyes and let it waft around you, then let it merge with the sour aroma of abortion bans and blocked access to birth control. Now tell me if Republicans have a problem with abortion or they have a problem with women getting laid without their permission. Tell me if Republicans smell a bit "punitive" in their attitudes, and does it seem like banning abortion might be more about punishment than saving lives?
****
Republicans will deny the "war on women," and why would we expect them to acknowledge it outright? You need only to witness the condescending tone, the dismissive gestures, the vicious insults and bullying, not to mention this, a nauseating list of anti-women legislation passed in the country since things really escalated in 2011.
Politicususa: Proof of War on Women
I knew there was a lot, but as I read through this, I became so heartsick and so mad. I had no idea they had done so much. So much of this legislation is absolutely without purpose other than to mess with women, just to prove that they can. Why, for Pete's sake, are there people in the world who think birth control is a bad thing that needs to be heavily legislated and controlled? What's particularly annoying is the recent trend in legislation permitting people to refuse to do some aspect of their job if it conflicts with their religious convictions. It is truly ridiculous. Of course they're using it to get around anti-discrimination laws that protect gays, but in this list of legislation are examples of bills allowing pharmacists and healthcare workers to refuse to provide birth control to patients if it conflicts with their religious beliefs. Are there really people out there working in public who believe so very strongly in their religious conviction that birth control is wrong that they couldn't bring themselves to just fill the blessed prescription and let them be on their way? I mean, do they really feel that doing their job to fill people's prescriptions is committing a sin if their prescription is for something sinful like birth control? What if the patient isn't using it for birth control but to regulate her periods? How do these scenarios play out in real life--when the pharmacist politely says, "No, I can't fill this for you, it's against my religion," what then? Is the customer supposed to just say, "Oh, how nice. Well thank you anyway," and go somewhere else? Or does another pharmacist come over to do the transaction so the religious one won't have to sully his soul with the sin of birth control? Do they feel silly at all? And what does the religious pharmacist feel he's accomplished? People still get birth control, the world is still full of sin, and what besides an abiding sense of self-righteousness did he get from refusing to do his job?
What about the Jewish waitress who should have the right to refuse to serve shrimp to her customers because eating shellfish is against her religion? How about if people just get over themselves and quit worrying so much about other people's sins, sex in particular.
So I'm going to dig into the conservative position on abortion and explain why it IS about women and NOT about saving babies. I'm going to make some unkind generalizations about conservatives, and of course I realize not all of them are demons from hell. But these generalizations are based on my own fascinated study of conservatives as I debated issues in political forums, listened to my family and conservative friends discuss politics, and examined the nature of the conservative mind and personality in various books over the years. I believe I know the conservative mind very well, along with the particular personality quirks that go along with it. I have little respect for them, and if I seem like I'm being mean or unfair, it is because I have seen meanness and unfairness blossom abundantly in just about everything they say or do.
Conservativism is a philosophy of selfishness. It's the theory that says society prospers best when each individual seeks his own personal gain and best interests, and our success comes in proportion to our wits, talent and hard work, leading to the collective success of the group as a whole. Looking at conservative political positions, each in its own way represents selfishness as the conservative's overriding principle, the most obvious example being the glorification of capitalism and a free market economy. Conversely, the conservative's aversion to Socialism is because enforcing equality of outcome across the population for the greater good is the opposite of self-promotion, it means taking an interest in and working to improve the condition of others along with your own.
"Cutting taxes" is obviously a position that benefits the self if one is a tax payer. "Cut government spending" and "promote small government" allow for ease of implementing the "cut taxes" program. Supporting cuts to spending and a small government that provides very little is easy if you are someone who doesn't need any of the services or resources provided by government. If you don't care about state parks, environmental standards, food and drug safety, education, healthcare, or social programs, then you have no problem slashing all that right out of the budget to make way for your tax cuts. But if you have family and close friends who rely on government services, do you still want to slash them to the bone? Where a liberal will vote to keep a government program in place if there are people out there somewhere, complete strangers, who rely on it, a conservative doesn't give two squirts who's using government services, he says cut them. They are of no use to him. The conservative simply will not draw a connection from the policies he supports to the real-world consequences for the people he knows, and certainly not for strangers. He supports cutting the government because smaller government suits him well and he likes his taxes low.
Demonizing the poor, particularly in cutting welfare, medicaid, and food stamps, serves the selfish purpose of allowing the conservative to view his own worth and character as superior to other people. This is more satisfying when the poor have nothing because he can believe they are less valuable, less righteous, less "good" than him in proportion to what little they have vs. his own comfortable lifestyle. Conservatives particularly oppose government programs that provide money and other services that bring poor people up to a particular living standard, making them closer to "equal" with him, artificially, living on money they didn't earn. And worst of all, that HIS tax money was taken from him in order to give this lowly undeserving poor person a false boost up the value ladder and reduce the moral gap between them. It bothers conservatives very, very much to think of people receiving money, food, medical care handouts they don't deserve. When selfishness is your ideology, those who don't serve themselves deserve to have nothing.
Racism, homophobic gay bigotry, and righteous Christian posturing for political power represent selfishness of perspective. Racist attitudes and behaviors come out to reflect the desire to be a member of a more privileged and special class. Religion is used self-servingly to provide cover for discrimination and bigotry. Conservatives feel good when they have the power to put lesser people in their place.
In all of these issues, conservatives don't really even pretend to be guided by anything other than selfishness. They almost take special pride in being selfish, as though it is their own specialness and innate superiority that grants them the privilege, and why should they apologize for that? They usually don't pretend to see any moral need to consider anyone else's viewpoint or circumstances, and they pursue their own agenda ruthlessly. They really don't care, and they see no benefit at all in compromise. They also tend to assume that everyone else operates with the selfishness ideology too, after all, why wouldn't they? Thus, Democrats don't sincerely care about helping the poor, or immigrants, or women, they must have something to gain in doing it, they must be buying votes.
Oddly enough, there is one issue they can't approach with the selfish ideology firmly in place. They have to disguise it and pretend, in just this one case, to be motivated by concern for another human being. Abortion. Their true motivation for this issue is as selfish as the rest. When independent, single women engage in sex and focus on career instead of family and remain in control of their own lives rather than moving from one passive female role to another: daughter to wife to mother, etc. they challenge the acceptable identity that conservatives have created for women that keeps them firmly in line--nonsexual, nonthreatening, valuable in terms of nurturing and supporting others, where the highest and most desirable honor is to be remembered and cherished as a Good Mother. Both conservative men and women are troubled by free-wheeling single gals calling their own shots, competing in life on their own terms rather than those defined by someone else, building a career and accomplishing things. Decades ago, women could be kept from discovering such freedom by slut shaming and scaring them into thinking they were unlovable if they didn't have a husband by the age of 25. Today, no one's ashamed of having a healthy sex life, and if a woman chooses to focus on school and career throughout her 20s, she doesn't worry that she'll die an unwanted spinster because she missed her chance to marry. In fact, I'm pleased to say, lots of women don't even assume they will get married anymore. It's not a mandatory female condition anymore, and this gives major heartburn to conservatives who cannot stand to see their once sacred image of the Ideal Woman being pushed aside as women seek to find their own ideal image instead of striving to meet the standards of one provided for them.
Selfish. Just like gays and blacks, women are and should remain what he defines them to be, what they traditionally have been defined to be. This new kind of woman is frightening, for who can say how much power she may wield and what she may do with it when she has become the standard?
The most remarkable (and frightening) aspect of the new woman is her sexual independence. She will have as much sex as she wants, with whomever she wants, as often as she wants, and it is no one's business. There are no social consequences anymore, no one will whisper about her and call her names, she won't be shunned in polite circles, and men won't reject her for her impurity. It's alarming to conservatives that women's sexual freedom has actually become quite attractive. Men are turned on by it, and even other women admire it when it's expressed in a classy way. Alas, no little girl wants to grow up to be Molly Good Mother the Virtuous and Sweet anymore, they want to grow up and rock their sexuality, explore and devour it, make choices and experience things, learn and accomplish and live. If you can understand how important it is for a conservative to categorize people and rank them, particularly those he can safely place well beneath him and manipulate for his own advantage or simply use to boost his own ego by judging them and expressing contempt, the idea of losing women as one whole category of lesser beings is a disturbing thought. Especially if women emerge somehow instead to have their own self-created power that doesn't respond in any way to his control. These uppity bitches need to be put in check.
When women exercise their sexuality with prudent use of birth control, they are pretty much untouchable by the right wing conservatives that want to yank them back in line. It is when sex has the consequence of unintended pregnancy that conservatives have the perfect platform on which to pounce. First, there is the moral condemnation implied still in getting knocked up. You can't slut shame a woman for having sex, but she will probably still today feel pretty embarrassed and humiliated to find herself "in the family way" as a result of her wanton behavior. Still, if women are allowed to terminate their unwanted pregnancies and minimize the consequences of having sex, conservatives can't touch them. If a woman has an abortion, she's still arrogantly calling the shots, carelessly wiping away her mistake as though it were nothing so she can get right back to her vibrant, independent life.
So the (selfish) conservative agenda is to reduce the use of birth control so that women will be more likely to suffer for their choices, and eliminate abortion as an option for getting off the hook. So they created a debate and controversy over abortion that was and is completely disingenuous. The push to ban abortion is meant to punish women for their nontraditional choices, particularly for having sex, and force them back into the traditional role of motherhood as well as the hardship of poverty and unexpected life turmoil. There is no male equivalent to a woman's unexpected pregnancy, the sudden immediate need to figure out what to do, the possibility of having your whole life thrown permanently off course, the consideration of whether to involve the other party in this decision, or your mother, or a pastor. This situation belongs uniquely to women, and they alone should decide what options should be available.
Unbelievable how much this has been a men's issue on the right. Unbelievable how men in state legislatures across the country saw women's right to abortion as their top legislative priority and most urgent problem to be solved. I'd like to speak to them face to face and watch very closely when I ask them thoughtful questions and prove there's nothing deep in there about this issue, there is only shallow rhetoric and reactionary judgment born of misogyny.
First they narrated an image of women who get abortions, shaming them and framing abortion as something reckless, promiscuous women find themselves in need of, women who should have known better, women who lack self control. In this weak and vulnerable moment, women aren't dealing with enough emotional turmoil, they must put on the yoke of conservative scorn as well.
Then, because the selfish motive behind this agenda would never win enough support for their controversial position by itself, they had to pretend to be driven by desire to save the lives of the unborn and stop abortion in America. This turns out to be a very compelling platform for them, because everyone in some respect sees a pregnant woman and thinks of what's inside as a "baby." It wasn't hard at all to frame this issue in terms of stopping the murder of babies, and there you have a ready-made excuse for just about any radical approach you want to take to deny women access to abortion. For who doesn't understand the urgency in saving babies from cruel, painful death? So the abortion battle has raged all over the country, in court rooms, outside clinics where demonstrators assault women's senses with shouted curses, ugly names, tearful pleas to spare the life of the child, horrible graphic images, and physical intimidation or interference from entering the clinic. They can be excused for their extreme measures, given the way they have framed their crusade. Conservative lawmakers bullied through abortion bans in several states in hopes of testing Roe v. Wade again in the Supreme Court and overturning it. Anything vaguely related to women's health, birth control, or family planning is aggressively legislated in conservative states. States without an outright ban worked on killing access to abortion by hyper-legislating the procedure and the facilities that provide them. Presented as laws protecting the health of women seeking abortion care, they impose ridiculous restrictions designed to impede the process, not protect anyone's health. Presented as laws to protect women from making uninformed decisions or acting on impulse, they impose waiting periods and mandatory counseling. No other simple out-patient medical procedure has ever produced so much conservative interest in controlling its every detail.
You'd look at their passion on this issue and think, wow, they really care a lot about those poor unborn babies! They must lie awake at night tortured by the thought of those they can't save. And they have fooled everyone brilliantly, for only women suspect what their real purpose is, and if we say it out loud, we are hysterical feminists who always think everyone's out to oppress women.
But let's examine it and see.
1) There is, literally, not a single other political issue in which conservatives champion the cause of another human being and seek to protect or rescue them from harm.
Not the poor, who, like unborn babies, are helpless and cannot stand up for themselves. Not the mentally ill or mentally disabled, who are as helpless and innocent as babies and suffering severe neglect and poor quality care due to lack of funds for mental health services. Not abused animals, even though conservatives might like animals and hate animal cruelty, you won't see them volunteering at the humane society or working to find homes for strays or helping to capture, spay, and release feral kittens. Not child abuse/neglect, which would be something you'd certainly expect them to take an interest in, since their hearts are so wrought by the tragedy of fetus-babies dying before they're born--surely living babies suffering real injury and disease would be even more compelling. No, not a popular conservative cause. Not third world hunger and disease, again babies dying in agony, conservatives don't adopt starving orphans and save their lives.
It seems strange, doesn't it, that the plight of the helpless unborn--who are actually non-sensate, non-cognitive, barely human-looking, unaware of self or surroundings, incapable of feeling pain, un-named, unknown and unloved by anyone, whose presence on earth will not be missed by a single person, whose unremarkable passing will relieve its mother of a terrible burden she knows she cannot bear--should provoke such EXTREME, relentless, aggressive rescue attempts and political activism, yet none of these other helpless creatures' suffering or dying provokes any political interest at all? What IS it that's so compelling about saving those hidden little unborn babies you'd never even knew existed if someone didn't tell you the woman was pregnant?
2) There is, literally, not a single other political issue in which the conservative position is purely for the benefit of someone else and not themselves.
Their political concerns revolve around their own personal gain or questions of their own personal power over another group of people. Conservatives are champions of their own interests, not those of others, and their personality is distinguished by a lack of empathy and concern for the well being of others, especially strangers. Their political views are not motivated by a compulsion to "do the right thing" or "fight a terrible injustice." The "right thing" is what benefits them, and they will use all sorts of logical leaps and fallacies to prove it every time. Fighting injustice doesn't interest them, for it isn't the "just" outcome they care about but rather the outcome that gets them what they want. It truly would be a bizarre wrinkle in their pattern to develop strong protective and compassionate feelings toward, not just a stranger but not even a person, a piece of human flesh that no one can see and nobody knows or cares about. In the traditional measure of conservative worth, this creature is even less likely to inspire him to care--this thing not only doesn't have a job and support itself, it can't even sustain its own life and has to suck resources like a parasite from its host.
Strange enough if one conservative found himself wrapped up in such a powerful campaign of selflessness, how likely is it that the whole herd of conservatives all caught the same weird fever at the same time? I wish it were so obvious to everyone as it is to me, these men are on a mission, and saving lives is no part of it at all.
3) Conservatives are often criticized for their hypocrisy in trying to ban abortions without regard for what effect that would have on women, while at the same time opposing birth control, the very thing that could reduce the number of abortions. In fact, conservatives haven't shown much interest at all in programs designed to prevent unwanted pregnancy, such as comprehensive sex education in schools, increased availability of free or low cost birth control, better education and medical care for women starting in their teens. They defend their irrational position by insisting "abstinence only" is the only form of birth control they advocate for young people, because it is the only 100% safe method to prevent disease and pregnancy. Birth control encourages pre-marital sex, and conservatives like to pretend they don't know that pre-marital sex is pretty much the norm in society today, with or without birth control.
Are you seeing a theme here? Think about it, if the issue of all these unborn babies getting murdered preyed upon your mind to the extent it appears to do for conservatives, wouldn't you embrace and support all the programs that would have the certain effect of reducing baby murders? It's conceivable that the right combination of programs could provide birth control and education to enough women all over the country so that in ten years time there'd be no more need to protest abortion because it would hardly ever be needed. Isn't this what you want if you are anti-abortion? Less abortions?
In fact, less abortions is what they do want but not in the way you'd think. Those of us with compassion for the difficulty women face in making this terrible heart-wrenching decision support the use of birth control because reducing UNWANTED PREGNANCY is the result we'd like to achieve. Look at their rhetoric and tell me conservatives don't want to keep unwanted pregnancy just the way it is but eliminate abortions completely. Does it seem their interest is in saving the lives of unborn babies or in controling the lives of women by ensuring their chances of getting pregnant remain high if they choose to have sex and then making them become mothers when they are not ready?
4) They do not believe that abortion is the same thing as murdering a baby. They simply do not. Here's how I know. The difference between an unborn fetus and a baby is very natural to understand. When a woman has a miscarriage she does not fish the poor dead body out of the toilet and call the authorities to report that her baby has died. She does not give it a name, buy a casket, have a funeral, get a headstone and cemetery lot and bury the fetus. She would do all of these things if it were a baby who died. Abortion bans do not provide for first degree murder charges against someone caught performing one illegally or recommend the death penalty, even though if this were a baby it would be a premeditated and brutal killing without a doubt. Abortion bans typically don't even recommend severe prison terms for those who illegally murder their babies when abortion is banned. No one would advocate a light penalty for someone who genuinely murdered an actual baby, so clearly conservatives understand like everyone else--a fetus is not the same as a baby, and an abortion is not the same thing as murder.
So we know they understand the difference between a fetus and a baby, we can be even more certain their motives are not about compassionate rescue and mercy. If capable of compassion and mercy, there isn't any reason they should feel moved more by the suffering of a fetus than for its mother making the difficult decision and the cost to her if termination isn't an option. In fact, compassion and mercy have nothing to do with it. Conservatives feel nothing more for the unborn fetus victimized in an abortion procedure than for the victims of any other tragic event happening to someone they don't know.
5) Anti-abortion legislators add exceptions to their abortion bans for cases of rape and incest. If saving the life of a fetus were the true purpose of this legislation, no exception for anything would be acceptable because a murdered baby is a murdered baby, regardless of how it was conceived. But if the purpose of the abortion ban is to punish women for having sex, then you would grant an exception for rape and incest because she should not be punished for being forced to have sex against her will.
6) I don't see this argument made often enough in abortion debates, perhaps because it's so hypothetical it's easy for the other side to laugh it off. If men carried the burden or even half of the burden of childbirth and post-birth child care--if their bodies were the ones stretched all out of shape and thrown into turmoil--if their careers, future plans, and lifestyle preferences were on the line based on this one decision--choose abortion or choose life? There would be no question at all about men's right to choose abortion. They would make all of the exact same arguments in support of their rights as we do about ours. The issue would be so self-evident, so beyond debate, so ridiculously one sided that men would not even entertain discussions about the subject. Of course they can get abortions. It's their body, their life. And NO, that thing growing in there is not a baby, don't be retarded.
This is such an absolute truth that men don't even deny it. They know it's ridiculous to pretend that men would sacrifice anything at all, let alone everything just so they can be saddled down taking care of a kid? No thank you very much. I think even the rare man who would choose life would also respect his brothers' right to choose. Men stick together that way. It's too bad women don't more often.
This issue disturbs me very much. Here we are, fifty years after Roe v. Wade decided the question of women's right to abortion in this country, and now we have abortion suddenly banned or severely limited or made unavailable through undue regulations and defunding. MEN passed those laws, and they did so with the very most ugly, condescending, dismissive tone toward all women and their reproductive rights. The sneaky Texas legislature breaking legislative rules to stop Wendy Davis's filibuster in time for them to pass their abortion ban, then doctoring the official legislative web site showing the final vote, making it appear to have been done before midnight when in fact the votes were recorded a few minutes after. They tried to cheat the outcome and deny Wendy her well-deserved victory (however brief). They arrogantly promised "We'll see you soon," to remind her that they had the power, not she, and they would simply abuse legislative procedure to call another special session for this non-emergency bill, and they gloated because Wendy could not stop them. The vicious remark Rick Perry made about Wendy Davis, presuming to instruct her on the appropriate beliefs she should have based on her own personal history with unexpected pregnancy, completely dismissing her and all women as having nothing relevant to say about this issue.
The truth is in that contempt and the disrespect of Wendy Davis and all the female supporters who came to protest. It was a truly awesome crowd, thousands of people stayed for the entire day and all night waiting for the vote. Rick Perry carried on as though his work were just too important for all these silly women to understand, he never made a single acknowledgement of the large group of support for women's rights. The message coming through from these guys is clear: "You ladies do not call the shots, we make the rules and we will tell you what they are. You have no part to play in this, but you may watch if you behave." These men give absolutely zero fucks about saving babies, they care not one bit about preservation of life. It's about women, and they don't really even hide it very much. It's about something they can take away from us and control, something personal and intimate, something emotionally difficult, something necessary for our well being and our right to self-identify--our choice to become a mother or not.
And then fucking North Carolina governor, ignored protestors for weeks after sneaking his abortion ban through, and then he serves them an insult, brings them down a plate of cookies and says, "These are for you." Refused to hear them, refused to stay even for a moment and hear them, just dismissed them with a condescending "God bless you." And cookies. Why do they hate women so?
*****
This is what I would like to force a conservative to give me a thoughtful true answer to, if I could force a sincere conversation about abortion. They would never allow such a thing, though, why would they? There's nothing in it for them to gain by opening up for a thoughtful conversation.
"Okay, tell me why you saw the need to do this? No, no political talking points about 'right to life' and all that. Tell me how you feel about a woman who exercises her right to an abortion? How do you feel about the fetus she aborted? Do you believe it had a soul? Did its soul go straight to heaven to be with God because it died in its innocence? Then didn't that woman do a wonderful and generous thing for her child, delivering it straight to God rather then let it be born into sin and risk the loss of redemption? Isn't that what we'd all want for our children, to be placed safely in heaven, never to sin, never to fear, never to hurt? If that woman committed murder by abortion, then she sacrificed her soul to hell so her child could go to heaven--I think that's a beautiful story and she can be proud she was strong enough to make that choice."
Another one:
"Tell me, senator, imagine if somehow you yourself went off for a stolen weekend with your mistress, shagged like monkeys all over the motel room and the hot tub, came back and three weeks later you found out you're pregnant. You have an embryo implanted in your body, and if you do nothing, it's going to grow and grow and swell your belly out to embarrassing size. You're going to have to explain to everyone--your wife, your constituents, your kids, your friends. You will likely pay a political cost, you can't cheat on your wife, get knocked up, and just let the thing progress for nine months, humiliated in front of everyone, giant fat pictures of yourself in the paper with swollen ankles. So you may have to resign your seat, and if you don't you'll be a spectacle. So what's it going to be, senator, will you face the music, go through the embarrassment and physical hardship of pregnancy and childbirth, maybe lose your seat, maybe lose your wife and family? Buy a crib, a car seat, diapers and baby clothes so you can be all set for your new full time job taking care of a baby, forever? That little embryo inside you, it's about the size of an acorn, doesn't look anything like a baby at all, does it have a right to be born now that it's there? Do you have no choice? Or would you be okay with the other tough choice, terminate the pregnancy before anyone finds out, save your career, save your marriage, put it behind you and vow to never make such a mistake again in your life? I really want to know, and I want the truth, what would you choose, given those two options? Do you really believe there's only ONE factor that should be considered, the child's right to life? Does your life matter not at all?"
After denying you the right to an abortion, Republicans are outraged that they have to pay for your childbirth. No Medicaid coverage for childbirth, they say. If women had to give birth in a ditch more often, maybe they'll think twice about opening their legs.
Take in the Republican position on this, close your eyes and let it waft around you, then let it merge with the sour aroma of abortion bans and blocked access to birth control. Now tell me if Republicans have a problem with abortion or they have a problem with women getting laid without their permission. Tell me if Republicans smell a bit "punitive" in their attitudes, and does it seem like banning abortion might be more about punishment than saving lives?
****
Republicans will deny the "war on women," and why would we expect them to acknowledge it outright? You need only to witness the condescending tone, the dismissive gestures, the vicious insults and bullying, not to mention this, a nauseating list of anti-women legislation passed in the country since things really escalated in 2011.
Politicususa: Proof of War on Women
I knew there was a lot, but as I read through this, I became so heartsick and so mad. I had no idea they had done so much. So much of this legislation is absolutely without purpose other than to mess with women, just to prove that they can. Why, for Pete's sake, are there people in the world who think birth control is a bad thing that needs to be heavily legislated and controlled? What's particularly annoying is the recent trend in legislation permitting people to refuse to do some aspect of their job if it conflicts with their religious convictions. It is truly ridiculous. Of course they're using it to get around anti-discrimination laws that protect gays, but in this list of legislation are examples of bills allowing pharmacists and healthcare workers to refuse to provide birth control to patients if it conflicts with their religious beliefs. Are there really people out there working in public who believe so very strongly in their religious conviction that birth control is wrong that they couldn't bring themselves to just fill the blessed prescription and let them be on their way? I mean, do they really feel that doing their job to fill people's prescriptions is committing a sin if their prescription is for something sinful like birth control? What if the patient isn't using it for birth control but to regulate her periods? How do these scenarios play out in real life--when the pharmacist politely says, "No, I can't fill this for you, it's against my religion," what then? Is the customer supposed to just say, "Oh, how nice. Well thank you anyway," and go somewhere else? Or does another pharmacist come over to do the transaction so the religious one won't have to sully his soul with the sin of birth control? Do they feel silly at all? And what does the religious pharmacist feel he's accomplished? People still get birth control, the world is still full of sin, and what besides an abiding sense of self-righteousness did he get from refusing to do his job?
What about the Jewish waitress who should have the right to refuse to serve shrimp to her customers because eating shellfish is against her religion? How about if people just get over themselves and quit worrying so much about other people's sins, sex in particular.
So I'm going to dig into the conservative position on abortion and explain why it IS about women and NOT about saving babies. I'm going to make some unkind generalizations about conservatives, and of course I realize not all of them are demons from hell. But these generalizations are based on my own fascinated study of conservatives as I debated issues in political forums, listened to my family and conservative friends discuss politics, and examined the nature of the conservative mind and personality in various books over the years. I believe I know the conservative mind very well, along with the particular personality quirks that go along with it. I have little respect for them, and if I seem like I'm being mean or unfair, it is because I have seen meanness and unfairness blossom abundantly in just about everything they say or do.
Conservativism is a philosophy of selfishness. It's the theory that says society prospers best when each individual seeks his own personal gain and best interests, and our success comes in proportion to our wits, talent and hard work, leading to the collective success of the group as a whole. Looking at conservative political positions, each in its own way represents selfishness as the conservative's overriding principle, the most obvious example being the glorification of capitalism and a free market economy. Conversely, the conservative's aversion to Socialism is because enforcing equality of outcome across the population for the greater good is the opposite of self-promotion, it means taking an interest in and working to improve the condition of others along with your own.
"Cutting taxes" is obviously a position that benefits the self if one is a tax payer. "Cut government spending" and "promote small government" allow for ease of implementing the "cut taxes" program. Supporting cuts to spending and a small government that provides very little is easy if you are someone who doesn't need any of the services or resources provided by government. If you don't care about state parks, environmental standards, food and drug safety, education, healthcare, or social programs, then you have no problem slashing all that right out of the budget to make way for your tax cuts. But if you have family and close friends who rely on government services, do you still want to slash them to the bone? Where a liberal will vote to keep a government program in place if there are people out there somewhere, complete strangers, who rely on it, a conservative doesn't give two squirts who's using government services, he says cut them. They are of no use to him. The conservative simply will not draw a connection from the policies he supports to the real-world consequences for the people he knows, and certainly not for strangers. He supports cutting the government because smaller government suits him well and he likes his taxes low.
Demonizing the poor, particularly in cutting welfare, medicaid, and food stamps, serves the selfish purpose of allowing the conservative to view his own worth and character as superior to other people. This is more satisfying when the poor have nothing because he can believe they are less valuable, less righteous, less "good" than him in proportion to what little they have vs. his own comfortable lifestyle. Conservatives particularly oppose government programs that provide money and other services that bring poor people up to a particular living standard, making them closer to "equal" with him, artificially, living on money they didn't earn. And worst of all, that HIS tax money was taken from him in order to give this lowly undeserving poor person a false boost up the value ladder and reduce the moral gap between them. It bothers conservatives very, very much to think of people receiving money, food, medical care handouts they don't deserve. When selfishness is your ideology, those who don't serve themselves deserve to have nothing.
Racism, homophobic gay bigotry, and righteous Christian posturing for political power represent selfishness of perspective. Racist attitudes and behaviors come out to reflect the desire to be a member of a more privileged and special class. Religion is used self-servingly to provide cover for discrimination and bigotry. Conservatives feel good when they have the power to put lesser people in their place.
In all of these issues, conservatives don't really even pretend to be guided by anything other than selfishness. They almost take special pride in being selfish, as though it is their own specialness and innate superiority that grants them the privilege, and why should they apologize for that? They usually don't pretend to see any moral need to consider anyone else's viewpoint or circumstances, and they pursue their own agenda ruthlessly. They really don't care, and they see no benefit at all in compromise. They also tend to assume that everyone else operates with the selfishness ideology too, after all, why wouldn't they? Thus, Democrats don't sincerely care about helping the poor, or immigrants, or women, they must have something to gain in doing it, they must be buying votes.
Oddly enough, there is one issue they can't approach with the selfish ideology firmly in place. They have to disguise it and pretend, in just this one case, to be motivated by concern for another human being. Abortion. Their true motivation for this issue is as selfish as the rest. When independent, single women engage in sex and focus on career instead of family and remain in control of their own lives rather than moving from one passive female role to another: daughter to wife to mother, etc. they challenge the acceptable identity that conservatives have created for women that keeps them firmly in line--nonsexual, nonthreatening, valuable in terms of nurturing and supporting others, where the highest and most desirable honor is to be remembered and cherished as a Good Mother. Both conservative men and women are troubled by free-wheeling single gals calling their own shots, competing in life on their own terms rather than those defined by someone else, building a career and accomplishing things. Decades ago, women could be kept from discovering such freedom by slut shaming and scaring them into thinking they were unlovable if they didn't have a husband by the age of 25. Today, no one's ashamed of having a healthy sex life, and if a woman chooses to focus on school and career throughout her 20s, she doesn't worry that she'll die an unwanted spinster because she missed her chance to marry. In fact, I'm pleased to say, lots of women don't even assume they will get married anymore. It's not a mandatory female condition anymore, and this gives major heartburn to conservatives who cannot stand to see their once sacred image of the Ideal Woman being pushed aside as women seek to find their own ideal image instead of striving to meet the standards of one provided for them.
Selfish. Just like gays and blacks, women are and should remain what he defines them to be, what they traditionally have been defined to be. This new kind of woman is frightening, for who can say how much power she may wield and what she may do with it when she has become the standard?
The most remarkable (and frightening) aspect of the new woman is her sexual independence. She will have as much sex as she wants, with whomever she wants, as often as she wants, and it is no one's business. There are no social consequences anymore, no one will whisper about her and call her names, she won't be shunned in polite circles, and men won't reject her for her impurity. It's alarming to conservatives that women's sexual freedom has actually become quite attractive. Men are turned on by it, and even other women admire it when it's expressed in a classy way. Alas, no little girl wants to grow up to be Molly Good Mother the Virtuous and Sweet anymore, they want to grow up and rock their sexuality, explore and devour it, make choices and experience things, learn and accomplish and live. If you can understand how important it is for a conservative to categorize people and rank them, particularly those he can safely place well beneath him and manipulate for his own advantage or simply use to boost his own ego by judging them and expressing contempt, the idea of losing women as one whole category of lesser beings is a disturbing thought. Especially if women emerge somehow instead to have their own self-created power that doesn't respond in any way to his control. These uppity bitches need to be put in check.
When women exercise their sexuality with prudent use of birth control, they are pretty much untouchable by the right wing conservatives that want to yank them back in line. It is when sex has the consequence of unintended pregnancy that conservatives have the perfect platform on which to pounce. First, there is the moral condemnation implied still in getting knocked up. You can't slut shame a woman for having sex, but she will probably still today feel pretty embarrassed and humiliated to find herself "in the family way" as a result of her wanton behavior. Still, if women are allowed to terminate their unwanted pregnancies and minimize the consequences of having sex, conservatives can't touch them. If a woman has an abortion, she's still arrogantly calling the shots, carelessly wiping away her mistake as though it were nothing so she can get right back to her vibrant, independent life.
So the (selfish) conservative agenda is to reduce the use of birth control so that women will be more likely to suffer for their choices, and eliminate abortion as an option for getting off the hook. So they created a debate and controversy over abortion that was and is completely disingenuous. The push to ban abortion is meant to punish women for their nontraditional choices, particularly for having sex, and force them back into the traditional role of motherhood as well as the hardship of poverty and unexpected life turmoil. There is no male equivalent to a woman's unexpected pregnancy, the sudden immediate need to figure out what to do, the possibility of having your whole life thrown permanently off course, the consideration of whether to involve the other party in this decision, or your mother, or a pastor. This situation belongs uniquely to women, and they alone should decide what options should be available.
Unbelievable how much this has been a men's issue on the right. Unbelievable how men in state legislatures across the country saw women's right to abortion as their top legislative priority and most urgent problem to be solved. I'd like to speak to them face to face and watch very closely when I ask them thoughtful questions and prove there's nothing deep in there about this issue, there is only shallow rhetoric and reactionary judgment born of misogyny.
First they narrated an image of women who get abortions, shaming them and framing abortion as something reckless, promiscuous women find themselves in need of, women who should have known better, women who lack self control. In this weak and vulnerable moment, women aren't dealing with enough emotional turmoil, they must put on the yoke of conservative scorn as well.
Then, because the selfish motive behind this agenda would never win enough support for their controversial position by itself, they had to pretend to be driven by desire to save the lives of the unborn and stop abortion in America. This turns out to be a very compelling platform for them, because everyone in some respect sees a pregnant woman and thinks of what's inside as a "baby." It wasn't hard at all to frame this issue in terms of stopping the murder of babies, and there you have a ready-made excuse for just about any radical approach you want to take to deny women access to abortion. For who doesn't understand the urgency in saving babies from cruel, painful death? So the abortion battle has raged all over the country, in court rooms, outside clinics where demonstrators assault women's senses with shouted curses, ugly names, tearful pleas to spare the life of the child, horrible graphic images, and physical intimidation or interference from entering the clinic. They can be excused for their extreme measures, given the way they have framed their crusade. Conservative lawmakers bullied through abortion bans in several states in hopes of testing Roe v. Wade again in the Supreme Court and overturning it. Anything vaguely related to women's health, birth control, or family planning is aggressively legislated in conservative states. States without an outright ban worked on killing access to abortion by hyper-legislating the procedure and the facilities that provide them. Presented as laws protecting the health of women seeking abortion care, they impose ridiculous restrictions designed to impede the process, not protect anyone's health. Presented as laws to protect women from making uninformed decisions or acting on impulse, they impose waiting periods and mandatory counseling. No other simple out-patient medical procedure has ever produced so much conservative interest in controlling its every detail.
You'd look at their passion on this issue and think, wow, they really care a lot about those poor unborn babies! They must lie awake at night tortured by the thought of those they can't save. And they have fooled everyone brilliantly, for only women suspect what their real purpose is, and if we say it out loud, we are hysterical feminists who always think everyone's out to oppress women.
But let's examine it and see.
1) There is, literally, not a single other political issue in which conservatives champion the cause of another human being and seek to protect or rescue them from harm.
Not the poor, who, like unborn babies, are helpless and cannot stand up for themselves. Not the mentally ill or mentally disabled, who are as helpless and innocent as babies and suffering severe neglect and poor quality care due to lack of funds for mental health services. Not abused animals, even though conservatives might like animals and hate animal cruelty, you won't see them volunteering at the humane society or working to find homes for strays or helping to capture, spay, and release feral kittens. Not child abuse/neglect, which would be something you'd certainly expect them to take an interest in, since their hearts are so wrought by the tragedy of fetus-babies dying before they're born--surely living babies suffering real injury and disease would be even more compelling. No, not a popular conservative cause. Not third world hunger and disease, again babies dying in agony, conservatives don't adopt starving orphans and save their lives.
It seems strange, doesn't it, that the plight of the helpless unborn--who are actually non-sensate, non-cognitive, barely human-looking, unaware of self or surroundings, incapable of feeling pain, un-named, unknown and unloved by anyone, whose presence on earth will not be missed by a single person, whose unremarkable passing will relieve its mother of a terrible burden she knows she cannot bear--should provoke such EXTREME, relentless, aggressive rescue attempts and political activism, yet none of these other helpless creatures' suffering or dying provokes any political interest at all? What IS it that's so compelling about saving those hidden little unborn babies you'd never even knew existed if someone didn't tell you the woman was pregnant?
2) There is, literally, not a single other political issue in which the conservative position is purely for the benefit of someone else and not themselves.
Their political concerns revolve around their own personal gain or questions of their own personal power over another group of people. Conservatives are champions of their own interests, not those of others, and their personality is distinguished by a lack of empathy and concern for the well being of others, especially strangers. Their political views are not motivated by a compulsion to "do the right thing" or "fight a terrible injustice." The "right thing" is what benefits them, and they will use all sorts of logical leaps and fallacies to prove it every time. Fighting injustice doesn't interest them, for it isn't the "just" outcome they care about but rather the outcome that gets them what they want. It truly would be a bizarre wrinkle in their pattern to develop strong protective and compassionate feelings toward, not just a stranger but not even a person, a piece of human flesh that no one can see and nobody knows or cares about. In the traditional measure of conservative worth, this creature is even less likely to inspire him to care--this thing not only doesn't have a job and support itself, it can't even sustain its own life and has to suck resources like a parasite from its host.
Strange enough if one conservative found himself wrapped up in such a powerful campaign of selflessness, how likely is it that the whole herd of conservatives all caught the same weird fever at the same time? I wish it were so obvious to everyone as it is to me, these men are on a mission, and saving lives is no part of it at all.
3) Conservatives are often criticized for their hypocrisy in trying to ban abortions without regard for what effect that would have on women, while at the same time opposing birth control, the very thing that could reduce the number of abortions. In fact, conservatives haven't shown much interest at all in programs designed to prevent unwanted pregnancy, such as comprehensive sex education in schools, increased availability of free or low cost birth control, better education and medical care for women starting in their teens. They defend their irrational position by insisting "abstinence only" is the only form of birth control they advocate for young people, because it is the only 100% safe method to prevent disease and pregnancy. Birth control encourages pre-marital sex, and conservatives like to pretend they don't know that pre-marital sex is pretty much the norm in society today, with or without birth control.
Are you seeing a theme here? Think about it, if the issue of all these unborn babies getting murdered preyed upon your mind to the extent it appears to do for conservatives, wouldn't you embrace and support all the programs that would have the certain effect of reducing baby murders? It's conceivable that the right combination of programs could provide birth control and education to enough women all over the country so that in ten years time there'd be no more need to protest abortion because it would hardly ever be needed. Isn't this what you want if you are anti-abortion? Less abortions?
In fact, less abortions is what they do want but not in the way you'd think. Those of us with compassion for the difficulty women face in making this terrible heart-wrenching decision support the use of birth control because reducing UNWANTED PREGNANCY is the result we'd like to achieve. Look at their rhetoric and tell me conservatives don't want to keep unwanted pregnancy just the way it is but eliminate abortions completely. Does it seem their interest is in saving the lives of unborn babies or in controling the lives of women by ensuring their chances of getting pregnant remain high if they choose to have sex and then making them become mothers when they are not ready?
4) They do not believe that abortion is the same thing as murdering a baby. They simply do not. Here's how I know. The difference between an unborn fetus and a baby is very natural to understand. When a woman has a miscarriage she does not fish the poor dead body out of the toilet and call the authorities to report that her baby has died. She does not give it a name, buy a casket, have a funeral, get a headstone and cemetery lot and bury the fetus. She would do all of these things if it were a baby who died. Abortion bans do not provide for first degree murder charges against someone caught performing one illegally or recommend the death penalty, even though if this were a baby it would be a premeditated and brutal killing without a doubt. Abortion bans typically don't even recommend severe prison terms for those who illegally murder their babies when abortion is banned. No one would advocate a light penalty for someone who genuinely murdered an actual baby, so clearly conservatives understand like everyone else--a fetus is not the same as a baby, and an abortion is not the same thing as murder.
So we know they understand the difference between a fetus and a baby, we can be even more certain their motives are not about compassionate rescue and mercy. If capable of compassion and mercy, there isn't any reason they should feel moved more by the suffering of a fetus than for its mother making the difficult decision and the cost to her if termination isn't an option. In fact, compassion and mercy have nothing to do with it. Conservatives feel nothing more for the unborn fetus victimized in an abortion procedure than for the victims of any other tragic event happening to someone they don't know.
5) Anti-abortion legislators add exceptions to their abortion bans for cases of rape and incest. If saving the life of a fetus were the true purpose of this legislation, no exception for anything would be acceptable because a murdered baby is a murdered baby, regardless of how it was conceived. But if the purpose of the abortion ban is to punish women for having sex, then you would grant an exception for rape and incest because she should not be punished for being forced to have sex against her will.
6) I don't see this argument made often enough in abortion debates, perhaps because it's so hypothetical it's easy for the other side to laugh it off. If men carried the burden or even half of the burden of childbirth and post-birth child care--if their bodies were the ones stretched all out of shape and thrown into turmoil--if their careers, future plans, and lifestyle preferences were on the line based on this one decision--choose abortion or choose life? There would be no question at all about men's right to choose abortion. They would make all of the exact same arguments in support of their rights as we do about ours. The issue would be so self-evident, so beyond debate, so ridiculously one sided that men would not even entertain discussions about the subject. Of course they can get abortions. It's their body, their life. And NO, that thing growing in there is not a baby, don't be retarded.
This is such an absolute truth that men don't even deny it. They know it's ridiculous to pretend that men would sacrifice anything at all, let alone everything just so they can be saddled down taking care of a kid? No thank you very much. I think even the rare man who would choose life would also respect his brothers' right to choose. Men stick together that way. It's too bad women don't more often.
This issue disturbs me very much. Here we are, fifty years after Roe v. Wade decided the question of women's right to abortion in this country, and now we have abortion suddenly banned or severely limited or made unavailable through undue regulations and defunding. MEN passed those laws, and they did so with the very most ugly, condescending, dismissive tone toward all women and their reproductive rights. The sneaky Texas legislature breaking legislative rules to stop Wendy Davis's filibuster in time for them to pass their abortion ban, then doctoring the official legislative web site showing the final vote, making it appear to have been done before midnight when in fact the votes were recorded a few minutes after. They tried to cheat the outcome and deny Wendy her well-deserved victory (however brief). They arrogantly promised "We'll see you soon," to remind her that they had the power, not she, and they would simply abuse legislative procedure to call another special session for this non-emergency bill, and they gloated because Wendy could not stop them. The vicious remark Rick Perry made about Wendy Davis, presuming to instruct her on the appropriate beliefs she should have based on her own personal history with unexpected pregnancy, completely dismissing her and all women as having nothing relevant to say about this issue.
The truth is in that contempt and the disrespect of Wendy Davis and all the female supporters who came to protest. It was a truly awesome crowd, thousands of people stayed for the entire day and all night waiting for the vote. Rick Perry carried on as though his work were just too important for all these silly women to understand, he never made a single acknowledgement of the large group of support for women's rights. The message coming through from these guys is clear: "You ladies do not call the shots, we make the rules and we will tell you what they are. You have no part to play in this, but you may watch if you behave." These men give absolutely zero fucks about saving babies, they care not one bit about preservation of life. It's about women, and they don't really even hide it very much. It's about something they can take away from us and control, something personal and intimate, something emotionally difficult, something necessary for our well being and our right to self-identify--our choice to become a mother or not.
And then fucking North Carolina governor, ignored protestors for weeks after sneaking his abortion ban through, and then he serves them an insult, brings them down a plate of cookies and says, "These are for you." Refused to hear them, refused to stay even for a moment and hear them, just dismissed them with a condescending "God bless you." And cookies. Why do they hate women so?
*****
This is what I would like to force a conservative to give me a thoughtful true answer to, if I could force a sincere conversation about abortion. They would never allow such a thing, though, why would they? There's nothing in it for them to gain by opening up for a thoughtful conversation.
"Okay, tell me why you saw the need to do this? No, no political talking points about 'right to life' and all that. Tell me how you feel about a woman who exercises her right to an abortion? How do you feel about the fetus she aborted? Do you believe it had a soul? Did its soul go straight to heaven to be with God because it died in its innocence? Then didn't that woman do a wonderful and generous thing for her child, delivering it straight to God rather then let it be born into sin and risk the loss of redemption? Isn't that what we'd all want for our children, to be placed safely in heaven, never to sin, never to fear, never to hurt? If that woman committed murder by abortion, then she sacrificed her soul to hell so her child could go to heaven--I think that's a beautiful story and she can be proud she was strong enough to make that choice."
Another one:
"Tell me, senator, imagine if somehow you yourself went off for a stolen weekend with your mistress, shagged like monkeys all over the motel room and the hot tub, came back and three weeks later you found out you're pregnant. You have an embryo implanted in your body, and if you do nothing, it's going to grow and grow and swell your belly out to embarrassing size. You're going to have to explain to everyone--your wife, your constituents, your kids, your friends. You will likely pay a political cost, you can't cheat on your wife, get knocked up, and just let the thing progress for nine months, humiliated in front of everyone, giant fat pictures of yourself in the paper with swollen ankles. So you may have to resign your seat, and if you don't you'll be a spectacle. So what's it going to be, senator, will you face the music, go through the embarrassment and physical hardship of pregnancy and childbirth, maybe lose your seat, maybe lose your wife and family? Buy a crib, a car seat, diapers and baby clothes so you can be all set for your new full time job taking care of a baby, forever? That little embryo inside you, it's about the size of an acorn, doesn't look anything like a baby at all, does it have a right to be born now that it's there? Do you have no choice? Or would you be okay with the other tough choice, terminate the pregnancy before anyone finds out, save your career, save your marriage, put it behind you and vow to never make such a mistake again in your life? I really want to know, and I want the truth, what would you choose, given those two options? Do you really believe there's only ONE factor that should be considered, the child's right to life? Does your life matter not at all?"
Thursday, September 19, 2013
Did Anonymous Save Us from Romney in 2012?
People don't generally seem to know this, but it kind of looks like Republicans have taken to cheating as their best bet to win national elections.
Was there ever anything more entertaining than Karl Rove's hissy fit on election night, 2012, when Fox News called Ohio and the election for Obama? How delightful to see his usually smirky, self-satisfied, fat face trembling with distress as he insisted it was too soon to call! He's a man who should be proved wrong in public, as often as possible.
I see frequent reference to his meltdown in political commentary, but no one seems aware that his smug confidence in Romney's Ohio victory may have reflected knowledge that the fix was in rather than faith in bad poll data. No one mentions what I consider to be a HUGE story--he may have rigged the electronic voting machines in Ohio in 2012 just as he'd done in 2004 to help Bush defeat Kerry. In the many articles covering this, I can't find a definite answer, so we may never know for sure, but this article outlines exactly why it is not a ridiculous notion.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/
The author concludes that Rove probably did not do a fix for Bush in 2004 because there were plenty of indications that Bush would win leading up to that election, so the outcome wasn't surprising. I'm not at all convinced by that. Just because Bush was expected to win and may have won fairly doesn't prove Rove didn't slip a card or two up his sleeve just to make sure.
This article:
http://thedailybanter.com/2012/09/the-daily-banter-exclusive-did-karl-rove-rig-the-2004-election-and-is-he-doing-it-again/
describes the suspicion surrounding the 2004 election events in Ohio. It involves a tech service company funded by Rove associates hired by the state of Ohio to provide a "failsafe voting server" for the unlikely event of a "network problem." The SmarTech server, as it was called, would not be utilized unless some kind of problem with the standard voting system caused a failure, and shortly after Florida was declared for Bush, making Ohio the deciding state in the overall election, their system crashed and was switched over to SmarTech. The state had been reporting results decidedly in Kerry's favor, but after the switch, there were "serious anomalies that saw an increase in votes favorable to Bush," who went on to win Ohio and the election. If this was, in fact, observed by someone, I don't know why an investigation wasn't done at the time or why nobody heard about it. And knowing about it makes Rove's reaction to Ohio in 2012 interesting for reasons beyond simple shadenfreude.
And yes, that meltdown on election night 2012 was bizarre. It does make more sense as a reaction to something he thought could not happen than to simply having his heart broken by disappointment. He insisted the result was called too soon, but what made him think so, when in hindsight it clearly was not?
Ann Romney said she and Mitt were contacted at hourly intervals by Rove, and when it seemed they'd lost, Rove assured them it wasn't over and it would be alright, hang in there. He had such a contagious demeanor that they really did regain hope and believed they'd win right up until the moment the election was called for Obama. Even she seemed confused by Rove's utter certainty. At the time she felt inspired to share his confidence, because if anyone would know how to read the voting trends, it was Karl Rove. Looking back, she still seemed to wonder why he missed it so badly.
Now this is Karl Rove's profession, he's a king maker. He knows about polls and voting patterns; he seems less likely than the average Fox pundit to put undue faith in a Romney win that polls had been predicting would not happen. He's not likely to have fooled himself with the "skewed polls" rhetoric, at least not to the point of shock and tantrum when the results came in.
How do you explain Anonymous's warning and their claim to have thwarted his efforts? It was totally made up?
I don't know if Rove had a role in Bush's 2000 election, but many of us believe Bush stole that election through similar strategy--tamper with the results in a strategic state and make sure the final tally says we win. So if all this speculation is true, election rigging would have been a well-established backup plan by 2012 for elections close enough to hinge on one or two states.
Here's the rest of the evidence, and I do find it compelling:
1) Many Republicans, including the governor of Ohio, predicted Romney would win there despite Obama's strong poll majority. It wasn't the prediction so much as a "very eerie confidence" in victory that made it remarkable.
2) Romney's ORCA failed with crashes and slowdowns on Election Day, which could have indicated a cyberattack.
3) Romney did not prepare a concession speech, which seems bizarre for a candidate who was not predicted by polls to win.
4) Romney owned the voting machines in Ohio, which were given an unexpected software patch the night before the election.
I'm surprised and disappointed this didn't circulate out into mainstream awareness. I only learned of it six months or so later when I read deep into the comments of a political article and came across a reference to Karl Rove's unsuccessful attempt to rig Ohio for Romney, then used google to find the whole story.
I am admittedly biased, but when I think about what Republicans have done this year, wherever they have power, to interfere with fair elections and ensure their party's advantage, I notice they do seem to prefer using gerrymandering and voting laws to give themselves an edge. In Texas, Rick Perry even went to federal court to defend his state's redistricting and said it was done to improve his party's chances of winning and not to disenfranchise minority voters. (As though there could be any other reason to disenfranchise minority voters than to improve your party's chances--if minorities were voting for you, you'd hardly go trying to minimize their votes.) So I believe Republicans made a choice long ago, to use tricks and gimmicks to win elections rather than try to make themselves appealing to more voters and win fairly.
If Karl Rove rigged the elections, I hope he was hotly embarrassed to have failed this time. It's unfortunate he won't see the kind of consequences he deserves for it. Our elections are the last little bit of power we have as voters, and already they fail us in so many ways, we must at least keep them from becoming a complete sham.
Was there ever anything more entertaining than Karl Rove's hissy fit on election night, 2012, when Fox News called Ohio and the election for Obama? How delightful to see his usually smirky, self-satisfied, fat face trembling with distress as he insisted it was too soon to call! He's a man who should be proved wrong in public, as often as possible.
I see frequent reference to his meltdown in political commentary, but no one seems aware that his smug confidence in Romney's Ohio victory may have reflected knowledge that the fix was in rather than faith in bad poll data. No one mentions what I consider to be a HUGE story--he may have rigged the electronic voting machines in Ohio in 2012 just as he'd done in 2004 to help Bush defeat Kerry. In the many articles covering this, I can't find a definite answer, so we may never know for sure, but this article outlines exactly why it is not a ridiculous notion.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/
The author concludes that Rove probably did not do a fix for Bush in 2004 because there were plenty of indications that Bush would win leading up to that election, so the outcome wasn't surprising. I'm not at all convinced by that. Just because Bush was expected to win and may have won fairly doesn't prove Rove didn't slip a card or two up his sleeve just to make sure.
This article:
http://thedailybanter.com/2012/09/the-daily-banter-exclusive-did-karl-rove-rig-the-2004-election-and-is-he-doing-it-again/
describes the suspicion surrounding the 2004 election events in Ohio. It involves a tech service company funded by Rove associates hired by the state of Ohio to provide a "failsafe voting server" for the unlikely event of a "network problem." The SmarTech server, as it was called, would not be utilized unless some kind of problem with the standard voting system caused a failure, and shortly after Florida was declared for Bush, making Ohio the deciding state in the overall election, their system crashed and was switched over to SmarTech. The state had been reporting results decidedly in Kerry's favor, but after the switch, there were "serious anomalies that saw an increase in votes favorable to Bush," who went on to win Ohio and the election. If this was, in fact, observed by someone, I don't know why an investigation wasn't done at the time or why nobody heard about it. And knowing about it makes Rove's reaction to Ohio in 2012 interesting for reasons beyond simple shadenfreude.
And yes, that meltdown on election night 2012 was bizarre. It does make more sense as a reaction to something he thought could not happen than to simply having his heart broken by disappointment. He insisted the result was called too soon, but what made him think so, when in hindsight it clearly was not?
Ann Romney said she and Mitt were contacted at hourly intervals by Rove, and when it seemed they'd lost, Rove assured them it wasn't over and it would be alright, hang in there. He had such a contagious demeanor that they really did regain hope and believed they'd win right up until the moment the election was called for Obama. Even she seemed confused by Rove's utter certainty. At the time she felt inspired to share his confidence, because if anyone would know how to read the voting trends, it was Karl Rove. Looking back, she still seemed to wonder why he missed it so badly.
Now this is Karl Rove's profession, he's a king maker. He knows about polls and voting patterns; he seems less likely than the average Fox pundit to put undue faith in a Romney win that polls had been predicting would not happen. He's not likely to have fooled himself with the "skewed polls" rhetoric, at least not to the point of shock and tantrum when the results came in.
How do you explain Anonymous's warning and their claim to have thwarted his efforts? It was totally made up?
I don't know if Rove had a role in Bush's 2000 election, but many of us believe Bush stole that election through similar strategy--tamper with the results in a strategic state and make sure the final tally says we win. So if all this speculation is true, election rigging would have been a well-established backup plan by 2012 for elections close enough to hinge on one or two states.
Here's the rest of the evidence, and I do find it compelling:
1) Many Republicans, including the governor of Ohio, predicted Romney would win there despite Obama's strong poll majority. It wasn't the prediction so much as a "very eerie confidence" in victory that made it remarkable.
2) Romney's ORCA failed with crashes and slowdowns on Election Day, which could have indicated a cyberattack.
3) Romney did not prepare a concession speech, which seems bizarre for a candidate who was not predicted by polls to win.
4) Romney owned the voting machines in Ohio, which were given an unexpected software patch the night before the election.
I'm surprised and disappointed this didn't circulate out into mainstream awareness. I only learned of it six months or so later when I read deep into the comments of a political article and came across a reference to Karl Rove's unsuccessful attempt to rig Ohio for Romney, then used google to find the whole story.
I am admittedly biased, but when I think about what Republicans have done this year, wherever they have power, to interfere with fair elections and ensure their party's advantage, I notice they do seem to prefer using gerrymandering and voting laws to give themselves an edge. In Texas, Rick Perry even went to federal court to defend his state's redistricting and said it was done to improve his party's chances of winning and not to disenfranchise minority voters. (As though there could be any other reason to disenfranchise minority voters than to improve your party's chances--if minorities were voting for you, you'd hardly go trying to minimize their votes.) So I believe Republicans made a choice long ago, to use tricks and gimmicks to win elections rather than try to make themselves appealing to more voters and win fairly.
If Karl Rove rigged the elections, I hope he was hotly embarrassed to have failed this time. It's unfortunate he won't see the kind of consequences he deserves for it. Our elections are the last little bit of power we have as voters, and already they fail us in so many ways, we must at least keep them from becoming a complete sham.
Tuesday, September 17, 2013
This Made Me Mad
Wow, Katie J.M. Baker wrote an article linked below that is a pretty good whitewash of the whole ugly Steubenville business. Way to
excuse the rapists and minimize the way the town *did* try to protect
those boys and attacked the victim.
Town Destroyed for What Two People Did
One year after Steubenville: the update serves no clear purpose other than to minimize the ugliness that happened in that town last year and highlight certain media stories that reported wildly inaccurate details. It seeks to vindicate the townspeople who claim they've been harrassed since the trial by people who believe the whole town helped cover up the rape of a young girl in order to protect the two football players who raped her, degraded her, photographed her naked body and distributed it to their friends, laughed at her, called her "whore" and made "rape" jokes. And finally, the author of this piece wanted us to especially remember the forgotten victim in this case, Cody Saltsmann, who is serving two years in juvenile prison and will have to register as a sex offender every six months for the next 20 years. Poor Cody is dearly missed by his family while he's incarcerated, including his sweet little six-year-old cousin who displays his picture in her room and isn't really his cousin (?!). "Where's Cody?" she asks over and over in her sweet angelic voice. Aww! He must be a really nice guy after all!
REALLY?! A woman wrote this? I couldn't find an email link to share my reaction with its author, but I really could not believe what I was reading. I just noticed the outrageous title too, fitting with the theme of how everyone, even the whole town, ended up being victimized last year over this rape case. Was the town destroyed "by" what two people did? (i.e whatever the town suffered was brought about by the young men who chose to commit these inhuman criminal acts?) Oh no, it was destroyed "for" what they did, meaning the town got blamed for what they did, and it isn't fair and everybody's real bummed out about it, and some people have even been real mean to the people there, who did nothing wrong. But it isn't the boys' fault, it's the fault of all the false news reports that circulated in the big media blow-up claiming all sorts of wild exaggerations and giving "strangers" the idea that townspeople were complicit in the cover-up. Business owners had their livelihoods threatened by these strangers, though it isn't clear exactly how. A couple of little league kids got called "rapist" by someone on another team...something about masked vigilantes camping in a snowy driveway? and something else about googling the name of a 16 year old girl and finding her accused of drugging the rape victim and bringing her to the party.
Seriously, that's it. Okay, I believe all of these townfolk victims are going to be just fine, and if media attention on this case was what ultimately brought the rapists to justice, then I'm sure all the victims would agree what they went through was worth it. Honestly, they sound kind of whiny to me, and the whole effect of victimizing these people because they got called a name or they almost had something maybe kind of bad happen to them feels like minimizing what the real victim went through.
I know her identity is sealed, but she's the one I want to hear about a year later. I want her to be more okay than she was a year ago and on the way to being more and more okay as time goes on. I want her to have left that brutal, self absorbed, rape excusing town behind her and never look back. She is better than that town.
Baker shares explicitly the inaccurate details printed by the media covering this story. The stories are, indeed, grossly exaggerated or completely untrue. However, I followed this story quite thoroughly a years ago as it broke, and I never saw these details reported anywhere. The accurate details reported in the media were left out of this story, though, making it sound like the media blew this all out of proportion and nothing even close to what was reported actually happened. In fact, the true events were only slightly less horrifying than the false reports, and if the cover-up was exaggerated, it was not completely fabricated or imagined.
Honestly, I couldn't even finish reading after I got to the part where Saltsman was such a sweet boy and very remorseful for what he did, etc. I remember what he did. I remember the apology he gave to that girl and her family in court where he basically said "Oops, my bad, I shouldn't have sent that picture around to everybody like that." After the events of that night, his texts and tweets were not of a boy distraught over what he had done. He was a boy scared he was about to get caught, trying to find a way to charm the girl's father out of pressing charges, seeking the Coach's assistance to "fix" it for him. I honestly can't imagine what made this woman want to try and portray such a vicious little narcissist as a sweet, sympathetic figure, but she'd have had an easier time softening the image of other rapist, Ma'lik Richmond. In contrast to Saltsmann, Richmond broke down and sobbed in the courtroom as he said his apology to the victim and her family. I don't recall what he said exactly but I remember it was a real apology. He said he was sorry for what he did to her, not "sorry it happened" or "gosh I shouldn't have done some of that stuff."
And as for the media exaggerating the cover-up and making the townspeople look worse than they were, well, I remember at least the football coach knew about it and tried to keep the boys out of trouble. Saltsman's text message said "Coach knows about it and isn't worried about it so I'm not worried about it either." The last I heard anything about this case, there were rumors that the coach might be arrested and charged for his role.
And before we go letting the town off the hook, let's examine what's almost completely missing from this story, the truth about what vile, horrible, ugly things a gang of kids that night did to that poor girl. The kids came out of that town, how did they get to be so entitled and so impervious to human pain? How were they able to drive around from house to house in that town partying like that, with a naked drunk girl and all kinds of loud carrying on? How is it possible not a single adult was aware of what these kids were doing all night? The town *should* be worried about what the rest of the country thinks of them because they're apparently raising their children to be animals up there and now they'd like everyone to just hush about it because it wasn't that bad and it wasn't their fault.
I remember there were two girls who threatened the victim on Twitter when the trial was over, because she had "ripped apart their whole family" with this case. Waah! It's a town full of whiny, victim blaming rape apologists, and the sad thing is, I think this article was intended to give me the opposite impression.
Town Destroyed for What Two People Did
One year after Steubenville: the update serves no clear purpose other than to minimize the ugliness that happened in that town last year and highlight certain media stories that reported wildly inaccurate details. It seeks to vindicate the townspeople who claim they've been harrassed since the trial by people who believe the whole town helped cover up the rape of a young girl in order to protect the two football players who raped her, degraded her, photographed her naked body and distributed it to their friends, laughed at her, called her "whore" and made "rape" jokes. And finally, the author of this piece wanted us to especially remember the forgotten victim in this case, Cody Saltsmann, who is serving two years in juvenile prison and will have to register as a sex offender every six months for the next 20 years. Poor Cody is dearly missed by his family while he's incarcerated, including his sweet little six-year-old cousin who displays his picture in her room and isn't really his cousin (?!). "Where's Cody?" she asks over and over in her sweet angelic voice. Aww! He must be a really nice guy after all!
REALLY?! A woman wrote this? I couldn't find an email link to share my reaction with its author, but I really could not believe what I was reading. I just noticed the outrageous title too, fitting with the theme of how everyone, even the whole town, ended up being victimized last year over this rape case. Was the town destroyed "by" what two people did? (i.e whatever the town suffered was brought about by the young men who chose to commit these inhuman criminal acts?) Oh no, it was destroyed "for" what they did, meaning the town got blamed for what they did, and it isn't fair and everybody's real bummed out about it, and some people have even been real mean to the people there, who did nothing wrong. But it isn't the boys' fault, it's the fault of all the false news reports that circulated in the big media blow-up claiming all sorts of wild exaggerations and giving "strangers" the idea that townspeople were complicit in the cover-up. Business owners had their livelihoods threatened by these strangers, though it isn't clear exactly how. A couple of little league kids got called "rapist" by someone on another team...something about masked vigilantes camping in a snowy driveway? and something else about googling the name of a 16 year old girl and finding her accused of drugging the rape victim and bringing her to the party.
Seriously, that's it. Okay, I believe all of these townfolk victims are going to be just fine, and if media attention on this case was what ultimately brought the rapists to justice, then I'm sure all the victims would agree what they went through was worth it. Honestly, they sound kind of whiny to me, and the whole effect of victimizing these people because they got called a name or they almost had something maybe kind of bad happen to them feels like minimizing what the real victim went through.
I know her identity is sealed, but she's the one I want to hear about a year later. I want her to be more okay than she was a year ago and on the way to being more and more okay as time goes on. I want her to have left that brutal, self absorbed, rape excusing town behind her and never look back. She is better than that town.
Baker shares explicitly the inaccurate details printed by the media covering this story. The stories are, indeed, grossly exaggerated or completely untrue. However, I followed this story quite thoroughly a years ago as it broke, and I never saw these details reported anywhere. The accurate details reported in the media were left out of this story, though, making it sound like the media blew this all out of proportion and nothing even close to what was reported actually happened. In fact, the true events were only slightly less horrifying than the false reports, and if the cover-up was exaggerated, it was not completely fabricated or imagined.
Honestly, I couldn't even finish reading after I got to the part where Saltsman was such a sweet boy and very remorseful for what he did, etc. I remember what he did. I remember the apology he gave to that girl and her family in court where he basically said "Oops, my bad, I shouldn't have sent that picture around to everybody like that." After the events of that night, his texts and tweets were not of a boy distraught over what he had done. He was a boy scared he was about to get caught, trying to find a way to charm the girl's father out of pressing charges, seeking the Coach's assistance to "fix" it for him. I honestly can't imagine what made this woman want to try and portray such a vicious little narcissist as a sweet, sympathetic figure, but she'd have had an easier time softening the image of other rapist, Ma'lik Richmond. In contrast to Saltsmann, Richmond broke down and sobbed in the courtroom as he said his apology to the victim and her family. I don't recall what he said exactly but I remember it was a real apology. He said he was sorry for what he did to her, not "sorry it happened" or "gosh I shouldn't have done some of that stuff."
And as for the media exaggerating the cover-up and making the townspeople look worse than they were, well, I remember at least the football coach knew about it and tried to keep the boys out of trouble. Saltsman's text message said "Coach knows about it and isn't worried about it so I'm not worried about it either." The last I heard anything about this case, there were rumors that the coach might be arrested and charged for his role.
And before we go letting the town off the hook, let's examine what's almost completely missing from this story, the truth about what vile, horrible, ugly things a gang of kids that night did to that poor girl. The kids came out of that town, how did they get to be so entitled and so impervious to human pain? How were they able to drive around from house to house in that town partying like that, with a naked drunk girl and all kinds of loud carrying on? How is it possible not a single adult was aware of what these kids were doing all night? The town *should* be worried about what the rest of the country thinks of them because they're apparently raising their children to be animals up there and now they'd like everyone to just hush about it because it wasn't that bad and it wasn't their fault.
I remember there were two girls who threatened the victim on Twitter when the trial was over, because she had "ripped apart their whole family" with this case. Waah! It's a town full of whiny, victim blaming rape apologists, and the sad thing is, I think this article was intended to give me the opposite impression.
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