As the Carpetbagger writes
http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/003614.html
It's been exactly a month since Harry Reid unveiled his Prevention First Act and NARAL began asking anti-abortion activists to join them in an effort to reduce unwanted pregnancies...the ball, as Amy Sullivan put it, has been in the court of abortion opponents.
Why isn't the Christian Right responding? Let's get real. This isn't about abortion. It's about three things:
- The Wedge
- Onward Christian Soldiers
- Anti-Abortion is Anti-Women
- The Wedge -- Divide and conquer. By keeping good and concerned Americans at each others throats in an endless running battle, we don't notice what the Republicans in office are doing in the meantime.
- Onward Christian Soldiers - The Republicans have been cynically flogging anti-abortion rhetoric since they realized in the mid-eighties that it would bring them thousands of dedicated foot soldiers for any campaign they run. [See "What's the Matter with Kansas"] Actually working to reduce abortions in a reasonable and sympathetic manner would significantly weaken their base.
- Anti-Abortion is Anti-Women - The Main Reason why the Christian Right (99% led by men) is so dead set against a reasonable discussion about reducing abortions is that anti-abortion is a thin veil over what is really about being anti-woman. Just as women activists for over a century have argued that control over your own reproductive organs is fundamental to any reality of women's rights, the Christian right is just as determined to continue social and state ownership of the woman's body as a way of curtailing those rights. These cynical leaders of the anti-abortion movement have not been on the forefront of children's rights, child health or maternal safety. Real, live, breathing women, children, and adult men don't earn a fraction of the breast-beating being lavished on nameless, homeless, even fatherless zygotes by the "pro-life" movement.
It's time to end the false debate. Pro-Choice and Anti-Abortion have been arguing past one another in an endless running battle. Pro-Choice has been gradually losing, not only because Anti-Abortion crowds have the motivation of seeing their cause as morally equivalent to Abolition, and who's to say they're wrong? Yes, we'd rather they start with picketing torture, for example, but since no one can speak definitively about the "life-state" of a fetus, this is a no-win debate. Meanwhile Pro-Choice proponents have carelessly let themselves be tagged with "Pro Abortion" -- which isn't a winning proposition no matter how you slice it.
The Republicans have been winning through divide and conquer. Reid and Clinton have recently decided to change the debate, and destroy the abortion "wedge" that keeps generally good and concerned people at absolute loggerheads.
Clinton and Reid are speaking for the majority of Americans who think that abortion should be available, but rare.