We've read it here, we've heard it on the Majority Report, we've read it in the papers. Some(mostly male) democrats are talking about playing political poker with our collective uterus as the chip. Thank goodness that there are some sane people here on Kos making the argument about why Dems need to stand up for reproductive rights, like
Kid Oakland and Jane Knowles.
Katha Pollit wrote a
column on this issue recently in The Nation, in which she breaks down the state-by-state consequences of Roe's overturning.
There was a little poll debate on the Kid Oakland thread between Jane Knowles and "Ann Arbor Blue" in which there was a good deal of speculation and a lot of information about what the polls really mean. Most of the people who argue that abortion is a political liability for the dems believe that "most people" don't support completely legal abortion, and indeed, as I pointed out in a previous diary entry, the number of people supporting "abortion on demand" has declined since the 1980s, which reflects the failure of the left to argue this one well, in my opinion.
However, as we know, while anti-abortion people will chip away on the ends of abortion and already have, another one of their problems is with birth control. They get away with seeming to stop the "extremes," but they are the ones who are extreme. One of the big issues involved in the abortion/privacy and birth control politics debate is the regulation and legality of birth control pills, particularly RU 486 and "Plan B." Addressing this level of privacy should be an important part of the debate around doctor/patient autonomy and privacy, and could swing a lot of "prochoice" republicans away from that party, and perhaps a lot of waffling democrats toward "choice" or, put better, reproductive and sexual freedom.
We don't need Roe to go in order to do this.
For example, for those who are questioning what the choice polls mean, here's an
interesting discussion on the morning after pill on, "Free republic," where indeed most people seem to respond in favor of keeping Plan B and argue that birth control pills are not the same thing as abortion. I guess these folks don't really know their own party, since Bush's appointees include wing-nut,
David Hager, against whom so many of us wrote petitions.
However, the people who vote Republican while being pro-choice are just counting on the political failure of the Christian right because
they know that the theocrats are in the minority. They're in the party for the taxes, the war and the racism, I guess. I have no respect for people who claim to be pro-choice and yet vote for Republicans because they don't want to pay taxes. My judgement: they're selfish bastards. However, according to the Dem. gamblers, those are the ones who will move to the left if Roe goes, because while they believe most people don't believe in unrestricted abortion, they also think most people aren't really for no abortion at all.
So don't these two groups of gamblers have something in common? That is, both pro-choice Republicans and waffling-on-choice democrats are willing to compromise other people's rights for some "higher" goal, while relying on "other people" to defend the choices that they claim to support themselves.
I hate to say it guys, but if not now, when? and if not us, who?