Proving Too Much

You may have heard about this embrace of utter crackpottery from new social conservative darling Mike Huckabee:

Speaking before a gathering of Christian conservative voters, GOP presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee said legalized abortion in the United States was a holocaust.

“Sometimes we talk about why we’re importing so many people in our workforce,” the former Arkansas governor said. “It might be for the last 35 years, we have aborted more than a million people who would have been in our workforce had we not had the holocaust of liberalized abortion under a flawed Supreme Court ruling in 1973.”

Leaving aside the rather problematic economic assumptions here, we have two classic pieces of stupidity and exploitation common to the rhetoric of the forced pregnancy lobby. First, if abortion is a “holocaust,” one wonders why most anti-choicers believe that the alleged primary perpetrators of this genocide should face fewer legal sanctions than if they spat on the sidewalk. And Huckabee would have signed the North Dakota law that also exempted women from punishment for contributing to the “holocaust.” Does Huckabee believe that Eichmann should have been exempt from punishment? Or maybe he should stop using this idiotic and spectacularly offensive analogy?

In addition to the bizarre causal logic, the “Oh no! Giving reproductive rights to women means more furriners undermining the values of Good White Americans by coming here to feed their families!” argument has perhaps broader implications than he intends. If the key problem with abortion is lower birthrates, forget abortion: we need to stop the production and distribution of contraception immediately! Passing arbitrary laws forcing poor women to obtain unsafe abortions will do nothing while Trojans are freely produced! Oh the humanity!

Again, there are few things as bizarre in American politics as “pro-lifers” who demand constant congratulation for having Unyielding Moral Principles as they advance positions that are a moral, legal, logical, and political shambles.