Reproductive Freedom Roundup
By - I think it’s correct to say that it’s frequently “a background assumption of the conversation — so much so that neither participant questions it — that women have the ability to plan how many children they will have. No one even asks how it is that women will be able to make this decision; it’s taken for granted. And I wonder how often do we have a conversation with a casual, background assumption that families will be able to plan the number of children they will have.” In this sense–as we can see by the number of people in South Dakota who voted for Republicans on tax or agriculture issues and got an atavistic abortion ban instead–the pro-choice movement has been a victim of its own success. A lot of women don’t have to think of abortion as a political issue; when they discuss things like whether to have a planned c-section, its availability is just an underlying assumption rather than something which requires struggle to achieve. One potential positive that can be derived from the less-disingenuous-than-usual success of the forced pregnancy lobby South Dakota is that it might make that point clear. But it won’t just happen– pro-choicers have to be proactive about it.
- Matt does a great job with the obvious unseriousness of attempting to ban Mifepristone on “public health” grounds. Given that it’s both safer than many other drugs nobody is trying to ban but also far safer than childbirth, there’s obviously no principled justification that doesn’t circle back to wanting to restrict abortion rights. (And, of course, we have yet more examples of what a pathetic dodge the focus on late-term abortions is; people who were serious about avoiding them, as opposed to using them as a rhetorical wedge to get much broader regulations passed, would want to make RU-486 more easily available.)
- The ratcheting-up of silliness with respect to pharmacists interposing themselves between the people with the actual authority to write prescriptions and the medical interests of their patients in order to impose your moral convictions on others (which has now extended beyond dishonest claims about Plan B to reach to giving antibiotics and vitamins to women who make moral choices that you don’t like) compels me to point out again how ludicrous the claims that such actions constitute acts of “principle.” The “principled” action in this case would be to say that “because I cannot in good conscience dispense drugs that are, er, accessories after the fact to abortion or something–I’m sure it it’s in the Bible somewhere if you squint really hard, and if James Dobson books are religious texts–I must resign.” Conversely, the argument that “I should continue to get paid although I refuse to do my job” is the antithesis of an act of principle. It’s sure easy to be “principled” if this means “never having to accept any negative consequences for your actions.”