I am glad that I have access to adequate dental care should I need a cavity filled. That said, having a tooth filled is a pain in the ass: it's expensive, time-consuming, and just generally unpleasant. This is why I floss.
Stripped of its surrounding controversy, abortion is essentially the same as a tooth filling or root canal: it is a medical procedure you're glad is available, but you hope you won't have to take advantage of. No matter how pro-choice you are, I can guess that you aren't hoping to be put in a position that requires you to choose an abortion.
This is a perfect example of the often-overlooked middle ground between the typically so starkly-divided choice and life camps. Both sides agree that abortion is not an inherent good, and that the fewer that are needed, the better. From religious, social, economic, and medical perspectives, limiting the need for and occurrence of abortions, both legal and illegal, should be a common goal. In place of debates on the legality of late-term abortions, technicalities of "forcible rape," and issues of spousal and parental notification, discussions of preventative measures against unintended pregnancy - contraception and education - might bring us farther in the effort to improve women's health.
But those interested in achieving any degree of compromise in are few and far between. Instead, discussion gives way to incoherent shouting, and polarizing rhetoric fuels the fight on both sides. Arguments addressing "a woman's right to choose" are shot down with appeals to "a child's right to life." Clever and incendiary bumper stickers stare each other down in the nation's parking lots while accomplishing absolutely nothing. Ultimately, the issue has polarized us so much that the idealism on both sides - but particularly on the right - refuses to bend for the sake of practicality.
The pro-life movement is generally disinterested with preventing the need for abortion through access to birth control and education, because as I've said before, this movement is as much about sex as it is about abortion. Sex is a sin, as is abortion: religion is not a relativist institution, and it knows not how to choose "the lesser of two evils." For many, the sole measure acceptable for the discussion of pregnancy prevention has long been, and continues to be, abstinence. Efforts to increase access to birth control, to develop programs for comprehensive sex education, and even to provide the potentially life-saving HPV injection to adolescent girls have all been viewed by the right-wing as an invitation to, and tacit approval of, premarital sex. Statistics that show abstinence before marriage to be an unreasonable expectation do little to change religious arguments, and sexuality continues to be discussed only in normative terms. Pro-life leaders are too idealistic to compromise, and no solution can be acceptable if it acknowledges the inevitability of extramarital sex.
Accordingly, numerous family-planning measures have recently been felled before the unwavering sexual idealism of the right wing. In addition to the widely-publicized defunding of Planned Parenthood, and last year's decision to continue funding abstinence-only education programs, a measure to provide monies to the the United Nations Population Fund also floundered in the House just last week. Interestingly, this organization does not provide funds for abortion. Instead, it grants access worldwide to family planning resources, sex education, and maternal care, with the expressed goal of decreasing the number of unsafe abortions. This is a cause we could, and should, all get behind. Unfortunately, this extending of the olive branch is unlikely to happen any time soon, since it would mean acknowledging that sex does not necessitate marriage, and that pregnancy need not follow sex. Lest you were wondering, the Ten Commandments are ever-present in our legislature... though I know not of any measures based on the presumption that we do not covet.
That "sexual idealism" hypothesis is a good way of collectively describing things. There's definitely a correlation between various social coservative values.
ReplyDeleteWhat I don't get is what makes these masses of pro-lifers so mobilized? B/c it's one thing to just frown upon premarital sex (birth control as its facilitator, and abortion as its most sinful consequene). And another thing to go tie your fat evangelial ass to abortion clinic gates.
I find the self-righteous, missionary attitude very disturbing because those who set the religious-conservative agenda are often total hypocrites driven by their personal failure to live by what they preach. Like super-lesbian pastor Becky, Gov. Sanford the App trail hiker, the FRC dude who had gay sex on meth... Oh, so good when they get exposed!
http://www.zcommunications.org/another-far-right-outing-by-saul-landau