Katha Pollitt’s article at The Nation (Focus on the Fetus) continues the unchanging rhetoric of the Left’s support for death. She repeats the same old, tired arguments against choice. There is nothing new here. But there is something old that bears notice.
She complains about the monies being spent.
Every dollar FOTF spends messaging the fans is a dollar not available to pay the electricity bill or keep staff on payroll—and in fact, FOTF has recently laid off hundreds of employees.
She complains about the alternative choice that she doesn’t agree with.
It’s maddening that the people who want to take away women’s right to choose have annexed “choice” to their own cause.
She complains about not having the money to get the abortion message across
“I don’t think we can cede to the right wing our ability to communicate with mainstream America,” Michelman told me by phone. NARAL’s costly, multiyear Choice for America ad campaign, she said, which used patriotic symbols to associate abortion rights with American values, was very successful—until the funding dried up. (emphasis mine)
In an interesting turn, she actually appeals to a pro-life issue to support abortion. Yes, to defend the elective abortion problem that pro-life confronts, she appeals to medical necessity as though they are the same.
We hear about the Pam Tebows, not about the women who listened to the doctors and terminated a dangerous pregnancy—or about those for whom disregarding that advice was a big mistake. Imagine a Super Bowl ad like this: Mother in kitchen with kids: “Thank God I listened to my doctor when she told me my pregnancy had gone terribly wrong. If I hadn’t, I might be dead, and my children would be growing up without a mother.” Or Husband at graveside: “Sally had so much spirit, so much faith. I just wish she’d trusted her doctor... this one time.”
Now, not all pro-lifers agree on how to handle hard cases. But we all understand the difference between medical necessity and the college girl’s and young career woman’s attempt to maintain sexual activity for convenience, even if a life is destroyed.
Pollitt’s turn to becoming a close pro-lifer should be noted.
But in the end she is a eugenicist. She appeals to the tried and true foundations of the abortion movement. She wants that better world which she believes the secular/progressive/postmillennial approach can deliver.
And what if Tim Tebow hadn’t turned out so well? In antichoice mythology the aborted fetus is always Beethoven or some other genius born in discouraging circumstances. What if it was Ted Bundy? Elderly Austrian woman in a dirndl: “I told my husband four children would be too many, but he said not to talk such nonsense—all the Schicklgrubers had lots of kids.” (bold mine, link mine, but the words are hers)
Wow. Stop a eugenicist with eugenics. Stop evil by practicing evil. It’s the most utilitarian message I’ve read in a very long time. And it is as evil as what it purports to protect us from.
