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And under the bus they go: Obama and pro-choicers
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by smkovalinsky | November 10, 2009 at 10:04 am
116 views | 4 Recommendations | 10 comments
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Is it getting a bit crowded under Obama's bus?
From Pajamas Media, a piece about how President Obama has thrown pro-choice women under the bus - and I might add, along with gay advocacy.
Of course, way back in the days of the campaign trail, this writer knew Obama would be a friend to neither group: Mainly, because he was campaigning and was elected at the onset of a historical saeculum fourth turning. Ah, the advantages we glean by studying Latin and Howe ans Strauss! :
After Obama was elected, Ms.magazine ran a cover with an image of him opening his shirt, Clark Kent style, to reveal a T-shirt which reads: “THIS IS WHAT A FEMINIST LOOKS LIKE.”Given how quickly reproductive rights were just jettisoned in the House, and mainly by Democrats, I wonder if there is any breast-beating going on over there. I certainly hope so, but I doubt it.
It seems like only yesterday that Hillary was running against Barack—but it also seems like a hundred years ago.
However, long before the Ms. magazine cover, I remember The List, which first came out during the Democratic primary race. I was shocked and disheartened by it. How could so many educated American women be so foolish, so desperate, so easily conned?
No, I am not talking about the McCarthy era blacklist (the only list that tenured and creative leftists really take seriously) but about the “Feminist Petition for Obama and for Peace.”
I have personally known many of the signatories; have truly admired (or strongly disagreed with) the views of some; have, over the years, been at odds, publicly, with more than a handful on issues such as pornography, prostitution, custody, surrogacy, the nature of Islamic gender and religious apartheid, 9/11, jihadic terrorism, the fate of both America and Israel, global anti-Semitism—but still: Let’s set that all aside for a moment. In their own terms, they have all just been royally screwed.
Many of these feminist signatories devoted their academic and activist lives to the fight for women’s reproductive rights. For example: Eleanor Bader wroteTargets of Hatred: Anti-Abortion Terrorism; Rosalyn Baxandall authored Women and Abortion: The Body as Battleground and Dear Sisters: Dispatches From The Women’s Liberation Movement; Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English wrote about women’s rights, including reproductive rights, way back in the 1970s, in For Her Own Good: Two Centuries of the Experts Advice to Women; Linda Gordon wrote Woman’s Body, Woman’s Right: Birth Control In Americaand The Moral Property of Women: A History of Birth Control Politics in America; Rosalind Petchesky wrote Negotiating Reproductive Rights andAbortion And Woman’s Choice: The State, Sexuality, and Reproductive Freedom, among others; and Katha Pollitt of the Nation magazine has writtenextensively about abortion rights in their pages.
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smkovalinsky
New York, New York, United States
Most RecentMost Recommended Comments (10)
at 10:44 on November 10th, 2009
I was as disappointed as any other pro choice person, but I also realize the realities of getting legislation passed. And sometimes you have to compromise. I know many believe this compromise was too much, but the alternative would have been a stalemate and no passage of health care reform.
at 10:50 on November 10th, 2009
Yes, Obama was never going to be able to act with any real freedom, that much was clear. That is why I get so annoyed at the right wingers who keep insisting he will be the new Hitler: If anything, he is the very opposite: all he does is compromise, compromise, and how can they view him as staging a "take over": he would have to become a different person....
at 10:56 on November 10th, 2009
Pajamas Media was named for that famous comment by Dan Rather about the fake documents he touted as real concerning Bush's navy reserve service. He said, "Who are you going to believe, me or a bunch of guys sitting around in their pajamas?", referring to the Internet bloggers who managed to prove that Rather's documents were forged.
The problem here is not abortion. It is Obama. The "don't-ask-don't-tell" policy is still in place. Because????
It is not politically and morally acceptable to ask for money from people to perform an act that they see as killing, pure and simple.
I am not against abortion in the first trimester, but I can see that I am not about to ask someone who finds abortion so morally repugnant to pay for someone's abortion.
That is why this should all be done state by state.
at 11:06 on November 10th, 2009
It is not politically and morally acceptable to ask for money from people to perform an act that they see as killing, pure and simple.
What about if you don't believe in the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Can you opt out of paying for that?
at 11:19 on November 10th, 2009
No, you can't. You can petition the government to get out and you can avoid military service if you are a CO, but you are stuck with paying for that.
I didn't say it was unconstitutional. I said it was bad politically. Asking people to pay for a war that they don't support is bad politically and immoral as well when the war itself is immoral.
All wars are not immoral. People who think that are immoral. :)
at 11:30 on November 10th, 2009
All wars are not immoral.
Are people who think that all abortions are immoral (rape, incest etc) immoral?
You can see the problem here. Morality is an individual thing and abortion used as the big straw man in any such debate. Should it fund euthanasia and on. Abortion is used as code in these debates, but any other form of killing execution, war, euthanasia, end of life options etc never is. I think you can see why this is an irregular use of moral code to pacify a religious activism sector of the community. It is that double standard I find insulting
at 11:35 on November 10th, 2009
Morality is not an individual thing. We just agree to disagree morally to keep the family, city, state and country together.
Abortion needs to have limits. They are in Roe vs Wade, but the left doesn't want any limitations at all.
Yes, I think you could argue that imposing a ban on morning-after-pills and IUDs because the zygote is a human being is immoral. I don't see a zygote as a human being, but I do see the fetus as a human being when it has a brain.
at 11:44 on November 10th, 2009
Have limits is different from all are immoral, which you did not say, but is the position that got the clause changed in the first place
We can happily argue when/limitations etc but a blanket opposition regardless of circumstance and denying women the right to chose within a prescribed legal framework is immoral. IMHO
at 12:03 on November 10th, 2009
It's curious to me that the same people who want less government and increased state's rights will deny an indivudal woman the right to choose that validates the sacrosanctity of the government over the individual. These same people deny birth control that is the first line against unwanted pregnancies. Late term abortions unless in the case of incest or rape are not what most people would want.
I think about it in terms of what freedoms I would want for my own daughter. Abortion is a difficult choice to make. I had to have one when I got the measles in my first trimester. It was my first pregnancy, and I still think about it when the time of year comes around. When I look at my children, and think about what that baby would have looked like or how old it would have been now.
at 12:05 on November 10th, 2009
Until you pry out the tentacles of religion and separate it from governance, it is a perennial problem...sadly