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RSSIn America, the pro-life lobby gears up
To gain political capital, elected representatives are exploiting the national hysteria over abortion.
By Laurie Penny Published 20 November 2011 12:52
Work and pleasure having sent me to the US for a while, I spent last week stocking up on all the essentials of civilised life that are unaccountably hard to find in the land of the free: tea bags, antibiotics and a small arsenal of hormonal and emergency contraception. The latter is less a reflection of how lucky I expect to get over here than a mark of refusal to risk interference in my uterine arrangements by any health authority in the US, where the usual public discourse around a woman's right to choose makes Nadine Dorries look like Vera Drake.
On 8 November, the state of Mississippi voted No to a proposal (see Michael Brooks, Observations, 14 November) that would have granted blastocysts "personhood" rights equivalent to those of a living, breathing human being with a functioning brain and nervous system - in effect outlawing not only abortion, but also many forms of birth control, including the IUD, hormonal contraception and the "morning after" pill. A campaign spearheaded by the group Personhood USA seeks to write into federal law the hypothesis that human life begins at the moment of conception, and that the rights of four-celled prehumans trump the rights of women.
The intricate game of denying health care to women with unplanned pregnancies and forcing them to carry those pregnancies to term has long been the stuff on which political careers are built at state level. In many districts of the US, abortion is now legal in name only. With the "personhood" initiative, however, the stakes are raised still further, conjuring the very real possibility that women's rights could be rolled back to the 1940s and ensuring that, for women and girls, sex once again becomes a risky business.
What is stunning about the abortion debate in the US is not just the savagery of its disregard for the "personhood" of female citizens, but the cynical way in which elected representatives exploit what has become a national hysteria over abortion for political capital. In the US, a politician's stance on abortion rights is often a make-or-break matter with voters. It is no accident that so many of the states where Personhood USA expects to get its measures on to the ballot next year are the same key swing states - Colorado, Florida, Nevada and Ohio - that voted for George W Bush in 2004 but declared for Barack Obama in 2008.
Culture wars
Attacking contraception, abortion and any other hard-won provisions to ensure female sexual equality has come to replace coherent economic and political discussion in the US. This is a tactic developed in the culture wars of the 1980s and 1990s, when politicians across the English-speaking world sought to play to the perceived prejudices of voters to whom they had little else to offer.
Mitt Romney, the Republican front-runner, has proposed cutting off federal funds to Planned Parenthood, which provides birth control and other health services to millions of low-income women.
Instead of offering any sort of vision for a future for the US, conservatives are reverting to attacking vulnerable women and minorities. These new culture wars are a clear signal that neoliberalism is fast running out of ideas.
Tags: Abortion
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58 comments
That's enough laws - Ed
mittfh
ho hum...why am I not surprised that in a post which starts with an oh-so-smug "ho hum" that the commenter goes on to make a complete prick of themselves.
First of all nobody in the first four posts 'invoked' Godwin's Law. The first post to do that was mittfh, by actually using the phrase 'Godwin's Law'...from which we can assume that mittfh doesn't know what 'invoke' means.
Secondly, mittfh might have been been justified in stating that within the first four posts, evidence tending to support Godwin's Law could be found. However, that'd be wrong too. Godwin's Law states
"As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1."
Now even if mittfh is pedantic enough to claim that since the word Nazism occurred in post 4, some 'growth' had taken place (ie. the 'growth' from zero posts to four posts), since all four posts were by the same author, he can hardly claim that there was a discussion taking place.
So, to sum up. The conditions for meeting the requirements of Godwin's Law were simply not in place and the first 'invocation' of the law was by mittfh.
Bob's Law is the only law which can claim any grounds for verification so far in this thread...except maybe Spud's law which states "Any post opening with a smug little 'ho hum' is bound to be a) written by a tosser b) wrong"
ho hum
Nobody tells me "That's enough laws"...I'll finish legislating when I'm good and ready.
Does anyone for a moment believe that she needs provision for contraception? I mean, would you?
So basically Laurie, you're telling us that in America, there's a large religiously-inspired anti-abortion movement which inspires strong feelings? And, further, you imply that unscrupulous politicians are willing to exploit these people's beliefs and prejudices for their own political ends?
Well...fuck me...who'd have thought it? Any chance you can get the NS to fund a trip to the woods? Maybe you could look into the question of where bears like to shit...while you're out there?
Buckskins
"To murder an unborn child is wrong."
...no actually, at least in English law this statement is meaningless since you cannot murder an unborn child. Murder is the unlawful killing of another human being with malice aforethought. Luckily, we are saved from a discussion of whether the planning of an abortion constitutes malice aforethought since..."At common law a foetus was not a human being. Life began when the foetus passed through the birth canal and took its first breath"...so either way, no 'murder' has taken place.
I'm not claiming the above is any defence of or justification for abortion, but you might want to reconsider infecting the debate with unnecessarily emotive language.
"Attacking contraception, abortion and any other hard-won provisions to ensure female sexual equality has come to replace coherent economic and political discussion in the US."
...but economic and political discussion will only be coherent when both sides agree what they are talking out. Political and corporate America have got their story straight-admittedly, it's a self-serving, disingenuous and inaccurate narrative. But the Occupy movement can't agree on anything except that they don't want to do anything concrete, say anything definite or even agree on a core set of beliefs other than...a) capitalism is bad b) change is needed c) won't someone think of the children...something you claim is a strength for some reason.
It's no fuckin wonder there's no coherent discussion. But it has far more to do with political opportunism from all sides rather than the abortion issue.
"Does anyone for a moment believe that she needs provision for contraception? I mean, would you?"
Don't be a dickhead. If you want to criticise someone, then find grounds for doing so. This is just pathetic misogynist bile and I'd put money on the fact that you're a fat ugly bastard who hasn't has sex since you broke your wrist trying to pull an extra packet of Monster Munch from the vending machine in Outpatients.
"These new culture wars are a clear signal that neoliberalism is fast running out of ideas."
...or it's a clear sign that neoliberalism is continuing to promote neoliberal ideas...possibly even a sign that neoliberalism has 'won'...why would it start needing 'new' ideas?
And why do you consider these culture wars to be new? They've been waged for half a century at least. The only 'new' aspect is your involvement...but that's just because you're too fuckin lazy to go and find a real story, so you pick up on a long-running issue that's already been analysed to death and try to give it some currency. You failed. You failed because you're too fuckin idle to either find a new angle or to write it up in an original manner. This is truly appalling.
"Life begins at conception."
does it?...even at a single cell?...and you base this I assume on potentiality, since that single fertilised cell has the potential to become a living human being?
So say I'm shipwrecked and washed up on a desert island with another human being with a kidney problem who depends on dialysis. Since they're now effectively dead, their potential for continued existence having just sank to the bottom of the sea, should I regard them as human? I mean, after all, what they really are now is a big bag of cells awaiting decomposition. Or should I knock them on the head, nick their stuff and feel no more remorse than if I'd just chucked a bag of mince in the bin? That would seem to follow from any potentiality argument. No potential...no life.
Another point. If you apply the same analytical methods as in the last article ie. Removing books = burning books =Nazism
then why doesn't it apply to
burning foetuses = genocidal attack on a particular cultural group (ie the 'unborn') = Nazism?
Don't get me wrong...I'm totally in favour of abortion, only I'm very much against off the peg hyperbolic polemics whose 'principles' and rules of inference have no consistency whatever, and whose logic is a pick-and-mix affair which cahnges from week to week to suit the argument. It makes for shoddy analysis and sixth-form journalism.
"Believe it or not,Spud, I am 6 ft 3, blond, blue eyed, handsome and have to fight the women (of various ethnicities) off."
That's a strange way to try and redeem yourself from a very ill considered 'joke'...although in describing it as a joke I'm probably doing you a big favour...and belittling what is a very real and damaging issue. But you seem to be saying: "OK, so I'm a misogynist but at least I'm not a racist misogynist." Although in my-and I imagine most people's-experience, irrational discrimination in one sphere tends to creep into others quite readily. (Was the blue-eyed blond reference significant in that regard?)
But, more importantly, in saying:"I'm a misogynist but..." you've shown yourself right up. There is no 'but'.
You see, what I think happened is that you looked back and thought: "Yeah, that was a bit of a shitty thing to have said."...and if that is what happened, then say so...don't try and palm it off as a bit of light-hearted banter.
"Work and pleasure having sent me to the US for a while, I spent last week stocking up on all the essentials of civilised life that are unaccountably hard to find in the land of the free: tea bags, antibiotics and a small arsenal of hormonal and emergency contraception."
Wouldn't that take a single trip to the supermarket? how did it last all fuckin week?
Is anything you write informed by reality? Do you just make up everything these days?
Buckskins
Feel free to ignore the last post, I'd misread AND misinterpreted yours. I was making unwarranted assumptions about your motivation.
"Attacking contraception, abortion and any other hard-won provisions to ensure female sexual equality..."
On a serious note though, what is female sexual equality? Presumably the 'equality' is with men. But I'm not sure what that phrase could mean...other than equality of opportunity to have sex without unwillingly conceiving. But that's not equality since the inverse opportunity is never afforded to about half of mankind.
Nor could I, try as I might, ever hope to have as much sex as the average woman if she chose...and I speak as a magnificent stallion of a man with the stamina of a Duracell rabbit?
How is this 'equality' measured...or what standards are we measuring it against? Surely physiological differences negate any possible notion of equality? Is it not more sensible to assume that there's female and male sexuality and equality is like comparing oranges and apples?
"Another point. If you apply the same analytical methods as in the last article ie. Removing books = burning books =Nazism"
Spud, nowhere in her last article does Laurie mention Nazism. It is mentioned in the comments but not in her article.
You are rather stating the obvious Laurie, but for what its worth I am with you on this one. These people are reigious maniacs who need to be fought every step of the way.
Woods, your sister wants her wig and clothes back.
No problem Spud. We can anyway agree to disagree. I seen a guy with an arm missing and both legs mangled. In fact half of one leg was gone from the knee down. With triage he was last in for surgery because he had already been written off. The last I heard he was scuba diving and enjoying himself. Life is sacred my friend, although I do believe in certain instances, the early termination of same. That does not include the unborn.
I can agree here that these culture wars are a clear signal that neoliberalism is fast running out of ideas.But I don't agree these cultural wars are new and I don't know what neoliberalism is anyway.
It's this latest neo-poor class and their associates that's most upset at the moment, probably(that's started in America first too, I understand).
People have been scared of women for thousands of years - yet at the same time they crave the very creativity we are naturally endowed with. Of course women are key to the current crises in the world. The last thing the old failed order of things wants is women to continue acting as if we're in control of information concerning our own lives, whatever state we're in..ie with or without employment contract, or marriage contract or child.
But we are the data controllers of our own lives, really.
Even Esther gets a new deal in the Bible..ie "half"(?). Who are we to assume she's just talking about the Jews when she refers to "me and my people" ? In my view of this now famous story she's making a positive difference for all of us - then and now, here and there and especially as a fitting response to help the likes of poor old Queen Vashti (who was apparently "disappeared" rather than divorced - and all because she positively refused to do some silly performance before her husband).
Im a reigious maniac! Spud is hilarious.. And Laurie just looks mean, I hope she found that contraceptive..
You are amusing me buckskins.Firstly i get my information from news channels ( thats proper news channels not the ones in the US that are basically political propoganda)and from a variety of newspapers,the net and of course the odd book.Don't presume to condescend to me just because you dont like what i say. However, you are an extremist because only extremists call aborting a collection of cells at a few weeks murder. Unfortunately most christians in the states would appear to hold extreme views and the several million fundamentalist lunatics certainly do.
What is it about some people, that no one has the right to murder an unborn baby fail to understand? The use of contraception is as distant from abortion as Spud is to Laurie.
Spud, please lighten up on her a little my friend. It's no sport shooting at Ducks in the water. Laurie I wish you would get a grip darlin. Please stop exaggerating and bending events to suit your needs. You're a talented writer and don't need the crap. Quality outscores quantity every time.
MOST people hold extremist views? Then they can hardly be extremist, can they?
Antibiotics? You think antibiotics should not be "hard to find"? Seriously? Are you unaware of the very good reasons NOT to make antibiotics easy to find? Have you never heard of antibiotic-resistant infection, the return of TB, etc?
How can a four-celled organism have personhood status while a dog or a parrot does not? It makes no sense at all.
Don't run yourself down like that, JS. If you had no brain, no bones, and no functional nervous system, you couldn't type, let alone construct three grammatical sentences.
About 90% of abortions are carried out at 8 weeks or less: a fetus at that stage of development is no more like a 29-year-old blogger than an apple seed is like an apple tree.
And it's prolife countries who push the average time of an abortion up, as prolifers prefer abortions to be delayed and illegal, rather than swift, safe, legal, and available on demand. Prochoice countries tend to have fewer abortions than prolife countries. (Ireland, always cited by prolifers, simply exports all abortion to mainland UK - a healthcare service for which the Irish government misogynistically declines to pay.)
To gain political capital, elected representatives are exploiting the national hysteria over the murder of not-yet born childen.
"Spud, nowhere in her last article does Laurie mention Nazism. It is mentioned in the comments but not in her article."
...it's there by implication Whatever...particularly to a 'generation' for whom history is the Nazis. Book burning = Nazism...not Fahrenheit 451.
WWII is history these days...with dashes of Vietnam, Martin Luther King and Ghandi.
History for kids who started Secondary school after 1995 goes like this..
In the beginning everything was cool and our brains evolved as we got cooler, more harmonious with nature and nobler and nobler as communitarian savages.
But not all was cool and groovy...far away in a place called Europe, nature had spawned a degenerate species called the white male. Now due to this species's extreme fucked-up-ed-ness it was able to use its evil powers to harness nature, create excess and demarcate labour...result alienation and a desire to despoil the planet.
The next few centuries were just a fuckin nightmare. White guys spent their time killing and exploiting the groovy brown folk and oppressing womankind everywhere. From their previous happy and harmonious lot, women were reduced to chattels, sex-slaves and beasts of burden; gone was the special female 'way of being' and 'knowing'; we lost touch of the groovy rhythms of existence and oneness; we replaced them with capitalism; red in tooth and claw.
All this white-guy lunacy continued unabated, fighting and robbing from everyone else-including each other-until WWII. (naturally, there was a brief respite while all the big-hitters got together and formed a secret society called the Patriarchy). Then during WWII one bunch of white psychopaths went so far that even the other white guys thought "erm..hang on...this isn't cricket"-all their 'discourse' was of course infected with public-school sporting metaphors.
After WWII, fucked-up-white-maleness hobbled on but gradually the forces of light and feminism and bourgeois relativism kicked in and gave us UNESCO and Human rights and post-structuralism and Sex in the City...and we were finally on the road back to the golden age.
But the forces of capitalism regrouped...and now, only a band of plucky rebels from the planet Tatooine, led by Princess Laurie can save us but only if they can deliver the dilithium crystal to Commander XENobar in his secret volcano lair on the planet Frappacino in the distant Amygdala galaxy.
Seriously, this is what History is these days...the bit at the end was speculative, I'll concede, but the rest is pretty much the impression taken away from school by the majority of kids...that's why politics is so dumbed down...dumb down history and you dumb down the present...and then 'journalism' becomes a simple game of 'find the sinister influence of the capitalist Patriarchy'...it's just so fuckin childish.
The point is buckskins that many people, other than religious nut cases, do not believe it's an unborn baby . It is just a collection of cells, up to a point, and the government should not be forcing it's extremist religious views on everyone. personally i think the time limit on having an abortion should be considerably reduced as 24 weeks is far too late but banning it is the talk of born again nut cases.
tho 2 b fair 2b prolife yoov goota b pro LP lol uvverwise wtf eh? lolz
Has anyone ever actually seen Laurie debate with someone?
Fraziel 1 doesn't understand that we are all just a collection of cells.
As an aside, I wonder what proportion of those advocating the "Pro-Life" argument also support (a) increasing military spending, (b) capital punishment, (c) other policies / philosophies which provide for legal means for adults to die before their biological expiry date.
Jones - I dispute that we are 'just' a collection of cells, i think we're a mind boggling, almost beyond comprehension, quite amazing, albeit rather squelchy' bunch of cells. I often have no idea what any one of my cells is going to do next.
David - yes, sort of, on the radio.
Julian - True dat innit blad
Spud - Broadly speaking I disagree with almost everything you're saying, but i did read almost all of it and i've always found it hard to resist heartfelt star wars imagery. Lol.
Thems of youse who is saying 'US religious right hate abortion,' isn't news - it is.. in US at the minute, because there's an election coming and the GOP might be looking at some extreme policy in this one. There's a fear that in being so desperate to shore up Tea-party votes this could be pushed at the candidate as campaign policy. Or something. Think it was in a Huff tweet. Or did i dream reading about this? I have some weird/boring ass dreams. Much more boring than Spuds.
I'm nearly 30. But I'm still just a collection of cells.
We all are.
"...and now, only a band of plucky rebels from the planet Tatooine, led by Princess Laurie can save us..."
You see, comic book stuff!
But really, is this getting out of proportion? I had no idea who Laurie Penny was until I stumbled in here during the riots and actually feel no better or worse for having found out. Though I have learnt a lot about internet opinions and people - I won't say trolls because it isn't strictly true.
Reading Laurie's pieces always feels faintly reminiscent of being harangued by a 12 year old child. It's mildly funny at first to see someone so obviously clueless going off on one like a deranged preacher , but it soon transitions into being tiresome and then eventually it becomes like a bad car crash...you really don't want to look but you can't help yourself. I'm even past the point of being bothered to engage with her writing enough to respond to specific points now. She just makes my toes curl up with embarrassment for her. I haven't felt that way since I saw the little professor type kid with the bow-tie and suit on the Wogan show back in the 80's who would pretend to be an antiques expert.
While I'm a fan of yours, Laurie, I need to point out that the very hysteria you are denouncing appears in your opening sentence. Misuse of antibiotics aside (see: Ophelia Benson's comment, and the fact that almost no illnesses you are likely to acquire in the USA require antibiotics), your hyperbole, which I assume is for literary value and to emphasize the more ridiculous facets of American society such as their abysmal healthcase, has made you look almost as hysterical and naive as those who believe that contraception is akin to abortion.
People have been scared of women for thousands of years - yet at the same time they crave the very creativity we are naturally endowed with. Of course women are key to the current crises in the world. The last thing the old failed order of things wants is women to continue acting as if we're in control of information concerning our own lives, whatever state we're in..ie with or without employment contract, or marriage contract or child. http://www.furniture101.net/
Well said SpudMiddleton, I worry that someone like Ms Penny seems to gaining influence but she is entitled to her views and doesn't deserve halfwit john woods making such comments.
Yes Laurie
The horrifying truth is that not everyone - far from everyone in fact - is happy with the current arrangements over abortion, and that in America people openly say so and lobby their representatives accordingly.
Why, some of them even campaign for the law to be changed - imagine!
Under the circumstances you may want to take your uterus elsewhere.
Oh - and about Vera Drake : possibly one of the silliest "serious" films ever made.
Back alley abortions as a social evil - fair enough, but abortionist as social worker!!!???
Sorry not buying.
"I'm not claiming the above is any defence of or justification for abortion, but you might want to reconsider infecting the debate with unnecessarily emotive language"
Spud I don't give a rats ass about any government dictating to me their convenient vote getting definition of a human life. Life begins at conception. Not at 20 weeks or passing through a birth canal, or any other location. I think people informing us as to the legitimacy of terminating a baby's life is a darn sight more emotive like language than my advocating life as opposed to murdering the baby. Make no mistake about it. The most dangerous place in your and my country is a mothers womb. Murder is not a substitute for birth control or the after effects of a drunken Saturday night.
@Jones, i understand very well that up to a point we are just a collection of cells.These fundamentalist loonies think we are a person from conception. It is due ,imo,to an inability to actually think about anything because of religious brain washing and dogma. I feel sorry for them but they should not be foisting their nutty views on everyone else.If only atheists and agnostics would unite in the states in the way fundamentalists have done. Think of the political clout they would have.
Ho hum. Why am I not surprised that in an article featuring the controversy over legalised abortion, Godwin's Law gets invoked within the first four comments...
I fully agree with your reasoning Laurie. It is remarkable how rights can be bestowed on a collection of cells above that of the woman. However right you are in your column, does not take away from the fact that this is nothing more than stating the obvious.
Why am I not surprised that any time the Nazis get mentioned then someone will repeat the old cliche about Godwins Law. I'm sure we're all familiar enough with it by now to not need to be told every time.
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