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The Anti-Choice Hoax of the Century
I’m inviting you to see why the so-called Right To Life movement is the hoax of the century.
I have been involved in the complex and fascinating work of providing abortion services since 1975. Despite the violence and the crazy politics, this is extraordinary work that has brought me in touch with extraordinary people. One of those is Bill Harrison, a doctor who has practiced in Fayetteville, Arkansas for nearly 20 years.
If you were searching for the most progressive community in the country, you probably wouldn’t choose Fayetteville. Yet women there need abortions just as women all over the country. And they have been grateful to have Bill’s excellent medical attention and warm heart. Dr. Harrison is one of the most courageous and eloquent people I know. He wrote about his career:
“I have dared to ride the tiger. This tiger is ignorance, intolerance and hatred incarnated in some of the anti-abortion Religious Right…I have chosen to ride this tiger unquietly, raking its side with verbal spurs, swinging my hat and whooping like a cowboy for the past 15 years.”
Over the years Bill Harrison has, not surprisingly, been the target of some horrible harassment by the RTL (I won’t give them the name they have chosen for themselves, because they gave up that privilege when they started murdering us).
Worse than that, he has been battling Leukemia. This summer he finally had to close his office as he went into Hospice Care. His illness has not been a secret. Everyone knows that he never would have given up or closed his office by choice. No one thinks he was defeated or intimidated by the self-righteous folks who show up on his sidewalk so certain they know what God wants every woman to do.
Yet these people are so without shame that they are celebrating the closing of Bill Harrison’s office as some kind of gift from God resulting from their activities. Posted July 28, 2010 on the 40 days for Life Newsletter:
“I had to share amazing news that, with God’s grace, could be repeated in YOUR community.
I just received word from our local 40 Days for Life campaign leaders in Fayetteville, Arkansas — and got confirmation from their local media — that their city’s one and only surgical abortion facility is CLOSING!
Praise God!
During three previous 40 Days for Life campaigns in Fayetteville, the abortionist grew more and more aggressive towards the prayer volunteers, taunting and ridiculing them in person — and in the media …
… but they did not react; they persisted in peaceful vigil and remained to pray for the unborn, the women entering the facility — and especially for the abortionist himself.
And NOW … that facility is closing down!”
When I first read this I was so furious and disgusted that they could be gleefully congratulating themselves and praising God for the terminal illness of my friend. Besides being far removed from any semblance of Christian Love, it was duplicitous to suggest to their supporters and donors that it was their actions that had caused the clinic in Fayetteville to close.
Then because I am a bleeding heart liberal I found myself pitying them because they are so hateful and they have tried so hard to control women for so many years with such little success. They must be terribly frustrated. Then I got angry again because, of course, that frustration has hypocritically led to anti-abortionists murdering 8 people in the name of life.
Then a huge light bulb went off in my head. It’s not that I didn’t know this before, but I found myself amazed that the antis have gotten away with this for so long. The RTL has succeeded in one of the most effective hoaxes of modern times—they have managed to con much of the public into believing that they are a morally-motivated group that loves life, loves babies and wants to prevent abortions.
BUT IT IS A LIE THAT THE RTL WANTS FEWER ABORTIONS. PERHAPS THE MORE CORRECT NAME FOR THEM IS ‘RIGHT TO LIE’.
How can I say that?
RTLs need abortion the way fire fighters need fires.
Picketing an abortion clinic to try to stop abortions is as effective as picketing an airport to try to get more people to vacation locally. It’s all show. And it is a cruel, bullying, vicious, smug and self-righteous show.
We all know that the RTL movement has enough politicians (mostly Republican) who vote lock step with them that they could change women’s reproductive health care overnight. All they would need to do is to support a few measures that are already supported by most Democrats. Here in no particular order, are a few simple things they could support that would be guaranteed to result in fewer untimely pregnancies, and hence fewer abortions in no specific order:
1. Make long-acting, effective reversible birth control methods like IUDs available free of charge to any women who want them. These birth control methods are effective for 5 to 10 years and don’t require a woman to remember to do anything in order to be protected from pregnancy. They can be used by women of any age. If a woman wants to get pregnant, she simply has the IUD removed and her normal fertility returns. This birth control method is widely used in Europe, but quite expensive and less frequently used in this country.
2. Cover all reproductive health care including all methods of birth control, infertility, tubal ligation, and vasectomy, under affordable health insurance.
3. Create excellent and affordable childcare so that women who want to have children can also make a living to support them.
4. Make sure young people learn how to create successful relationships as well as how to be responsible with their sexuality. That will give them the tools to create healthy families and be good parents with enough resources to care for their kids when the time is right.
5. Promote vasectomy as a very safe and inexpensive method of permanent birth control for men. This would be especially helpful for couples who have completed their families so that a late and unexpected pregnancy doesn’t through everyone into emotional turmoil.
6. Increase research into developing safer, more effective and long lasting methods of birth control.
7. Make sure the Morning After Treatment is easily available, inexpensive, and covered by health care insurance.
8. Require by law that all pharmacies either fill prescriptions for birth control and Morning After Treatment, or else inform over the phone, in advertisements, and by posted signs that they are Anti Choice Pharmacies, and the location of the nearest pharmacy that respect a woman’s choices.
Now that I see this so clearly, my plan is to print out this list and make sure that every little grandmother with her rosary, and every obnoxious, loud, angry man with his bull-horn, and every self-righteous seminary student waving a Bible, and every teenage girl with her chastity ring and her secret sex life standing between a woman and her own moral choice REALLY HAVE TO FACE that they are not doing any of the things that could actually lessen the need for abortion. And they will have to face that either they have been duped into giving their time to insult, intimidate, and harm women OR that they are part of perpetrating one of the most insidious, cruel,and successful hoaxes of our modern day.
- Posted in
31 Comments so far
Show AllGood list! Title it: Steps To Reducing Abortions and challenge these RTL's and their candidates to support it.
I agree -- this is a good list! And, I commend Charlotte Taft for writing this article!
I would add to the list:
CLOSING THE WAGE GAP between men and women
I ended up being a single mother in the late 1970s -- through divorce, and although I worked in management jobs, I made anywhere from 30-45% less than men working at the same jobs. I can tell you that this did NOT work well for me. Finally, I had to pick up a second job, and pay for more childcare, as mentioned in the list, but the worst part of the scenario was that I was completely worn down, and I didn't enjoy much time with my son.
The wage gap, currently, depending upon the article, or the study, is, for women, between 67-cents and 76-cents for every dollar a man earns.
How can men -- any man -- wish this on his daughter, sister, mother, etc.?
Of course, there are countless women who continue to work against "closing the wage gap," too. Shame on them!
Hi Kay,
i just googled "wage gap" - there's a new report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics that the gap has shrunk recently, not because women are earning more, but because men are earning less due to the collapsing industrial economy.
Here's a clip from a news article two days ago:
*******************************************
... Women earned 82.8% of the median weekly wage of men in the second quarter of 2010, up from 76.1% for the same period a decade ago and the highest ever recorded, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports.
...
"The good news is the wage gap is closing. The bad news is the reason," says economist Robert Drago, research director at the Institute for Women's Policy Research.
Men have been losing jobs at a faster rate than women in the recession because of troubles in manufacturing, construction and other industries, he says. By contrast, job loss has been slow in government and health care, which tend to employ more women.
...
"It's not good news for women to have men making poor economic progress," says Carrie Lukas at the Independent Women's Forum. "This isn't a gender war. If men lose, that doesn't mean that women win."
usatoday.com/money/workplace/2010-09-13-wage-gaps_N.htm
The Independent Women's Forum, despite the even-handed title, is a far-right organization. Carrie Lukas has the magnificent ability to talk nonsense super-fast and non-stop, and if her interlocutor manages to get a word in edgewise she takes a lightning-quick breath and veers off without pausing into another stream of verbal diarrhea. Thom Hartman used to have her on regularly and I used to turn off until I figured it was over. She's that annoying. I don't know who funds that organization but it's no doubt the usual suspects.
Thanks, i figured that might be the case but i didn't look it up.
i went to the IWF site, and it is corporate apologetics. i opened one article on the costs of "big government" and Lukas regurgitates the think-tank meme that taxes on corporations simply get passed on to consumers so are counterproductive. i logged in and commented, but i can't show you because comments are moderated and it's not up yet.
i think the labor bureau statistics hold water though.
Kay, I have always enjoyed and respected your viewpoints, this issue is no different.
To begin with, I would challenge anyone to find a "right to life" suporter that doesn't also support the death penalty.
Here in Texas, our very own "God fearing" governor has refused and in fact thrown roadblocks into an investigation that he executed an innocent man when he ignored new forensic evidence proving the innocence of Cameron Todd Wilingham. This poor man not only lost his beloved children in an accidental fire, he was put to death as a scapegoat in their tragic deaths. How Christian could our good faithful governor be?
The same people who claim to be "right to lifers" also refuse to adopt homeless or abused children into their own "loving" home, and if they do happen to take in foster kids or adopt a child, the child is abused physically because of thsoe same religious beliefs. Ever hear of the children who were quite literallly whipped to death by a pair of Baptist preachers in Austin, or the Rev, Lester Roloff's home in Corpus Christi that was eventuallly closed because of child abuse?
Further, these saame "right-to life" hypocrites refuse to allow stem cell research on frozen embryos, whose state of life is really not even questionable. If they aren't used for research that will eventually save many lives, they are discarded in the trash. Apparently they don't object to that. Further yet, these are typically the same people who have no problem sending over 5000 of the children of others to fight and die in bogus resource wars taht will increase their own bottom line. Meanwhile their own children, not unlike George W. Bu$h, are exempted from the very wars these bastards start simply because they happened to be lucky enough to be born on the right side of the tracks.
Christ would be so disgusted by such people claiming to be followers of his belief system, when in fact, they are nothing but greedy, selfish and self rightious bastards dressing up in the clothes of the lamb. Fuck em and may they take the fast train to Hell, which if it actually does exist is certainly where these scum belong.
aussidawg said "To begin with, I would challenge anyone to find a "right to life" suporter that doesn't also support the death penalty."
I in fact have met such people who are opposed to war, the death penalty, abortion and all forms of violence. Mostly they have removed themselves from the abortion issue because of the hate-filled right-wingers who are the ones most vocal and visible. Perhaps you have met some but they just haven't let you know who they are, or maybe not.
I would probably not describe abortion as fascinating. That is kinda morbid...remember that it is killing a baby after all.
The list is good...considering that those methods are "should ofs" and not useful once a baby is in the belly. Those getting pregnant are only thinking about one thing at the time...vaginal pleasure...not babies
Being a democrat to me is like following 80/20 rule. I agree with most but wonder why abortion is so praised by democrats. There is nothing gained, only lost.
Aside from the fact that you did not understand the point of the article, you do not seem to have read items 3 and 4 on the list.
I suppose you mean "should haves?"
No, it is not a baby until AFTER it is born. And how are you so sure about what is in a woman's thoughts "at the time"? Getting accidentally pregnant is not something one does on one's own!
Before it is born it is a monkey right??? I forget how evolution goes. I get women "accidentally" pregnant all the time. Some say I have a rapist wit.
Troll. Do not feed.
I think those rtl-ers, whatever that means in a real world, I think the rules should make it that every ova or egg in a woman must produce another human and naturally in the womb. Make a lot of men happy and not so lot of women happy as spitting out baby after baby will soon wear down their defiance to what their idiot of a god demands of them.
"Those getting pregnant are only thinking about one thing at the time...vaginal pleasure...not babies"
This would be what "missing the whole point of the issue" sounds like as it passes overhead.
Charlotte thanks for your article. Yes this is the biggest hoax. Over thirty years a go when we were working to get the Vermont Women's Health Center up and running we had a community meeting at which a right wing state legislator said to me "If you women get abortion on demand, how do we know there will be enough men to fight the next war."
I have always felt glad to have been clued in so early on as to the real motives of the Mandatory Motherhood movement. No I'll never call them by their chosen name because they are so anti life in every way generally supporters of war and non supporters of things like the federal program for food for mothers and infant children. Just check the voting records of anti-choicers. No it is all about controlling women and leaving life and death choices to men. And men with their devotion to a warrior culture and domination of nature don't have a great record of promoting life.
Ecofeminism is the real culture of life.
RTL - Right To Lunacy. These cults are a threat to civilized society - so why do we tolerate them? They're hypocrites who want an unnatural world order that never did - and never could - exist. Try them for sanity - a commitment hearing - and watch them hang themselves with their own idiotic ideology.
They are beyond reason and logic - they are INSANE in the truest sense of the word. So let's lock them all up and see if there is any treatment that might make 'normal' human beings out of them. These people have serious mental aberrations - this isn't about 'freedom of speech' - this is about competence and decent healthcare for the mentally ill. Start them out in a locked ward (once deemed incompetent and a danger to themselves and others) and see how they do. You'd be surprised at how many will eventually recover, although other will need medication (thorazine, stellazine were the old drugs used for such cases - I don't trust the newer ones though).
It seems to be the case that these fanatical RW movements need to take positions that are internally contradictory, as author Taft points out. The greater the cognitive dissonance, the louder and more shrill and determined they get.
Great column. Of course, the Bible-thumpers won't support any of the sensible measures you suggest. Why? Mainly because conservative religious folk view people as basically sinful and deserving of suffering. That's why the religious types focus constantly on punishing people instead of correcting the problems in the first place. Some of these deluded folks even view contraception as evil -- they believe women should have babies until their bodies are worn out! All this underscores the dangers caused by allowing religious cults to acquire political power, especially through political campaign donations.
It's useless to argue with these people as they ignore reality and the facts. They are so caught up in their religious delusions that they pose an ongoing threat to our democracy, such as it is. One thing reasonable people can do: DEMAND that governments at every level halt all tax breaks and other perks granted to religious groups.
Very good perception!
This issue has always BEEN a Red Herring. Gives rightwing housewives something to do, keeps people active at election time and keeps the coffers filled.
They NEVER want this situation to diminish or go away: it's a Go to Congress Free card...AND... significantly it cripples progressive movements by sucking time, money, passion and people from the larger issues. We all hear that great Sucking Sound as it empties Progressive Coffers!
Alank is correct. Abortion was a back burner issue with a few right-leaning but Democratic Catholics; nobody else was really paying attention. Then in the late 19702, Republican NCPAC founder (and homophobic closet gay who later died of AIDS) Terry Dolan met with Richard Viguerie and a few other biggies and they settled on abortion as the "bomb", the leading issue to create divisions in working class, less educated voters, mostly in the South and Midwest but also in the suburbs. They "created" the present day abortion "issue" deliberately, carefully and cynically.
The people who benefit, Right wing pro-corporate elites could hardly give a rat's ass one way or another. Women from that crowd can get any reproductive health service they want, any time, from their full-time, fee-for-service providers and no doubt do just that. But "RTL" gives them ground troops and cover.
You are correct on most points, but you can't blame Catholic Democrats for this one. Right to Life was founded in the living room of Jack and Barbara Wilke in Cincinnati prior to 1970. (I know, because I was there. I got smarter over the years.) Jack and Barbara were lifelong members of the GOP and even had a son who ran for various offices under GOP endorsements. Wilke used his position as a physician to interfere in the medical decisions made by OB/GYNs practicing at one of the hospitals in Cincinnati in the mid 70's. He used his position in the Catholic Church to get his political endorsements into the hands of every Catholic church goer in the weeks before every election. The people he endorsed were, without exception, always Republicans, and always far right of center. For years he preached his intolerance. He is responsible for painting any liberal cause in colors that make it unpatriotic and an outright threat to our basic freedoms. Years later he gave up leadership of the National RTL but continued to push his rightwing agenda. I would not want to be in his Gucci slippers when he meets The Judge.
As a flaming liberal on the left of companeros Fidel Castro, Bill Moyers, Carter and Chavez, I think that the pro-choice movement should concentrate a lot more on making abortion rare, although I don't have the factual wherewithal to judge abortion on a moral level.
My sense is that we should throw a lot more resources into avoiding unwanted pregnancies and supporting pregnant women, financially and otherwise, who are at risk of considering abortion.
I know that we can all agree that abortion is often a "last resort". I only wish we could make it ALWAYS a last resort, safe, and as early as possible.
I have a 4-year-old. When she was conceived, our life was chaotic and uncertain. In some ways, it still is today. I don't know what life would be like if we'd aborted her. But I know that she is the most amazing thing that ever happened to us.
The point is, it was your "choice" to have her .....
The "Christian Right" is neither.
We Mystics have faith in the creator, but like everyone else we have free will and can make up any doctrine we choose to believe. Now, I will take you on a magical mystical tour. We do not have a problem for women having a choice; in fact choice may be their responsibility. We do not dwell a lot on what God is actually like in the dimension of God, however in the dimension of the flush, if we had to bet, we would bet that God is a woman. Who did the beast first speak to, who was protected from the beast, who was the first to testify to the resurrection, and the last shall be made first again. We believe that we are the creators of souls, the very purpose of the creation.
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.
Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.
The Mystic interpretation: A woman will choose which souls will be created, but must stand aside until the beast has been trampled under by the unprotected.
Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.
We know the laws of physics; no two forms of matter can occupy the same space at the same time. However, at the moment when the sperm enters the egg are they not one flush? That is when the soul is created, at a later time the flush is created. The soul comes before the flush. The question for us is, if the woman did not choose would a soul be created? TBD later, for now it remains one of the great mysteries in the dimension of the flush. We do believe that destruction of the flush does not destroy the soul in any case.
SOLREV: Your claim to being a mystic is entirely drenched in a Christian worldview. And it is not "flush" unless you're relating to a toilet. It would appear you are speaking about the FLESH.
I have studied a number of mystical teachings and cannot relate to your post much at all. Just as the Christian publishing houses have sought to co-opt the term "spirituality," as the garbage industry has abducted the term of "organic," your use of the word mystic is, in my view, misappropriated.
I do, however, agree with your concluding statement... while substituting flesh for (your use of the term) flush.
God is Pro-Life. To those who choose not to investigate the reality of God, my prayers go out to you. To those who prefer their own interpretation of Reality and Truth, my prayers go out to you. To those so hardened of heart they cannot see nor understand the value and dignity of all life, my prayers go out to you. The chaotic and violent tone of these posts gives sound to the silent screams of a child ripped from the womb. " The peace I give you is not of this world...". Sadly so many of us will never know this...
Peace
Mr Nelson, it is we who are sorry for the likes of you. The essay and most of the thoughtful responses to it spoke of the need to provide adequate information and medical care to women so that abortion would be RARE. Your holier than thou attitude will certainly not sit well with those of us who truly care for all the people who are already born. I did not read anything here today that would lead me to believe that the writers relished the act of abortion. We all favor Life but I can say for myself that I also believe that war should be abolished right along with the death penalty. Most RTL folks seem to support both. I know a number of people who are pro choice but do not personally believe in abortion. I feel sorry for people like you and your ilk. As for me, I shall work for Peace in THIS world!
Ricky Nelson writes, as though he knows with certainty, that "God is pro-life. To those who choose not to investigate the reality of God, my prayers go out to you. To those who prefer their own interpretation of Reality and Truth, my prayers go out to you."
Is it not the case that your belief in the "reality of God" is your "own interpretation of Reality and Truth..."? Have you heard of the word "tautology"?
He also writes: "To those so hardened of heart they cannot see nor understand the value and dignity of all life, my prayers go out to you."
Could someone please write a tome on the "value and dignity" of bedbugs, the H1N1 virus, or former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson?
These idiots not only seek to abolish all the social progress accomplished since the Great Depression; they seek the abolition of all of history since The Enlightenment.
God obviously has one great weakness. "He" seems unable to predict who should have been aborted for the greater good of mankind. Not a very good judge of character...in my umble [sic] opinion.
As for the earlier post by another no-nothing, about women who get pregnant because all they had on their mind at the time was "vaginal pleasure," tell that to someone who has been raped.
*****
This whole anti-choice issue connects to the issue of "intelligent design" as well. God (for which there exists no empirical evidence) created the Universe and all it contains. It could not be otherwise, because it is impossible that such complexity as Life Itself could have been created by Mere Chance, so we are the result of an "intelligence" far greater than our own.
That "intelligence" is called TIME. Despite Darwin and Einstein and their host of mathematical and theoretical geniuses, we humans are but tiny dots in the lineage of Life. We are incapable of understanding the real meaning of the Evolution of Life because Time is so long, and we are so short.
Each of us exists as a self-reported CONSCIOUSNESS, a Sentience within the scope of the Universe, while we ask ourselves, "Is there other Intelligent Life OUT THERE?"
We are basically idiots.
All is vanity, most esp. the push to reproduce ourselves in our own deranged image, which we then transfer to the nonexistent God.
Several issues remain unsolved. Among the most important is the tendency of our Life on Earth to "evolve" into more and more complex forms, of which we tend to place ourselves at the top.
Our Science says these days that the Universe is about 13.7 billion years old, that Earth is roughly 4 billion years old, and that life on earth is much younger.
Cosmologists have spent billions of hours devising explanations for the Red Shift, which tells us that the Universe began as The Big Bang, the Start of Time, when all the possibilities of Space and Time existed as a "Singularity."
There exists so much debate in Cosmology on this issue---for example, Dark Energy, the "steady-state" Universe, "string theory," etc., that we might as well be talking about God!
What it comes down to is that we are really stupid hominids who stumbled on the ability to write, and to pass down knowledge from one generation to the next.
There need be no God to explain our existence. The unique conditions of Life on Earth and the Evolution of DNA are sufficient.
After all, how could Life have Evolved without Volition?
The answer lies in the chemistry of life, which must be reinterpreted if our species---let alone Life itself---is to survive.
*****
As for abortion, I support it. We are already so overpopulated that we are killing each other while allegedly sentient adults.
How can anyone in their right mind "believe" in something for which they have no evidence? The concomitant here is the experience of something you have never experienced before, like an Electro-Magnetic Pulse that most people think was"just" lightning. Your brain registers nothing until it has recognized the same pattern at least twice.
Any further questions? Ask Ben Franklin... Or Tesla!
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