Abortion rights battle

Thought-provoking post over at Hullabaloo:

These people [pro-lifers] get a lot of credit for being honest, good hearted citizens motivated out of moral compulsion. But very often they are conniving liars who go to great lengths to hide their real agenda. They are not honest brokers who are willing to hash out a compromise. They insist that women not be allowed to have abortions, period, and all that babble is designed to get them to that end, no matter what.

Pro-choice advocates don't care if there is never another abortion as long as it is what individual women choose for themselves. The pro-choice movement never says that women must have abortions, use birth control or otherwise do anything they don't choose to do with their own bodies, including having as many children as their bodies can bear if that's what they want to do. The "pro-life" movement, on the other hand, uses slick public relations techniques to further their agenda of forcing women to give birth against their will. And then they turn around and say that the pro-choice people are absolutists. It's maddening.

And I'm getting very, very tired of hearing Democrats repeat this crap. From Clinton to Obama and everywhere in between, this issue has been used as a bargaining chip, only to have the other side move the goalposts each time and and continue to demagogue them as advocates of immoral baby killing. (For all his trouble, Obama is routinely referred to as an advocate of "infanticide" among these people.) I'm sorry that people disagree on this. I wish we didn't. But the ball is in the court of the anti-choicers. They refuse to accept the compromise that has been written into law stating that abortions can't be easily obtained after the first trimester and more recently can't be obtained at all after the second. That's a compromise and a very real and serious one. And it's not enough. In fact, nothing will be enough until abortion is outlawed.And then they will begin the war on condoms in earnest. In fact, they've already started.

Sadly, I won't be surprised in the years to come to see the Democratic party offer up abortion rights as a "compromise" so that women might keep their right to birth control. That's where this is headed. They take pride in making such chump deals, pretending like they are profiles in courage. (I say pretending because for the most part they know exactly what they are doing --- in this case, they clearly want to get this *icky* issue off the table if they can. I see no real commitment to it on a philosophical basis except among a few elected women who are far outnumbered --- oh, and the American people.)