Latest on abortion

I really liked what Digby over at Hullabaloo said about outreach efforts on the part of the new Focus on the Family president, Jim Daly:

Women always have and always will have abortions. And even if birth control is offered as part of the school lunch program and free at the DMV, many will still get pregnant and go through whatever they need to do to get them. It's the nature of human sexuality that there will be more pregnancies, regardless of birth control, than women who are in a position to carry them to term. Access to birth control is essential, as pro-choice people have proselytizing for decades. But it will never completely eradicate the need for abortion. Indeed, there is some evidence that free access won't even result in a major reduction in abortion --- after all, birth control doesn't always work and the urge to have sex seems to be more powerful than reason at least some of the time. (Surprise!) So unless you consider bearing children a just punishment for "irresponsibility," you should reconsider this notion that once birth control is made more accessible then we can all agree that abortion can be banned --- which is the implicit deal in "common ground" politics. The only thing that will happen is that abortion will go back underground, although if you consider it a matter of personal responsibility alone, you will probably think the women who die from illegal abortions deserve it.


Pregnancy and childbirth is far more than just a nine month "inconvenience" or a temporary health complication, regardless of whether one raises the child. It affects one's entire lifetime. Control of one's reproduction is fundamental to liberty, which is one reason why women have historically been second class citizens whose lives have been circumscribed by biology. That is what Focus on the Family believes in, that's what the conservative zealots in congress are trying to do and that is what the Democrats who continue to enable this assault on women's rights are letting them do.