Writing about the despicable Colorado State Senator Schultheis Atrios says,
"Not all pro-lifers, but the movement." Why would this be true? Why would it be necessary to think this in the face of all available evidence?
This puts me in mind of a recent comment thread at Jamelle's place, where I participated in a completely useless, but entertaining, discussion regarding this very issue. Jamelle made the entirely reasonable assertion that anti-choicers simply want to control the sexuality of every woman in the country, to which one commenter took umbrage, saying,
Why yes, that is an oddly specific, tangential reply, something of a specialty for this commenter. For example, this person called me a selfish jerk who is bad in bed and, in the next comment, accused all liberals relying exclusively on ad hominem attacks.
What I can't understand, and what the comment thread failed to resolve, is why anti-choicers feel it necessary to deny that they want to control women's sexuality. If I were anti-choice - that is, if I believed that "abortion stops a beating heart" or "it is a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you can live as you wish," that abortion is murder - then I would absolutely claim a desire to control women's sexuality, their decisions and their bodies. We control murderers, don't we? When we're able to catch a murder in progress, we stop it. We put people who attempt murder in prison, seeking to limit their choices and ability to act on their impulses. We control all sorts of people who do things society has deemed wrong. Sometimes it's a little bit of control, like paying a fine for a speeding ticket, sometimes it's prison and sometimes society, unfortunately, decides that a particular human being is irredeemable - to put it in Christian terms, beyond even the grace of God - and we kill them.
But when it comes to what anti-choicers call the "American Holocaust," they want to act as if controlling women's choices and bodies is the last thing on their minds. It's all about setting women free - free to act in exactly one prescribed way with no deviation allowed whatsoever, I suppose.
Since abortion terminates a pregnancy that resulted from having sex, and since anti-choice rhetoric is full of talk of consequences, responsibility and "she should have made the choice to not have sex," it follows that their desire is fundamentally to make women pay for having the wrong kind of sex. While unmarried women draw the most judgment, the woman's relationship status doesn't really matter. In every single case of abortion, the answer from the anti-choicers is that "she should have made the choice to not have sex." For them pregnancy is the natural, god-ordained result of intercourse, so if a woman doesn't want to become pregnant, then she shouldn't have sex.
Of course, many anti-choicers are also advocates for the idea that women need to be ready for sex at any time as a wifely duty, and there is even a weird church movement that encourages parishioners to have sex every single night for 30 days. I can think of one thing that might put a cramp crimp in those plans, but Evangelicalism is apparently a bit kinkier now than when I was a kid. At this point they're seeking to control the sexuality of both men and women, but of course since it's only women who can get pregnant, this control leads to the greater control of wanting to force her bring whatever pregnancy might occur to term.
Senator Schultheis also shows that it's the anti-choice movement which actually dehumanizes embryos and even infants. To him, as to the "pro-life" movement at large, a child is a consequence, a punishment. Pregnancy is what happens to sluts and/or a wife's duty to God and her husband. If Schultheis really thought of embryos as people, there's no way he would flippantly wish AIDS upon one as a way to teach the slutty slut slut the mother a lesson. The pro-choice movement wants every child to be born into families that want them, that can take care of them. That's why pro-choicers are also fighting for universal health care and living wages, for expanded access to child care and pro-family business practices.
It's the anti-choice crowd that thinks FMLA - with its unpaid leave - is dangerously socialist, who think that men who want paternity leave are sissies and/or French and who think healthcare should be more expensive than it is already. If they, for one damn minute, thought that embryos and infants were actual human beings deserving dignity and care, they'd either admit that they're trying to control women for the sake of the children or they'd quit altogether.
That they feel the need to lie about their motives and goals, and that they can dismiss embryos and infants as "consequences," wishing an incurable disease on them to punish sluts, says everything needed about the true moral status of their movement.
