One of the things that Richard Mourdock's remarks, and the subsequent rallying-around by pretty much the entire GOP including Mitt Romney, is that the GOP's position on abortion and contraception is all of a piece, and essentially the entire party supports it.
At the heart of it is fetal personhood, the notion that when the sperm cell bonks into the egg cell, voila! - instant person, whose moral worth is to be reckoned on a par with yours or mine.
That's why they regard their stand against abortion even in the case of rape and incest as principled - if that fertilized egg is a person, just like you and me, then of course its manner of having been brought into the world is irrelevant. The only thing that could possibly justify risking the life of this person is if the life of the woman carrying it is in danger, and even then there's little reason to favor the life of the woman over the life of the person inside her. (Bet that makes every woman reading this feel all tingly - that if it comes down to her life, or the life of the person inside her, we ought to just flip a coin over it. Swell.)
And of course, if the newly fertilized egg is a person, just like you and me, then any form of birth control that might work, even some of the time, by keeping this person from implanting in the uterine wall, thus ending that person's life - well, that form of birth control must be banned.
There's a reason why the GOP lined up behind the Catholic bishops on the inclusion of contraceptive access in ObamaCare: this is their position too, not for whatever reasons Pope Paul VI found to argue against contraception back in the 1960s, but because they have concluded that it's abortion under another name.
Now this is obviously a ridiculous position, and it's obviously a theological position. They can do in vitro fertilization in a petri dish - so is that a person, just like you and me, in that petri dish? Of course not - and you'd have to be the sort of person that would put theory and theology over the evidence of your lying eyes and your functioning brain (a thing the newly fertilized egg doesn't have, incidentally - you and I would stop being persons if our brans were to suddenly be removed, but apparently the fertilized egg can be a person without a brain, kind of like Republicans) to believe that it was.
But that's the position of the GOP. And despite his occasional talk of rape-and-incest exceptions (scary how that's now the 'moderate' position), the positions Mitt has taken across the board have largely been consistent with his party's overall position.
So in a week and a half, one thing we're voting on is not only whether a woman's right to choose will be preserved, but also whether access to birth control pills and other hormonal contraceptives will be preserved, and with it, a woman's autonomy, a woman's right to control her own destiny. The Democratic Party is enthusiastically in favor of this; the GOP is increasingly dead set against it all.
If that were the only difference between the two parties, this would be a high-stakes election.
It's not, of course. And maybe SC and I can take turns illustrating the high stakes across the board in this election: I suspect SC may be finding that it's hard to wrap it all into a single post. So I thought I'd take on one issue, and we can take it from there.
And it goes without saying that if the Republicans win, Federal funding for Planned Parenthood is gone. Better that poor women just have a lot of kids, so the wingnuts can rail at them for having sex, and then refuse to give mothers more food stamps if they have more kids.
They sure care a lot about kids being born once they're conceived, but after that, they're just another symptom of our evil system of dependency that must be disincentivized, regardless of the consequences to the actual kids, who apparently must be made to pay for their parents' sins.
(Oddly enough, that flies directly in the face of a very specific teaching of Jesus, but that doesn't stop even the religiously-motivated wingnuts.)
Posted by: low-tech cyclist | October 27, 2012 at 10:14 AM
it has just gotten worse and worse; more and more outrageous.
i think that to a large extent, the aggressiveness of the campaigns to remove women from positions of control over their own bodies and own families (and own lives) is wrapped up in a larger disdain for women. if one hears "feminazi" a few dozen times a day for months and years, one might start believing such a thing exists -- and that is dangerous to manhood (and by extension, the church, the flag, and so on).
in a similar fashion, a majority of americans express racist sentiments . a good number may not be conscious of prejudice -- but the open race-baiting of the last few years has not exactly moved us toward more tolerance.
Posted by: kathy a. | October 27, 2012 at 05:22 PM
At times like these, I'm glad my daughters have dual citizenship. The thought of Republican leadership again makes me physically ill.
Posted by: Eric Wilde | October 27, 2012 at 07:58 PM
Melissa Harris-Perry's open letter to Mourdock.
It's this I had in mind when I made a comment in the previous thread about the violence of rape. This bizarre discussion from the right has reminded me of powerful memories I'd not thought about in a while. As the then 'den mother' and house administrator of a professional dance company, I am taken back to the violent rape of one of 'my' dancers. I rather imagine that as focused, young and quiet as she was that she was without any sexual experience. We were about six or seven days shy of the final performance of the year. Somehow, this woman, who had been stalked, then terrorized in her own third floor apartment, to which the rapist had arrived in a pick-up truck with an extension ladder, went on stage the following weekend. She was on stage alone a good amount of the time. How she did this I will never know, but she prevailed.
We owe victims far more acknowledgement of their pain than the Right currently seems capable of assembling. All of that is so shameful. I think it's a stain the right will own for a long time.
Posted by: nancy | October 27, 2012 at 08:40 PM
yes, nancy. people who think like mourdock do not, at a fundamental level, believe women to be human. women are either owned (by fathers or by husbands), or they are sluts -- and, possibly mostly, they [we] are hypotheticals. caricatures. vessels. the violence and threats only really matter if they are made against another man's property; it is the property crime, and not the woman herself, that matters to them.
your dancer showed great courage, going ahead anyway. i hope and expect that she felt the support of you and those who cared for her. and she did prevail.
you reminded me of something i had forgotten, about a high school student i tutored one summer after she flunked a class. the teacher thought she was stupid, lazy, and boy-crazy, or something. it turned out that the student had been gang-raped in a rest room at another school, and the message she got was basically that she was a slut who invited it. wtf? she was a very bright student; she only needed to know that she mattered, that it wasn't her fault AT ALL, and then she could do the work just fine.
that summer was over 35 years ago. it makes me furious to know that dinos still roam the earth, stomping around and proclaiming their dominance. and even worse, that anyone is listening.
eric -- you are not off the hook with your daughters' dual citizenship. you are one of the good guys; work your stuff at home.
Posted by: kathy a. | October 27, 2012 at 10:02 PM
GOP rape advisory chart.
Posted by: kathy a. | October 27, 2012 at 11:29 PM
kathy a. -- Two heartbreaking details from my dancer's experience. She was three-thousand miles away from home, alone for the first time at age 22, hoping to pursue her dance dream after school at Mt. Holyoke. And her third floor window was cracked because she'd adopted a kitten and wanted it to be able to access the roof while she was at work at the studio. It was spring.
By fall, the police had arrested the serial rapist through identifying his MO and physical description which was unique and incontrovertible. She'd been gone for the summer and had returned to town. I had to debate with myself whether to tell her of the arrest. That was a difficult moment. I told her. I never knew whether that was the best thing to do. But I did. I hoped it would reassure her, but then again, how could anything have? Her world had changed forever.
lt-c. High stakes?. Yes indeed. And too many people, even young women, have no memory of what used to be common in this regard.
Posted by: nancy | October 28, 2012 at 12:19 AM
Just for the record, the Catholic Church is also against in vitro fertilization believing that it frequently involves the “deliberate destruction” or freezing of embryos, which is against the Church’s respect for human life. Furthermore, it separates procreation from the conjugal act.
As a lapsed Catholic (in no small part because of the church's nefarious meddling in secular politics), this is a position I think is immoral. It's just cruel to not support an infertile couple's desire to have a child.
Posted by: jeanne marie | October 28, 2012 at 02:52 PM
jeanne marie - there was a time when, although I disagreed with the Roman Catholic Church's positions on and relating to abortion, I had a certain respect for them, because the Church was (or at least appeared to be) pro-life across the board, not just until birth.
Lately they still mouth the same words about social and economic justice, but it's clearly not of any importance to the hierarchy; they're not going to put any weight behind their beliefs there.
Not to mention that it's hard to take seriously the moral stances of any organization that hasn't done a thing to penalize all those archbishops and cardinals who covered the tracks of molesting priests so that they could victimize more children. They're a church and a criminal conspiracy.
Posted by: low-tech cyclist | October 28, 2012 at 03:21 PM
The Catholic Church has lost all credibility with me because of the way they have re-victimized their parishioners who have come forward with their abuse stories. They have made it clear that they are far more concerned about the money they are losing in lawsuits then they are about their flock, or about maintaining integrity as an organization. As for them going around telling the rest of us how to live, my response is to remind them of the Gospel verse about removing the plank from one's own eye before taking the mote out of anothers. They don't get to lecture the rest of us when they've done so little to address the harm that they've done.
Posted by: beckya57 | October 28, 2012 at 03:55 PM
Lesley Gore's You Don't Own Me PSA! Awesome get out the vote message. (but, ick, stay out the comments)
As for the Catholic Church . . . it's heartbreaking for me. This is my heritage, these are my people. And I miss my small multi-cultural/racial/generational inner city parish.
But I am ashamed to be associated with the RC Church. So me and my family are "gone, gone, gone".
Posted by: jeanne marie | October 28, 2012 at 08:16 PM
JM---If you liked You Don't Own Me, do what you can to make Nov 6 Take A Woman To Vote Day. See http://bit.ly/RYu5Kd
Posted by: paula | October 28, 2012 at 09:04 PM
JM, that's great!
Posted by: kathy a. | October 28, 2012 at 11:27 PM
jm --Husband is a devotional Catholic, former-altar-boy son is lapsed for now, and I'm catholic, small c, mostly unchurched. I think, given the association of the more extreme elements of Catholicism with the crazy-angry-then-more-crazy right, it has become hard to remember all of the other divisions and efforts within Catholicism which minister to the poor, promote justice and try to live in kindness to those within and without the Church. Falling short, but working another day. Then another.
My spouse teaches at a Jesuit university where a number of faculty would agree that while their credentials might have taken them to more academically 'notable' environs, they feel that its institutional framework is one of decency and respect, where teaching, not 'publish or perish', is the order of the day. That's what attracted and retained them. That was and remains essential to its mission.
In other words, Catholicism is a big messy project -- like many others. The Dolan loudmouths love centerstage too much. Opus Dei is what? A misogynistic secret society cult? Sisters of Providence are busy running hospitals and providing charity care. Soup kitchens in my city are staffed with Catholic volunteers who have probably not been to confession in years. I have friends who have 'left' the Church in body but not in spirit or deed. The local parish snapshot is a wonderfully ragtag picture in a lot of places. (Garrison Keillor's description of Minnesota Catholics at Mass in their 'car coats' still makes me laugh.)
If I had a magic wand, I'd wave it and overnight remove tax-exempt status from all religious institutions engaging, as you note, in nefarious meddling in secular politics. The Catholic Church hierarchy ought to be silent on those matters and be deeply, profoundly and humbly penitent about more important others. Institution cleanse. "Gone, gone, gone" is understandable though.
Posted by: nancy | October 29, 2012 at 01:21 AM