Pregnant Women Are Human Beings

The usual conservatives are using two recent pieces of legislation in New York and Virginia to scream that the Democrats are supporting infanticide.  Meanwhile, Georgia, Alabama, and other southern states are passing ever more restrictive laws against abortion.  Of course, the actual text of the legislation in New York and Virginia doesn’t support the charge of infanticide.  And much of the anti-choice legislation will certainly be overturned in the courts.  But that is the point; the entire purpose of much of the uproar on the right is to get a case to the Supreme Court that will overturn Roe v. Wade.  And, of course, there’s (always) a presidential election going on.  With so many women seeking the Democratic nomination, the GOP and the right-wing press will certainly use abortion as a weapon against them.

          The issue of abortion is fraught with numerous moral and emotional complexities.  The Supreme Court confronted many of these complexities in Roe v Wade, but the battle rages on.  And the rhetoric of the anti-choice crowd becomes increasingly aggressive:  abortion is a holocaust; women are murdering their babies; our society fails to protect the weakest among us.  And so on.  The potential human being that the pregnant woman carries dominates anti-choice moral discourse to the exclusion of everything else.

          But, of course, there is always another human being involved in abortion—the pregnant woman herself.  And she is not a potential person, but a real one, with a real life already underway.  She has relationships, responsibilities, and aspirations.  Others may well depend on her in a variety of ways—emotional, economical, legal.  And pregnancy is not simply an “inconvenience,” as the right so often characterizes the reasons of women seeking abortions.  Pregnancy is the utter and permanent disruption of this real, ongoing life—not only for the pregnant woman, but also for all those others whose lives are intertwined with hers.  (Indeed, it is an insult to all mothers to claim that forcing a woman to have a child is just an “inconvenience.”)

          To put the point a bit differently, the rhetoric of the right devalues women in a most profound manner.  The real life of a woman counts for nothing against the potential life of the fetus she carries.  And in service to that fetus, she is denied the control of her own body.  Absent control of her own body, she cannot enjoy or exercise any of the rights we normally associate with respect for human dignity.  Really, she is no longer fully human, but merely a vessel for that which may become human.  

          Of course, women will be told that the time to exercise control over their bodies is before they have sex; then they won’t have to worry about getting an abortion (or birth control, for that matter).  Or, in language that perhaps more precisely expresses the sentiment behind this advice, “Don’t be a slut, and you won’t get pregnant.”  This is excellent advice for women who are raped, particularly young women who are raped by older male relatives.  And, of course, refusing sex is an excellent way to strengthen the bonds of marriage.  As usual, women are expected to control the behavior of men and to suffer the consequences of failure.

          It is tragic anytime any woman confronts the possibility that having an abortion is the best choice she can make.  And it certainly behooves society to do what it can to reduce the number of abortions.  But demonizing women who face real threats to their well-being and depriving them of the very foundation of human dignity is not a reasonable policy.  

The GOP Is Decadent and Depraved

Trump has stepped in it eyeball-deep again, jeopardizing our efforts against terrorism by handing out classified intelligence to the Russkies.  The resistance is getting excited again; maybe this will be the straw that broke the camel’s back.  Trump’s advisors and flunkies have leapt into damage-control mode again; actually, they just seem to stay in that mode.  And, apart from a few mild remarks by people like John McCain and Adam Kinzinger, the GOP is trying to ignore the whole business again.

     In all this uproar, there is one thing we can be sure of—this will not be the straw that breaks the back of the Trump administration.  What McConnell says in this Washington Post story makes that very clear:

I think we could do with a little less drama from the White House on a lot of things so we could focus on our agenda, which is deregulations, tax reform, repealing and replacing Obamacare.

There you have it; Trump is just too much of a drama queen, not incompetent or treasonous or mentally disordered.  If Trump would just tone it down a bit, the GOP could get on with looting and pillaging the working and middle classes to benefit their corporate constituents.  

     The GOP has been on a downward spiral of corporate stoogery since the election of Ronald Reagan.  And it has exploited racism (and misogyny and homohysteria and xenophobia and every other form of hatefulness) since Nixon’s southern strategy worked so well.  McConnell exhibited the racism of the GOP when he declared, following the election of Barack Obama, that the entire agenda of the Republican Party was to oppose Obama on all things.  And the GOP leadership’s commitment to corporate stoogery is exhibited by their willingness to tolerate anything Trump does, so long as he remains willing to further their corporatist agenda.

     The GOP isn’t going to do anything about Trump until he does something truly catastrophic, and perhaps not even then.  Eviscerating the EPA doesn’t seem to trouble GOP leadership.  Picking fights with dictators, or cuddling up to them, doesn’t either.  Selling out our allies to Putin is a small matter compared to the money to be made by cooperating with the Russian oil industry.  One is hard-pressed to imagine just what might make GOP leadership do something about the jackass they put in the White House.

     One often hears—from progressives and libertarians and people who are just fed up—that there is really no difference between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party.  There is certainly some truth to this.  Both are captives of the corporate sector.  Both operate on the principle that they know better than you how you should live your life.  Both are corrupt and dishonest.  

     But there are at least two very important differences.  First, the Democratic Party actually has a conception of the public good, inadequate as it may be; the GOP is committed to nothing but serving the wealthy.  Second, the GOP is fueled by hate; it has welcomed in the racists, the woman-haters, the homohysterics, the anti-science crowd—anyone motivated by hatred for someone or something.  The Democrats may be annoyingly prissy and politically correct.  But they are not determined to put anyone back on the plantation, or back in the kitchen, or back in the closet.  These differences are important.

     Meanwhile, as I get ready to post this, the cycle is starting again.  It seems that Comey kept detailed notes on his dealings with Trump.  The resistance is getting excited again….  While we wait for the cycle to repeat itself, perhaps Jackie Gleason has the final word on the matter.

Mitch McConnell Is a Pantywaist

And so is the rest of the GOP.  All it takes is a woman speaking in a voice of opposition (and quoting another woman, no less), and they get all squiggly and weak in the knees, ready to pee their pants in terror.  Mitch McConnell intones that “She was warned,” and the full majesty of Senate tradition is brought to bear.  Women must not be allowed to speak in such critical voices, even though several men said the same thing without incident.

     That the GOP’s high dudgeon about this violation of Senate tradition is just a mask for fear is evident in the lame remarks offered by GOP leadership.  Lindsey Graham says that silencing Warren is “long overdue” because “she is clearly running for the nomination in 2020.”  Egad!  What greater sin?  Indeed, what more common sin, at least amongst Senators?  I guess fear of a female president will continue to be an important theme in US political culture.  

     Orrin Hatch chastises Warren for not thinking how all this will affect Sessions’ wife.  Surely a wife’s concern for her husband is more important than anything a women might have to say about matters best left to men.  I guess women should be nurturing, caregivers, quiet.

     Marco Rubio, confused as always, sees the whole matter as a lesson in how important it is for the Senate to conserve its ability to conduct debates in a “dignified” manner.  And words like Warren’s threaten to turn the Senate into one of those legislatures “around the world where people throw chairs at each other, and punches.”  Especially when spoken by a woman, I guess.  In any case, dignified debate requires that we not tolerate words like Warren’s from people like Warren.

     None of this is terribly surprising.  The GOP under Bush the Second became accustomed to portraying any opposition as disloyal.  And with a vulgar sexist pig in the White House, the misogynist inclinations of the GOP are bound to become more pronounced.  Together, these factors exercise considerable pressure to restrict women’s influence in political culture.

     And this certainly accords well with the aims of fascism.  Portray the opposition as disloyal,  and, most especially, remove women from the political equation.  Women just aren’t up to supporting the kind of robust and manly (i.e., authoritarian and warmongering) society that the fascist envisions.

     This fear of a female voice is pathetic, sort of like a bunch of adolescent boys who are terrified of girls.  I can’t help but think of how Beavis reacts when Butthead plays a video he doesn’t like.