Slate: Abortion Is Great
by Dr. Susan Berry 16 Oct 2014, 9:59 AM PDT
A reviewer of a new book about reclaiming abortion rights from the pro-life community says
abortion is not only “no big deal,” but actually a social good of which the
pro-abortion crowd should be proud.
Writing at Slate,
Hanna Rosin is beside herself that feminist Katha Pollitt felt the need to
write her new book, Pro: Reclaiming Abortion
Rights. Pollitt’s book is described as “a powerful argument for
abortion as a moral right and social good.”
“We shouldn’t need a book explaining why abortion rights are
important,” writes Rosin. “We should be over that by now.”
Rosin bemoans Pollitt’s premise that not everyone is
celebrating the greatness of abortion because of the efforts of “a small
minority of pro-life activists.”
“Only 7 to 20 percent of Americans tell pollsters they want
to totally ban abortion, but that loud minority has beaten the rest of us into
submission with their fetus posters and their absolutism and their infiltration
of American politics,” Rosin complains.
She observes that Pollitt uses the word “awfulization” to
describe what has happened to abortion and its fans who are now “falling all
over themselves” instead of rejoicing at the “social good” that is the killing
of unborn children.
Noting that Pollitt’s aim is to get to the “muddled middle,”
or what might be termed the low-information, pro-abortion crowd, Rosin says
these individuals have been “infected by the awfulization without thinking
about it that much.”
“[W]hile the fight over abortion has been going on for more
than 40 years, we’ve forgotten what’s at stake,” writes Rosin. “The left
especially has lost sight of its original animating purpose.”
Rosin takes the left to task for getting “defensive” about
abortion, even to the point of portraying Planned Parenthood – the abortion
industry giant – as performing mostly “preventive” care. Fellow pro-abortionists
are rebuked by Rosin, speaking for Pollitt, for slogans like “Safe, legal and
rare,” which “have left the pro-choice side advocating the neurotic position
that you can have an abortion but only if you feel ‘really really bad about
it.’”
“This is not the right time for me” should be reason enough
for an abortion, says Pollitt, according to Rosin. Apologies for having an
abortion should be verboten.
Rosin observes Pollitt’s skillful way of querying why women
should accept a life of “dimmed hope” because of a single sexual encounter
when, according to them, no one expects men to do the same.
Similarly, she explains Pollitt’s dissection of what she
calls “the pro-life side’s contradictions,” particularly the notion that some
pro-life people like to say it is fine to abort a baby to save the life of the
mother.
“If you really think about it, this position is untenable,”
says Rosin, explaining Pollitt’s point. “No one would say it was fine to kill a
toddler if the mother needed its heart.”
“The pro-life position, she [Pollitt] concludes, involves a
reflexive moralism,” Rosin writes, “but doesn’t really reflect what people know
to be true, which is that the fetus and the mother have a complicated
relationship, unlike any other.”
Rosin is fine with Pollitt’s dismissal of conservatives,
pastors, and priests as “patriarchal or women-hating,” but admits this approach
doesn’t go far enough.
“Her book would be more convincing, and also strategically
smarter, if she actually examined what’s happening on their turf,” she offers,
and reasons that as more people have become pro-life, the number of single
mothers has risen, leaving what she views, ironically, as a positive
relationship between higher abortion rates and the number of couples in traditional
marriages.
Rosin states her greatest concern is poor women who “drift
into parenthood without thinking about it that much,” and supports accessible
birth control that also includes abortion.
“The pro-choice side should be able to say that a poor or working-class
woman getting an abortion is making a wise choice for her future,” she says.
“That way, the left would own not only gender and income equality, but also a
new era of family values,” juxtaposed with “the pro-life side’s very weak
response to the proliferation of young, struggling single mothers.”
Reflecting on her own abortion, in between her other
children whom she allowed to be born, Rosin said, “The aborted fetus hung
around as a concept, nothing at all like the living children I already had.”
“Having an abortion left me with a sense of what a great
power it is to be able to give life, but also a sense that I can trust myself
to use it carefully,” she concludes.
Slate
The
Root is a division of Slate Group.
Note: Coca-Cola
Company is a founding sponsor for The
Root.
Richard
M. Daley is a director at the Coca-Cola
Company, and a member of the Commercial
Club of Chicago.
James S.
Crown is a member of the Commercial Club of Chicago, and a trustee
at the Aspen Institute (think tank).
Lester Crown
is a member of the Commercial Club of Chicago, and was a lifetime
trustee at the Aspen Institute (think tank).
Cyrus F.
Freidheim Jr. is a member of the Commercial
Club of Chicago, and an honorary trustee at the Brookings Institution (think tank).
Foundation
to Promote Open Society was a funder for the Aspen Institute (think
tank), the Brookings Institution (think
tank), and the New America
Foundation.
George Soros
was the chairman for the Foundation to Promote Open Society, and is the founder
& chairman for the Open Society Foundations.
Open
Society Foundations was a funder for the American Constitution Society, and the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
Henry Louis Gates
Jr. is a trustee at the Aspen Institute (think tank), the
editor-in-chief & founder for The
Root, and was an honorary trustee at the Brookings Institution (think tank).
The Root is a
division of Slate Group.
Slate
is a division of Slate Group.
Strobe
Talbott is the president of the Brookings
Institution (think tank), and was an editor for Time magazine.
John Dickerson
was a correspondent for Time magazine,
and is the chief political correspondent for the Slate.
Michael Kinsley
was a correspondent for Time magazine,
and a founding editor for Slate.
Atul A. Gawande
was a medical columnist for Slate,
and is a director at the New America
Foundation.
Clifford M. Sloan
was a publisher for Slate, and is a
director at the American Constitution
Society.
Barbra
Streisand Foundation was a funder for the American Constitution Society, and the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
Barbra Streisand
is the founder of the Barbra Streisand
Foundation, and a William Morris
Endeavor Entertainment client.
Ari
Emanuel is the co-CEO & director for William Morris Endeavor Entertainment, and Rahm I. Emanuel’s brother.
Rahm
I. Emanuel is Ari Emanuel’s
brother, a member of the Commercial Club
of Chicago, the Chicago (IL) mayor,
and was the White House chief of staff for the Barack Obama administration.
Richard
M. Daley is a member of the Commercial
Club of Chicago, a director at the Coca-Cola
Company, and was the Chicago (IL) mayor.
Coca-Cola
Company is a founding sponsor for The
Root.
The
Root is a division of Slate Group.
No comments:
Post a Comment