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Scott Lemieux of TAPPED is logically correct but, I think, tactically mistaken for dismissing pro-choice efforts to look for “common ground” with anti-abortion conservatives.

To follow up on Monica’s post about Dana Goldstein’s terrific article about the coming battle over contraception, it’s also important to emphasize what Republican opposition to contraception reveals about cultural conservatism.

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The problem with this line of reasoning is that it ignores the broader set of assumptions about women and sexuality on which actual opposition to abortion is based. Consider anti-choice Republicans, who consistently opposed expanding contraceptive use: Given the choice between reducing abortion rates and controlling female sexuality, they will always choose the latter. Thus the idea that contraception can be a means of achieving a ceasefire in the culture wars has always been a fantasy. Liberals and conservatives aren’t just divided by abortion but by broader questions of female equality and sexual freedom.

He said it here.

I agree strongly that there’s a hard core of social conservatives who just flat-out hate the idea of women having sex (or possibly instead hate the idea of men having sex with women) and “getting away with it.”

And for those people abortion is virtually a red herring, relevant only to the extent that abortion, like contraception, amounts to a get out of jail card on the “wages of sin.”

Fine. You’ll never reach compromise with those people.

The trick, though, is that the hard core hides behind a heck of a lot of people who are squishy on abortion, sometimes really squishy, but 100% fine with contraception.

Those people you can find common ground with. And for logical and tactical reasons it’s extremely important to do so.

The point of engaging in “common ground” rhetoric isn’t about getting to compromise with the acid right. It’s to flush them out, to drive a wedge, to starkly separate them from their nominal allies in the squishy middle.

Maybe 20 years ago someone from Operation Rescue very bluntly said it was their policy to oppose initiatives that only reduced abortions because, in his opinion, unless abortions continued in big, big numbers the majority of opponents would lose interest in the issue.

“Common ground” solutions like contraception availability amounts to calling their bluff.

Would it be great if the majority of people were willing to back abortion rights 100%? Oh yeah, definitely. But the bad guys wish the majority were as enthusiastic about letting women die of preventable pregnancy-related complications. Since neither side seems likely to get such support, it becomes a question of who can provide intermediate solutions that are most appealing to the majority in the middle.

I happen to think the most appealing intermediate, a.k.a. “middle ground” solution is pressing hard on contraception. First of all because all but the fanatics are comfortable with it, and second because while nearly all the squishy middle are squishy about the boogeyman of “abortion on demand” they’re actually extraordinarily tolerant of abortion as a backup when contraception fails. That’s exactly Terry Randall and the American Bishop’s worst nightmare and… I just can’t see any reason why we shouldn’t give it to them.

So. Bottom line: you can’t compromise with fanatics, but by appearing reasonable (heck, by being reasonable!) you can peel off millions and millions of their nominal supporters.

I say go for it.

Jessi Fischer of The Sexademic, who’s just received her masters degree in sexuality from San Francisco State University says

This blog has seen its fair share of feminist bashers, quoting Valerie Solanas and Andrea Dworkin as if they represent a synthesized doctrine of Feminism. But those fools have it all wrong. In all the gender studies and women’s studies courses I took I never once read those women.

You want classic feminist theorists? Try Mary Wollenstonecraft. Try Virginia Woolf. Try Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Try Sojourner Truth. Try Simone de Beauvoir. Fuck, how about John Stuart Mill, Frederick Douglass or Henrick Ibsen? How about our modern feminists like Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem or Susan Faludi?

Feminism is not about man-bashing, porn-censure or making sure every woman works outside the home.

Feminism is about choice.

And because we are individuals with vastly differing opinions, feminist theorists contradict each other and argue with each other. There is no unifying feminist doctrine except choice.

She said it here.

That sounds about right. There are a lot of ideas about what feminism is all about. And even more ideas about how best to express feminism. And yeah, some of them can be as bitterly and sometimes even violently in conflict as any other broad social and political philosophies as broad as Christology to as (seemingly) obscure as taxonomy.

The other major element in her post is a pean to condoms, which she introduces with…

I know what you’re thinking. Condoms? Yes. My contraceptive method of choice allowed me to take control of reproduction and, consequently, my life.

I try to imagine worlds where sex with a man often leads to pregnancy. Or worlds without protection against STIs. The freedom to learn and develop my mind could be hindered by childrearing or health complications.

If you had a very narrow or, particularly, a very conservative notion of feminism (where “conservative” refers both to the right-wing conservatism of, say, Nikki Haley or the separatist conservatism of Mary Daly) you’d might raise an eyebrow, at least, at the idea of sex with men, let alone sex with men using the iconically “male” condom as contraception. Eh. Maybe so. Some schools of feminism really do balk at the idea of contraception (Haley) or men (Daly) let alone using contraception while having sex with men. But just as it would be a mistake to confuse their thin-ice edges with the more-literally-central ideas it would be an even bigger one to pick either one of those arguably doctrinally choice-limiting extreme cases and decide it represented the whole.

Summary: The way “reducing abortions” is almost always framed distracts us from the more legitimate, and legitimately pro-choice issue of reducing the number of unplanned, unwanted pregnancies. Here’s what we should be doing instead. And why. And why.

Silvana Naguib, who’s now blogging at TAPPED says…

Ever since President Bill Clinton introduced his succinct position on abortion: “safe, legal, and rare,” the goal of reducing the number of abortions has been a stated aim of abortion rights as well as anti-abortion groups. Last year, then-presidential candidate Barack Obama promised the pope that he would make efforts to reduce the number of abortions in the United States.

But should decreasing abortion rates be a stated goal of the reproductive-justice movement? Aimée Thorne-Thomsen says no. She makes the case that we should instead focus on increasing all options for women, expanding their liberty to make the right choice for them.

She said it here.

I say no too, for basically the same reasons. Framing the issue in terms of numbers of abortions avoided is going about it completely backwards.

Back before Roe was handed down our argument was that abortion was necessary as a fallback for contraceptive failure and/or failure of personal autonomy and/or failure to use contraception due to lack of education, access, affordability, safety, or usability of contraception.

And the reason we framed it that way back then is that we knew that even when it became legal, is that abortion is more expensive, more time-consuming, more uncomfortable, and medically more risky than any other method of avoiding unplanned, unwanted pregnancies.

Point being that making abortion “rare” should only be a highly-desirable outcome of making unwanted, unplanned pregancies rare.

And the obvious way to get there has no, zero, none relationship to restrictions on abortion. Instead it has everything to do with making a variety of contraception options safe, legal, available, reliable, usable, and affordable for women and men. It has everything to do with comprehensive sex education that includes not just “birds and bees” biology, anatomy, and technique but also appropriate modeling of negotiation and respect for decision-makers not just regarding sex but regarding relationships as well. Heck, for extra credit you can even toss abstinence advocacy on top of all that.

And the result of those policies (ok, except maybe the abstinence part) really would make abortion rare. But as a result, not a goal.

Of course no matter how well all of the above might work there will still always be a need for the fundamental right to fall back on abortion. So no matter how rare it becomes abortion will always need to be safe and legal and there.

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Can I just add one more thing about reframing the question away from abortion (where secular and lay opponents work hard to keep it) and towards preventing unplanned, unwanted pregnancy (where they really, really don’t want to go?)

When the issue is framed in terms of abortion then an increase in the raw numbers is considered a “failure” and a decrease is considered “success.” That’s great for Popes and the rest of the nopes, so you can see why they love that way of looking at it.

If instead you start looking at it in terms of education, autonomy, and in terms of safe, affordable, available, useable, and reliable birth control then an increase in the number of unplanned, unwanted pregnancies becomes the point of failure and a corresponding decrease becomes success. And an increase or decrease in abortion becomes a sideshow.

Popes and other nopes prefer to keep the focus on abortion rather than unplanned, unwanted pregnancies because with the former they can pretend they’re part of the solution. With the latter there’s no way they can pretend they’re not part of the problem.

I almost never get it together to participate in really important “meme” days of remembrance, or even days of celebration, on the actual designated day.

If I hadn’t stumbled across it at Scarleteen I’d have missed remembering today is Blog for Choice Day. And by the time I’d figured it out (sometime over the weekend) I’d feel dumb for having missed it and not say anything at all.

Most years I’d just say “every day ought to be blog for choice day anyway” and be done with it. This year, though, the new Republican-activist majority on the Supreme Court has handed down it’s… fascinating decision that, say, the entire Walmart Corporation has the same just-folks right to pay as much as it wants immediately before an election as any supporter of a small-town zoning-board candidate. Which suggests they might as easily next use identical logic rule that abortion restrictions are just as they infringe on pregnant men’s rights no less than pregnant women’s.

In these days of disappointment it’s so tempting to think of just staying home next time there’s an election… as, for instance, millions chose to stay home in 2000, 2004 when it might have made a difference who replaced Justices Reinquest and O’Connor.

It’s your choice to do so again in 2010.

Enjoy it while you can.

Happy Blog for Choice day.