While discussing where the United States stands in terms of infant mortality Sungold of Kittywampus says
I know this has been said before, but it obviously needs to be said again: Before we start conferring legal personhood on zygotes, how ‘bout we pour some resources into at least catching up with Cuba on infant mortality? We all ought to be able to agree on that as a goal – apart from those folks who care about constraining women’s sexuality more than saving babies.
Excellent illustration of the difference between pro-life and “pro-life” (a.k.a. anti-abortion, period) priorities. It’s not that there can’t be both. Nor that there aren’t people who are both. It’s also clear, however, that those who are both have had no, zero, none impact in terms of policy, effort, interest, or even visibility.
In case anyone on that side wonders why most of the rest of us find their rhetoric so unimpressive they might take a look at those numbers. For reasons too numerous to mention we’ll always need choice to be human, but it seems like…
I dunno…
If you really were pro-life and not merely anti-abortion then don’t you think one great way to reduce the rate of unplanned, unwanted pregnancies would be not just to work with pro-choice people to make it easier not to get pregnant when you didn’t want to but also to make the choice to remain pregnant not just easier but also less dangerous, stigmatizing, infantilizing, economically difficult, medically riskier. As opposed to the current “pro-life” position that the risk of pain, disability, or death, the stigma, the cost to health and career, the tragedy of infants or children suffer or dying without sufficient health care are all features of “the wages of sin” instead of bugs in the social fabric wherein all children grow up to be everyone else’s peers or else everyone else’s burden.
That we hear none of that from the “pro-life” side speaks volumes.
See also: – Teen Moms Displeased At Double Standard Glorifying Bristol Palin and Jamie Lynn Spears. “It’s ok if one of our children does it” is not evidence of moral consistency sufficient to sustain the mainstream anti-choice position.
Submitted by 2468 (not verified) on Mon, 2008-10-27 02:53.
Perhaps they're not even so much anti-abortion (though I'm sure many or even most are that as well) as they are anti-consequence-free-sex? After all, some of the far right's morality is a hard sell to the general public these days unless there are obvious consequences for the unbelievers.
[The more one looks at the stereotypes that seem to outrage them most, and at their "well, she's a *good* girl with her whole life ahead of her" counterexamples, yeah, I think a lot of it has to do with a "wages of sin" attitude. Which, by the way, is a *really bad* way to think about children! My old social-theory professor called it "abandonment of posterity." Children grow up to become our peers, shouldering a portion of responsibility for the burdens of the world, or else adding to them. #%~$~@#. Thanks, Nightfall. --fl]
Submitted by 2468 (not verified) on Mon, 2008-10-27 10:23.
It has always boggled my mind that the pro-lifers were also against sex ed. Wha??? Like the protester I talked to (gee, that sounds so much nicer than what actually happened) who made absolutely no sense when going on about my daughter needing to see pictures of dead babies so that she wouldn't get an abortion some day. He tossed in something about her learning how to roll condoms on a cucumber in school and totally threw me. Not the cucumber part, but the realization that he was also opposed to girls learning how to protect themselves from pregnancy. You can't have it both ways.
When I was in school, they used bananas, by the way.
[Bananas, huh? Cool. At least in school we just got old newsreels with black and white photos of syphilis sores. (My *church* on the other hand had an early, excellent, year-long comprehensive sex-ed class for 9th graders. But still, as far as I can remember, no hands-on condom demonstrations with fruit, vegetables, or anything else.) And actually I think Nightfall's probably right that their attitude is weird if and only if you believe they aren't just trying to punish women for Teh Sex. Otherwise it's visciously unjust but perfectly consistent. Thanks, Biscuit. --fl]