The Right to Choose: The Barn Door has Closed
January 24, 2006
Predictably, CNN predicts “smooth sailing” for Alito past the judiciary committee. Despite all his talk about the right to privacy, committee chairman Arlen Specter (R-PA) will vote to recommend the nominee to the floor.
The Democrats are still trying to fight this nomination. And I do genuinely feel a little flutter of hope in my heart every time someone says something like “we may have enough votes for a filibuster.” But while it’s hard to admit, it’s pretty much a given that Alito is going to get through. Like I say, we lost this battle in 2004 when young people didn’t turn out in any kind of significant numbers to protect our rights, and now we’re going to pay the price.
I read a great Op Ed by William Saletan in the Sunday New York Times about how everyone on all sides of this debate can support the idea of fewer abortions.
We in the pro-choice movement need to take our eyes off the Supreme Court and start reframing the message about why we support a woman’s right to choose from “it’s a privacy thing” to “the government should give women every opportunity to prevent unwanted pregnancies via free unfettered access to birth control, and trust that they’re going to make good decisions.”
That’s going to save more babies than overturning Roe ever will. Too bad we’ve been getting it wrong all these years.
You may be right about the future of the pro-choice position. This is just such an emotionally fraught issue though that I fear that the only way that position will be considered is if Roe vs. Wade is overturned.
I fear that you’re right. And the truth is that my generation ought to be collectively ashamed of ourselves for our apathy towards this issue.
But we do need to reframe the debate. The government needs to trust women to be adults and make adult decisions about what to do, and what not to do with our bodies. The only thing government can really do to prevent abortion is make birth control easier to access.
yup yup yup. i have not kept up with the alito thing at all, but i would have to agree that there would be less need of abortion services if we increased use of b.c. methods. of course this starts with education, so we should definitely be throwing this stupid abstinence-only education out the window. i mean, include abstinence in the sex-ed course, but not only teach abstinence. you know what i’m saying. i just keep thinking about those dongs that were at pamone trying to tell you that your b.c. pill was killing babies. it would be funny if it weren’t true. ok, it’s still funny, because those people are stupid. and stupid people are fun to laugh at. plus, they’re probably so ignorant about their reproductive system that they’ll just end up having ass sex trying to get preggers and then never have any babies. us: 1 them: 0