Women's Choice: Safe And Legal. Period.

The largest part of my life has been devoted and is still being devoted to finding points of contact rather than difference.

 - MK Gandhi

As Ericka observes, I have in the past argued for a policy formulation that makes abortion "safe, legal and rare."  The disagreement I had with her and our dear friend Hecate has been about the last word.

I always considered my position rather philosophically and pragmatically, holding that we should address this politically as a simple health issue.  So treat abortion as a medical procedure that can and should avoided.  If we can achieve our other goals of equitable access to contraception and ensuring overall reproductive freedom, why not frame our pro-choice agenda in such a way where we can get some buy-in from the other side of the aisle?

NARAL was a proponent of this approach, supporting S.20 in 2003, so I figured I was on pretty solid footing.  Certainly there can be honest disagreements on such things amongst friends and allies, and I stood by what I thought for a long time.

Of course I'm part of the patriarchy so it's a bit easy for me to be academic, casual, sanguine about my point of view.  No matter how much I care for and support Ericka, this issue necessarily doesn't directly impact me.  It isn't my body on the line.  It isn't my freedom at stake.

While I appreciated Ericka's and Hecate's points, I didn't really buy into the slippery slope danger--I didn't paternalistically dismiss their concerns, but I wasn't entirely convinced by their arguments.  My perspective has shifted quite a bit, however, since the HCR debate has been wending its way through our society and Congress.

Obviously Stupak has been a big component in my evolution of thought.  Not just the immediate threat to reproductive health, but even more the ancillary dangers I see from so-called moderates, liberals, progressives, etc, who were still fine with a "reform" that threw women under the proverbial bus so long as the bill contained their favored element(s) changed my mind.

My assumption has always been that we could find some modicum of common ground with our opponents--I tried to find points of contact even on such a divisive issue.  Naive, perhaps, but one must remember that politics is the art of the possible and that comes from some manner of compromise.  It also requires a willingness on the other side to have the same honest commitment to working out differences.

So check out the theme from today's Right To Life March:

“Stand Up Now —

Unite for the Life Principles —

No Exception! No Compromise!”

Well...okay then.

We must respond in kind.  We must unite for choice principles, no exceptions, no compromise. 

This is one reason NOW wants to kill the HCR bill, and I wholeheartedly agree.  It's long past time to drawn a line in the sand and fight for real reform that protects all Americans' health.  That includes women's unfettered access to all aspects of reproductive health.  That includes protecting unfettered access to safe and legal abortion.

I no longer care a whit if abortion is rare.  It's none of my fucking business.  That's what "Trust Women" means to me.

ntodd