Posted on 11/24/2003 11:03:49 AM PST by nickcarraway
Womb with a View
Why the feminists can't admit that most women favor the partial-birth abortion ban.
WITH ITS UNERRING EYE for what fails to matter, the Femintern seized on a PR mistake on the part of the White House to ram home a defense of its favorite project: unfettered abortion, any kind, any time. The mistake (duly noted and criticized on many conservative websites) was that the people shown surrounding President Bush as he signed the law banning partial birth abortion were (drum roll and flourish) all men. "Not a Womb in the House," wrote Anna Quindlen in Newsweek, who, with the Boston Globe's Ellen Goodman, whipped up the predictable narrative: This is a sex war, men against women, young women oppressed by old men.
Except that it's not. Out of camera range but very much in the picture were the women lawmakers who supported the ban, the women activists who campaigned for the ban, and the 70 percent of American women who supported the ban--all of them with wombs, like Quindlen and Goodman, and therefore just as entitled to speak for their sex.
Or possibly more so. If the sisters could tear their eyes away from the picture and read words instead, they might discover some interesting things.
ONE is that over the past decade support for abortion has been dropping steadily among old and young people; women and men. A second is that sex does not effect people's views on abortion, except that women are slightly more likely to be pro-life than men. And a third is that, as Will Saletan's "Bearing Right" tells us, the arguments made by Quindlen and Goodman have always been losers outside of selected newsroom and neighborhoods, and that abortion-rights advocates have only been able to prevail among broad swathes of voters when they use the "conservative"/libertarian "hands-off-my-[anything]" language favored by the NRA.
Polls taken over the preceding decade have not brought the sisters good news. Polls taken in 2003 showed those who described themselves as "pro-life" and "pro-choice" for the first time at parity and showed that support for abortion among college students had fallen 10 points in 10 years. Worse, a poll commissioned by a former head of Planned Parenthood showed that 5l percent of all women questioned (a great number of them with wombs, presumably), were opposed to abortion in all circumstances, except those of incest and rape.
As CNN's Bill Schneider explained on the AEI website, "Only 30 percent of women endorsed the view that 'abortion should be generally available to those who want it,' down from 34 percent two years earlier." Thirty-four percent thought it should be "against the law except in cases of rape, incest, and to save the life of the mother," while 17 percent thought it "should not be permitted at all." Worse still, Republicans are shrinking the gender gap among women, who do not share this aversion to Bush and his programs. All of this is not exactly a secret, which makes the sisters' hysterics a matter of truly willed ignorance. They are not fighting the fringe--they are the fringe, camped out in the exurbs of public opinion in a state better known as denial. As Bush said in the bill-signing ceremony, the public isn't ready yet for a ban on abortion, and perhaps never will be. But it is moving, somewhat, in that direction, and away from les girls, and their theories. And everyone sees it but them.
SOME YEARS AGO, the Goodmans and Quindlens assigned to themselves the power of speaking for "women," whom they saw as a movement or bloc. But this bloc (or movement) never existed. They were never speaking for women in general, just for themselves and their friends. They have every right to express their opinions, but not to assign them to millions of strangers, who may or may not share their views.
Thus they rise everyday to defend women from "threats" that most women do not see as threatening or to uphold "rights" that most women don't want. Goodman insists that women who support this ban were conned by a "public relations coup" they were too stupid to see through, and insists at the same time that these very same women, too addled to see through a threat to their interests, are perfectly fit to make sound moral judgments--such as killing a child near term.
They do not explain why Ted Kennedy is allowed to discuss the abortion conundrum, but George W. Bush and his allies are not. (Does Ted have a womb we don't know of?) Nor do they explain why, if having a womb is all that important, pro-life women aren't experts, either.
They aren't experts because the sisters don't want them to be. They are doing in their heads exactly what they accused the White House of doing in that ill-conceived photo, excising an inconvenient reality. There are plenty of wombs in the house, belonging to women not like them. And they choose not to see them at all.
Noemie Emery is a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard.
I wish tired old leftists would behave like old soldiers, and "fade away." What Ms. Quidlen misses is the point that men at the signing of the PBA bill apparently have more respect for the life in the womb than those who have wombs.
The balance between pro-choice women and women who say abortion should be outlawed or severely restricted is shifting toward the pro-life side, bumping that group into the majority in the debate over reproductive rights, according to a new national poll.
Fifty-one percent of women surveyed by the Center for the Advancement of Women said the government should prohibit abortion or limit it to extreme cases, such as rape, incest, or life-threatening complications.
The findings, with a 3 percent margin of error for the 1,000 women surveyed, tips the scale from the last sampling in 2001, when 45 percent of women sided against making abortion readily available or imposing only mild restrictions. Only 30 percent support making it generally available, down from 34 percent in 2001, the survey found.
The New York-based center that sponsored the survey is a nonpartisan advocacy group for pro-choice women's rights. The center's president, Faye Wattleton, headed the Planned Parenthood Federation of America for 14 years.
"While we do have a certain point of view on women's issues, we don't believe we should suppress information," Mrs. Wattleton said in an interview yesterday with The Washington Times. "You don't want to create false or artificial data."
The results, announced with a series of women's responses to issues such as domestic violence and affirmative action, found that fewer women — 41 percent — consider protecting abortion a top priority, an 8 percent drop from 2001. Of the 12 top priorities, keeping abortion legal was second to last, beating only the percentage of women who want to increase the number of girls participating in organized sports.
Eighty percent of women also reported having no second thoughts about their views on abortion.
Mrs. Wattleton, a women's rights activist in the 1970s, called the survey's results a "disturbing" step against the pro-choice perspective. She pointed to another part of the survey in which 50 percent of women said they believe the Supreme Court will let current abortion laws stand. Women who predicted the court would change the law said by a 2-to-1 margin that the court would make getting an abortion more difficult instead of easier, the survey said.
At issue during the high court's recent session was whether one or several of the justices would step down, opening the door to a President Bush appointee. The Bush administration has been tightening the restrictions on certain types of abortions after President Clinton undid many limitations from previous administrations.
"It's a broader issue now than mere reproductive rights," said Mrs. Wattleton, adding that changing administrations shouldn't seesaw on what she considers an inalienable right. "I've always felt it struck at the status of women in society." [Personal note: Unborn women excepted.]
"But even if we hold our noses at it, we want to be sure we show women's true perspective."
Pro-life groups applauded that portion of the survey, saying they were glad the organization did not skew results in its favor.
"They're concerned about the shift, and rightfully so," said Ann Scheidler, executive director of the Chicago-based Pro-Life Action League. "We are winning. It's by no means going to be in a year are two, but our effort is to eventually make abortion unthinkable."
The survey findings come just after the Supreme Court decided not to hear a case in which a federal appeals court barred anti-abortion groups from publishing Internet "wanted" posters for doctors who perform abortions. The lower court's judge ruled a year ago that although the posters contained no threatening language, the criminal-style look amounted to "true threats" not protected by the First Amendment.
The poll also found that 43 percent of women reported facing prejudice or discrimination in the workplace because of their sex, although only 50 percent said affirmative-action programs should continue. Roughly one-third said affirmative action should either be phased out or ended immediately.
The center's poll, titled "Progress and Perils: New Agenda for Women," was conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates, an independent research company specializing in social and policy work. The center's Web site and survey is located at www.advancewomen.org.
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First, these are issue of life and death, for the most innocent amongst us. Raising the level of awareness and revealing the hidden truths that support the continuance of the horror is vital in a Republic. Tauted as an emergency method to exercise 'choice', the truth is, this is never an emergency procedure (it takes three days to perform!) and it isn't necessary to murder a viable child in the womb in order to save a woman's life.
Second, to even write a law proscribing a method of killing alive preborn infants is a step in the right direction that will be an eye opener for at least some who have been manipulated via lies to perceive the preborn as tissue masses that have not yet reached human being status ... the grisly kill method is felt excruciatingly by the child being slaughtered and that fact is one the liars and defenders of the indefensible are actively seeking to counter or deny, with calims that pain is subjective, that the child has yet to take a breath, that the child isn't eyt sentient ... anyhting but acknowledging the truth, the facts of the horrific abortion doctor convenience methodology.
Finally, frontal lobotomies were once a vogue medical procedure. The maiming reality finally sunk in and the 'procedure' became abhorrent to the general medical field. The method of executing an alive, sensing (even able to dream) pre-born child must be repudiated as inhumane else some of those without medical training will accept the horror as what you characterized, 'a medical procedure'. Removing limbs was routine before anesthesia but that went out of vogue when a more human procedure developed. Humanity should repudiate inhumane medical procedures, without clinging to the horrific practice merely because an alternate more humane procedure could be chosen, don't you think?
Many women want to steal their own personal power from anyone else they think has power, esp. the men in this country . So yes there is a gender war of sorts in this country, but it isn't the men who are leading the charge.
What better way to hold men down than to support the right of women to murder children, while supporting men be sent to prison for the same thing.
Wake up ladies, the frault lies at your feet for the acceptance of murder in this society. Stand up for what is right, and do not fear that someone is going to call you "un-cool". It has nothing to do with a woman's right to choose. Where the woman has not been allowed a choice , it is arguable , but the vast najority of pregnant women exercised their right to choose, that pregnant woman's choice was sex.
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