Sunday, April 18, 2010

Newsweek author asks wrong question

Sarah Kliff asks, How can the next generation defend abortion rights when they don't think abortion rights need defending?

Aside from the obvious question -- How can there even be a "next generation" when you're aborting them? -- there's the question Kliff ought to ask: Why would the youth generation defend abortion rights when they recognize abortion as a wrong?

Just a few points to raise about the article itself:

The Democratic Party has, since 1980, supported a woman's right to an abortion.


1. Who is this woman?

2. At least Kliff is admitting that it's about a right to abortion, not some amorphous "choice".

Anti-abortion Democrats, most notably the now retiring Rep. Bart Stupak, pressed for stringent abortion restrictions.


This shows a lot about Kliff's attitude -- that she thinks refusing to take people's money by force of law and use it to pay for other people's abortions is somehow a "stringent abortion restriction".

And what worries [NARAL president Nancy] Keenan is that she just doesn't see a passion among the post-Roe generation—at least, not among those on her side.


Perhaps because her generation aborted so many of the post-Roe generation.

This past January, when Keenan's train pulled into Washington's Union Station, a few blocks from the Capitol, she was greeted by a swarm of anti-abortion-rights activists. It was the 37th annual March for Life, organized every year on Jan. 22, the anniversary of Roe. "I just thought, my gosh, they are so young," Keenan recalled. "There are so many of them, and they are so young."


I remember when I attended a Feminists for Life board meeting in DC. The representative of the FFL college outreach was crying, saying to us, the older women, "This is my generation that's been attacked. It's not the same for you." And she's right.

The younger generation of prolife activists sees a nation in which 1/3 of their peers were killed before birth. That's 1/3 of their siblings, prospective classmates, friends, romantic interests, co-workers. And they feel this absence acutely.

Not that there aren't abortion supporters among the young. But for all the keening about "access" and "restrictions" among the abortion shills, young abortion supporters look around their communities and hardly see a lack of "access":

As one young mother in a focus group told NARAL, it seemed to her that abortion was easily accessible. How did she know? The parking lot at her local clinic, she told them, was always full.


And even among young supporters of legal abortion, there's not the enthusiasm for abortion that the oldsters embrace:

In the NARAL focus groups, young voters flat-out disapproved of a woman's abortion, called her actions immoral, yet maintained that the government had absolutely no right to intervene.


These aren't young women likely to encourage their friends to abort, not likely to do their part to see to it that the parking lots stay full (along with the NARAL coffers that abortion money flows into through the hands of clinic owners).

Millennials also came of age as ultrasounds provided increasingly clear pictures of fetal development.


They're no longer so ignorant and likely to get suckered into the "blob of tissue" lie as previous generations.

Yet, despite this trend, Americans are still largely on NARAL's side


Only if you define "NARAL's side" as "not banning all abortions". If you look at things NARAL supports, such as lack of informed consent, lack of parental involvement, abortions through all nine months of pregnancy, etc., you find minority support, even among people who self-identify as "prochoice". And Kliff obliquely admits this:

Since 1975 yearly Gallup polls have found that public support for legal abortion in at least some circumstances hovers between 75 and 85 percent.


"At least some circumstances" -- meaning that you have to count people who only want abortion legal in a "life of the mother" scenario to be able to come up with 75-85% support. What percent, pray tell, support abortion on demand through all nine months of pregnancy, with no waiting periods, no informed consent, no parental involvement for underage girls, and no safety or consumer protection measures in place? I dare say it's gonna be way less than 75%.

[To generate youth support], within the abortion-rights community there's a growing consensus on a promising path forward: start an open discussion about the moral, ethical, and emotional complexity of abortion that would be more likely to resonate with young Americans.


Play the "It's so sad; just look away" card. But with prolifers saying, "It's so sad -- how can you just look away?" this might backfire and lead young people to support the prolife centers that are helping women avoid abortions, rather than channeling them, weeping, into abortion mills.

And perhaps, having seen mothers, aunts, and sisters weeping in the night has left this generation of women unwilling to pass the anguish on to their own daughters.

7 comments:

OperationCounterstrike said...

RE: "How can there even be a "next generation" when you're aborting them?"

We only abort SOME of them. The ones whose mothers request it.

Danielle said...

When you say something like, the next generation is being aborted, that is a foolish statement considering over 4 million babies a year are being born in The United States alone.

As a pro choice woman, I am also a mother, by choice. I have two sons I am raising to be feminist minded, as well as respect women's choices to make their own medical decisions.

If I ever have a little girl, I will raise her just like my pro choice mother raised me, and my sister.

Being pro choice does not equate to pro abortion by any means.

Christina Dunigan said...

It's still statistically shown that the Left is more "prochoice" than the Right, and that the Right has fewer abortions and more children.

Even at 2 children per couple, you'd not be replacing yourselves.

L. said...

Well, I'm pro-choice, and I had three. And I haven't lost hope of adopting more someday.

However....there is no guarantee that my kids will grow up to share my opinions, anymore than there is that the children of "the Right" will share theirs.

(Also, I'm "Left" on social issues and "Right" on many others -- where does that leave my poor, confused kids???)

Lilliput said...

Yes this does worry me - the fact that the very conservative religious peoples of this world are having more children and eventually we will be left with a tiny minority living in the 21st century and the large majority living like the christians, muslims, jews and the other religions - taking us back into the dark ages.

Its very depressing.

Mom said...

Not everyone wants to pop kids out like a pez dispenser, but I hardly think that all pro choice women are aborting.

I plan to continue my family after the two children I already have, and I am very much pro choice.

L. said...

I am unwilling to pass anguish onto my own daughter -- I told her I'd be disappointed if she ever has kids! ;)