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Thursday, July 14, 2005

The Nation just doesn't get it.

"Should Roe Go?", by Katha Pollett, shows the same cluelessness as many abortion-advocacy screeds. Some examples:

Pollett leans away from returning abortion to the states because "criminalizing abortion, however briefly, means many, many women would suffer atrociously." Earth to Ms. Pollett: Many, many woman are suffering atrociously because legal abortion is readily available and virtually unregulated. There's trouble in Pollett's version of Paradise, and she's utterly oblivious of it.

Pollett also muses that under a mosaic of abortion laws, "fortunate women in antichoice states would fly to New York or Los Angeles or Chicago, and the less lucky--the poor, the young, the trapped--would have dangerous, illegal procedures or unwanted children. It would be a repeat of 1970-73, when women who could get to New York--but only they--could have a safe, legal version of the operation that was killing and maiming their poorer sisters back home." Again, Ms. Pollett assumes that legal abortion is safe, and that illegal abortion is significantly riskier. See Blast from the Past, Back-Alley Butchers vs. Main-Street Maimers, The Bad Old Days, A Few Bad Apples, and Legal Abortion Killed, Even Before Roe

Pollett says, "Even now, there's only one abortion clinic in Mississippi, and the promised prochoice masses--the 'regular old adult middle-class women'--have yet to arise." Earth to Ms. Pollett: Did it ever occur to you that "regular old adult middle-class women" just aren't as enthusiastic about abortion as she is?

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