Hillary Clinton and Abortion

First off, let me get this clear: I do NOT support Hillary Clinton for the Presidency in 2008. This is not because I regard her, as the right wing seems to, as some kind of she-demon, with sharp pointy teeth in her vagina and an ability to castrate men just by looking at them. It's because, frankly, she's a DLC sellout, and in no way a progressive.



If Hillary is the nominee, I'll vote elsewhere or stay home, thank you very much.



Now that we have that out of the way, let's talk about Hillary's speech on Monday to New York State family planning providers. There seems to be a great hue and cry in certain corners of Blogistan that in saying "abortion in many ways represents a sad, even tragic choice to many, many women" and "it's important that family planning advocates reach out to those who may not agree with us on everything to try to find common ground in those areas where, hopefully, emergency contraception, more funding for prenatal care and others can be a point of common ground", she is somehow trying to capture the votes of the evangelical right.



Perhaps she is, and if so, she's wasting her time. But like it or not, she is right on the money here in terms of where progressives should be coming down on the abortion issue.



I'm old enough to remember the "Free abortion on demand!" cries of the socialist rallies of the late 1960's and early 1970's, and indeed, abortion rights supporters have been tarred with this brush ever since. This is one reason why the right still thinks women are eager to get abortions at every possible opportunity.



In our unwillingness to even DISCUSS the abortion issue, we're losing a very real chance to stop the relentless march of the fundamentalist right, who give lip service to babies when their agenda is really about punishing women who do not remain chaste. Bill Clinton used to use the words "safe, legal, and rare", and that is EXACTLY where we ought to be.



We know how to make abortions safe. We know how to make them legal. But how do we make them rare? Again, that's not as difficult as it seems, and this is where we have the opportunity to make some headway with moderate voters who may not be comfortable with what they perceive as our view -- that abortion is an easy solution to a problem pregnancy that women enter into blithely.



It doesn't matter that there isn't a woman in the world who hasn't at some point inspected her underwear every morning making bargains with God that they'll save more money, be nice to their mothers, or never, ever have sex again, just please, please, just let her period come. It doesn't matter that the idea of a "waiting period" is something that only someone who hasn't been in this position could come up with. We have allowed the right to paint abortion as something women do as as casually as having their nails done, and it's time to take back the debate and return it to sanity. All Christians aren't murderers just because Paul Hill killed an abortion doctor, and all women aren't looking to have abortions just because some mythical woman somewhere has had three. Just because something is permitted doesn't mean it's mandatory.



This discussion is what I believe Hillary Clinton was doing on Monday.



Perhaps the biggest point of hypocrisy among the fundamentalist Christian right that wants to make abortion illegal, perhaps even a capital crime, is that they similarly want to bar information about contraception. If you needed further proof that much of the anti-abortion movement, particularly the wing that is also pro-war and pro-death penalty, is about female chastity and fear and loathing of female sexuality, there it is.



Here's the position we should be taking, right from Clinton's remarks in Monday's speech:

We should all be able to agree that we want every child born in this country and around the world to be wanted, cherished, and loved. The best way to get there is do more to educate the public about reproductive health, about how to prevent unsafe and unwanted pregnancies.

Where we differ from the fundamentalist right is that we acknowledge that people are going to have sex, and either they're going to have responsible, knowledgeable, protected sex, or else they're going to have unwanted pregnancies -- and unwanted diseases.



Here's what most of the squawking is about:

Research shows that the primary reason that teenage girls abstain is because of their religious and moral values. We should embrace this -- and support programs that reinforce the idea that abstinence at a young age is not just the smart thing to do, it is the right thing to do. But we should also recognize what works and what doesn't work, and to be fair, the jury is still out on the effectiveness of abstinence-only programs. I don't think this debate should be about ideology, it should be about facts and evidence -- we have to deal with the choices young people make not just the choice we wish they would make. We should use all the resources at our disposal to ensure that teens are getting the information they need to make the right decision.



We should also do more to educate and involve parents about the critical role they can play in encouraging their children to abstain from sexual activity. Teenagers who have strong emotional attachments to their parents are much less likely to become sexually active at an early age.

I don't agree with her that moral values and religion go hand in hand, case in point, oh, well, half the male Republicans in Washington. However, she does have a good point about abstinence. Abstinence isn't always a bad thing. If you have a 13-year-old who's already sleeping with her 17-year-old boyfriend because she thinks she doesn't have a choice, that if she doesn't he'll leave her and if he leaves her, she'll somehow cease to exist, that's a problem. I'm sorry, folks, but most 13-year-old girls aren't equipped to deal with the kind of pressure that a horny teenage boy can put on them. Wouldn't it be better to equip them with the ability to acknowledge and articulate when they just aren't ready? And in the rare cases when they ARE ready to make such decisions at that age, arm them with what they need in order to protect themselves?



Abstinence in young teens isn't a bad thing. We're not saying sex is bad and dirty, we're saying that it's something you might just need to put off for a while. You wouldn't want a ten-year-old driving a car, but by the time he's 17, well, you still might not, but he's a lot more ready than he would have been at ten. "Not now" doesn't have to mean "not ever."



We call ourselves "Pro-choice." This means that a teenager CHOOSING not to have sex is as viable a choice as choosing to proceed. Where we differ from the fundamentalist right, though, is that we don't regard that as the ONLY choice.



Let's go back to that example of the 13-year-old. Suppose she finds herself pregnant? Progressives believe that one mistake shouldn't ruin her life. The anti-reproductive self-determination right says it should. We want her to be able to have a safe, legal abortion, along with counseling so she doesn't make the same mistake again -- IF THAT'S WHAT SHE CHOOSES TO DO. I myself don't think that a pregnant 13-year-old should parent a child she bears, but that's just me, and that's a discussion beyond this posting.



I've long felt that the time has come for progressives to couple reproductive self-determination along with gun ownership as a "right with responsibilities." Yes, you have a right to own a gun. You also have a responsibility to both store and use it safely. You have a right to an abortion if you need one. But you also have a responsibility to take the necessary steps to try to ensure you don't need one.



Contraceptives fail. They do. They fail for any number of reasons. One reason is that people don't use them properly. Another is that there are always a certain amount of contraceptive failues. But that's where the "...and rare" comes in. Abortion should be a fallback position only. I guarantee you, that if we can somehow acknowledge that people have sex; that WOMEN have sex, and that it's OK for women to WANT to have sex, and therefore it's OK to PREPARE to have sex, abortion will be so rare it won't even be worthy of discussion.



I think this is where Hillary Clinton is going with this discussion; NOT that she's trying to cave to the anti-choice right.



From the foofarah over Janet Jackson's breast to the fact that Desperate Housewives is the #1 television show in America, we live in a country that is truly fucked up where women's sexuality is concerned. It's OK to have beer commercials with scantily clad, big-breasted cheerleaders, but God forbid that the one square inch that the bikini covers is exposed. The media glorify male horniness, but at the same time, we tell girls not to have sex, anc certainly not to PLAN to have sex. The only way you can have sex and not be a "slut" is to be "swept away" by passion -- like the cover of a romance novel. From that standpoint, the Samantha Jones character on Sex and the City may be the most subversive character in television history. At least until the final season, here was a woman who fucked like a man, and liked it that way. And you can bet your life that Samantha was ALWAYS prepared.



Until we stop socializing boys to get laid, and girls to NOT get laid, we're going to have coercive sex and we're going to have accidental pregnancies, and we're going to have abortions. If the Christian right was truly about ending abortion, they'd welcome this conversation and work with people who are pro-choice to educate people about ways to prevent pregnancy OTHER THAN JUST ABSTINENCE. But they aren't obsessed with babies and with a "culture of life", they're obsessed with punishing the bad girls who can't keep their legs closed. Isn't it funny how they give lip service to the glory of motherhood, but also regard it as a punishment for girls who don't live by their rules?