Until now, I was unaware that Republicans and conservatives hate women and are seeking to attack them and use their wombs as a vehicle for statist control.
Thankfully, the assault was made clear this past weekend in The Louisville Courier-Journal.
In the Sunday edition of The Louisville Courier-Journal, columnist Pam Platt registered her disgust with recent conservative victories across the nation and their subsequent attempts at undoing abortion rights.
For the author, being a “small-government” conservative entails keeping government limited even in the case of terminating an unborn child.
The argument the author advances has some serious shortcomings which must be brought to light.
First, the argument makes the mistake of assuming that “limited government” is a monolithic term and that limited government on many positions entails limited government on all positions. This is a fallacy and results in failing to understand the position of the opposing argument. The author insists that personal liberty ought not conflict with a morally dubious procedure as abortion. A thoughtful conservative would reply that “yes, the government ought to be limited, but it ought to be limited on the basis of those rights which do not interfere with the rights of another (in this case, the unborn child).” Where a morally egregious act is being done, no small government conservative would decry the government stepping in and prohibiting the act. The logic of the author’s argument would suggest that small government conservatives would render tacit approval to any and all actions regardless of their intrinsic moral status simply on the basis of keeping government limited. No conservative would argue this.
Secondly, the article fails to distinguish the identity of the enemy. Reading the article several times, it becomes clear that animosity is directed towards an audience without a circumference. Is the article aimed at conservatives? Republicans? Pro-life activists? Republican women? Conservative Democrats? Pro-life feminists? Conservative women? Pro-life women? State legislatures? South Dakota? The Democratic system that propels pro-life legislators into office?
I wonder how women, true conservatives and independents are feeling now, four months into “victory,” as a characteristically overreaching GOP has pulled on its hip boots to wade into abortion politics pronto and, yet again, dragging Big Brother right along with them.
Invasions of privacy? Mandatory ultrasounds? Longer waiting periods? Shorter windows of opportunity for the procedure? Fewer providers? Potential criminal sentences for doctors? Putting the squeeze on insurers? Piling on new restrictions for clinics? Making the procedure prohibitively expensive for poorer women? This, while Planned Parenthood, which does more to prevent unwanted or unintended pregnancies than any other organization, is threatened with defunding?
[…]
Women of America, you’ve been put on notice: If you have a womb, you’d darn well better plan on using it. You are practically vessels of the state. And who’s a socialist now?
Funny, isn’t it, how the Small Government Gang wants to curb government intrusion into everything except the womb. Second thought, not so funny.
Third, the argument takes no concern to place the debate in any context other than an impoverished appeal to “rights.” Man (or women, to be fair) becomes the standard bearer for his or her decision, regardless of the consequences. The moral autonomy and self-sovereignty latent within the argument contains no real possibility of advancing the common good or establishing any public ethic. The entire article overlooks the morality of the rights of the unborn, the morality of the procedural act of abortion, and the long-term health of the woman seeking an abortion. What becomes preeminent is the claim that s0-called “privacy” trumps all other rights.
Most unsettling about the op-ed is the inflammatory rhetoric advancing the argument. Consider this use of highly charged discourse (the same discourse, incidentally, that liberals accused conservatives of in the aftermath of the Arizona shootings).
What part of the longstanding GOP jihad against a woman’s right to choose did they not understand?
Insinuating terrorist motive on the part of the GOP is irresponsible at best and reckless at worst. The editorial staff at The Courier-Journal ought to be criticized for letting this provocation be printed.
The argument exhibits the response of a fledgling feminist movement—a movement whose sexual license has undermined its own advancement. Perhaps the argument is attempting to rally the pro-choice agenda in Kentucky (a state with a remarkable pro-life record). Perhaps the author is angered over the increasingly pro-life sentiment of younger generations. One cannot tell. But the readers of Louisville and throughout the entire Commonwealth are deserving of higher-level argument than the one put forth.
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