The Right to Choose
I’m pro-choice, but it doesn’t bother me in the least that Sarah Palin is not. A woman who would abort her unborn child is in absolute possession of the very prerogative that would allow her to. And it isn’t because a man must physically halt at that unknowable biological threshold and pass no judgement, but because a woman must know her own capacity for dealing with the consequence of that choice. Either choice is the right choice for that particular woman. Either a woman embraces her motherhood —or what it is she makes of her reproductive system is neither the best for herself nor society.
Still, the phrase “abortion on demand” suggests a kind of cartoonishly inhuman stereotype of the wanton libertine who regards her uterus as a garbage disposal which she can clear at any time with the flick of a switch. Do such women exist? Maybe. Do many women carry a baby to term and then instruct some doctor to perform a partial-birth abortion? I just can’t imagine that. But I don’t need to because I defend such a woman’s prerogative to do so. And it is because the very notion sickens me so that I say that such a wretched excuse for a woman benefits society by her choice to not successfully procreate.
In any event, the pro-choice movement needs the friction of the fight with women like Palin because it’s a fundraising thing. If you’re constantly arguing that Roe v. Wade is at death’s door and that this country will become an Evangelische Reich where the ranks of the Chimperorjungen must be swelled, then there must be a reason for making that case besides the usual liberal proclivity for lying, so what is it? Manufactured crisis fundraising.
No principles but power, baby.
