Connect the Dots

Atrios on abortion, today:

I've never really understood that expressing the view that the "abortion is icky but it should be legal" is the right politics. I don't know why our side always needs to run from the abortion issue even thought it's one of our most popular issues.

Most people think abortion should be legal. There are people who think that to be true and but who else think that abortion is icky. So, if you give them any kind of out by asking questions such as "should abortion be legal in this circumstance? in this circumstance?" they'll tend to answer no on at least some of them.

Katha Politt, in the Nation:

The trouble with thinking in terms of zero abortions is that you make abortion so hateful you do the antichoicers' work for them. You accept that the zygote/embryo/fetus has some kind of claim to be born. You start making madonna-whore distinctions. In the New York Times Magazine Eyal Press, a contributing writer to this magazine, writes of his father, a heroically brave and dedicated abortion doctor: "Had the women...been free-love advocates for whom the procedure seemed a mere matter of convenience, he would not have been so angry" at the antichoice protesters who hounded him and his patients. Why not? Because a sexy single woman should suffer for not suffering?

An abortion provider, in the United States, in the modern day (via Angelica):

“Most commonly, they ingest a whole bottle of quinine pills, with castor oil...we try to get them to the ER before their cardiac rhythm is interrupted...Sometimes they douche with very caustic products like bleach. We had a patient, a teen, who burned herself so badly with bleach that we couldn’t even examine her, her vaginal tissue was so painful....”

“Our local hospital tells me they see 12-20 patients per year, who have already self-induced or had illegal abortions. Some make it, some don’t. They are underage or poor women mostly, and a few daughters of pro-life families...”

...Indeed, in another eerie echo from the pre-Roe era, the increase in illegal abortion in Jen’s area is so significant that a doctor from the hospital mentioned above contacted her. He asked for her help in setting up a special ward for the treatment of illegal abortions when Roe is overturned, because he knows the caseload will mushroom then. “He didn’t say ‘if’—he said ‘when,’” Jen said. “Chills ran down my spine.”

Why is all this happening when abortion is still legal? Though the cost of abortion has remained remarkably flat since Roe —the cost of a first-trimester abortion at Jen’s clinic is $380, actually less than it was 20 years ago, adjusting for inflation—it's still too much for a woman who, as she puts it, “is on assistance, has two or three kids already and has no money whatsoever.” Teenagers in the state where Jen works also need parental consent before they can have an abortion. And for many teens and adult women alike, the overwhelming culture of shame that hovers around abortion prevents many from going to a clinic.

Just in case any of you thought I was overreacting to Frank McKenna's being pro-life, this is why being pro-choice is the only liberal, progressive position. Saying you support a woman's right to choose, but then create an entire culture where the only possible choice is to keep the child, is no better than overturning Roe in the first place. Telling young women from day 1 that abortion = murder, sin, death, but maintaining the fig leaf of legal "choice" is, if anything, more cruel and unusual than simply banning it outright.