For years, the liberal response to abortion has been to promote more accessible and affordable birth control as well as detailed sex education in public schools.Let's start here and say it's no more the place of such programs to encourage women to have babies than to have abortions. Mind your own fucking business. If a woman is enough of a grown-up to get pregnant, she's enough of a grown-up to make a choice, by herself, without any government mandadated "encouragement."
That's still the foundation of Democratic policies. But in a striking shift, Democrats in the House last week promoted a grab bag of programs designed not only to prevent unwanted pregnancies, but also to encourage women who do conceive to carry to term.
The article goes on to explain that the Dems are supporting an intiative (The Reducing the Need for Abortions Initiative) that funds
1. couseling that encourages women to have a baby and put it up for adoption rather than have an abortion,
2. an ad campaign letting poor women know that if they are "preparing for birth" they can get healthcare and other resources,
3. more parenting education and medical services for pregnant women,
4. day care at federal job-training centers.
Dare I point out the nauseatingly obvious? If these women are getting job training at federal centers, chances are they will not be able to secure employment that will enable them to afford day care after they are trained or medical care for their now non-fetal children or themselves.
Why do I not consider myself a Democrat? Because I'd like to support a party that has a set of ethics and values that are reasonably consistent and not affected by opinion polls. You've got the election Dems. The Republicans have been stinking up the joint for some years now. It's yours for the asking. You need not bend over and let the conservative sector of the electorate have at you again.
This sort of statement makes me want to set my hair on fire:
From a political perspective, Democratic strategists warn that emphasizing birth control gives voters a bad impression--"that Democrats are just about free love, not morality," said Rachel Laser, an analyst for the progressive think tank Third Way.For once, could the Democrats not let the other party set the terms of the debate? If the party (the Dems) knew what it actually believed, then maybe they could talk a little about what a hateful and damaging binary, say, "free love/morality" is. But noooo...instead they say "Hey, we're moral! We don't like abortion or sex either. If those slutty poor girls can't learn to keep their legs crossed, they should just resign themselves to making babies those of us who can afford them."
As if that will even somehow help. Political history even in my lifetime supplies abundant evidence that the more the "liberals" capitulate to the conservatives, the more the political landscape shifts right. You don't find common ground this way, Democrats, you just shift the field of debate farther from where your goals should be.
Take this passage from the article for an example:
Rep. Mike Pence, a Republican from Indiana, sees hypocrisy in the fact that much of the new family planning funding will go to Planned Parenthood. The money can't be used to terminate pregnancies--it's for birth control and gynecology services. But Pence says it's ludicrous to send tax dollars to the nation's largest abortion provider in the name of reducing abortions.I'm sending a big "Fuck You" out to Mike Pence. And an even more enthusiastic "Fuck You" to the candidates who think it's productive to sit down at a table to discuss compromise with people like Mike Pence.
"That's not a common ground I can accept," Pence said.
Okay, I guess I had time to rant about it after all.
I'm now going to excuse myself and get back to work. And try not to spontaneously combust.
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