On abortion, a few more links to add to the blog omnibus.

I have a few links to add to the post of May 17.

On abortion, a blog omnibus: Four Months, Three Weeks and Two Daysand other thoughts.

To begin, solid reasoning from Katha Pollitt.

A Man’s Guide to Abortion, by Katha Pollitt (The Nation)

You don’t have to be a woman to stand up for reproductive rights.

As abortion bans spring up in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, and elsewhere, it’s a good time to talk about men. Where are they? Polls show that in the United States there is little difference of opinion between men and women on abortion. According to Pew, 60 percent of women and 57 percent of men say abortion should be legal in “all or most cases.” But checking a box on a questionnaire doesn’t tell us much, because polls don’t measure intensity. There is no box for “sure, babe, whatever” or for “Yes! Abortion rights is the hill I would die on.”

In my experience, there’s a big difference in intensity between genders on the pro-choice side. Men are all over the anti-abortion movement—staffing and running organizations, protesting at clinics, harassing patients, and participating in mass protests like 40 Days for Life. I’ve been involved with reproductive rights for decades, and I have never seen more than a sprinkling of men at any conference, meeting, fund-raiser, or volunteer activity on the pro-choice side. With the exception of gatherings of abortion providers, many of whom are men, just about the only time I see our pro-choice brothers representing us is when there’s a really big march. And even then, they’re way under half the crowd.

Why? It’s obvious. For anti-choicers, abortion is about “the unborn,” who are as likely to be male as female—which means actually caring about how women fare isn’t required to be part of that movement. It’s also about maintaining traditional gender roles that put men in charge of women and cast women as wives and mothers. (And if the track record of Republican politicians is any guide, pro-life men don’t seem to have much trouble ignoring the sexual-responsibility and marital-fidelity requirements of those arrangements. Among many others, just look at thrice-married Newt Gingrich, Mark “Appalachian Trail” Sanford, and of course, the pussy-grabber-in-chief.)

On the pro-choice side, even when abortion isn’t dismissed as a cultural issue, it is nonetheless upheld, often by both sexes, as a women’s issue. The whole basis of the pro-choice perspective is that the woman is the protagonist: She, not the fertilized egg or embryo or fetus—and certainly not the man who impregnated her—is the one with rights. This is as it should be: Women are the ones whose physical well-being is at risk in pregnancy and childbirth and whose personhood is denied when abortion is made illegal or inaccessible. They, not their impregnators, are the ones who are punished for becoming pregnant outside marriage. Motherhood has a huge effect on women’s futures in every way, and it’s usually much greater than the effect that fatherhood has on men. That’s why the decision to end a pregnancy must always be up to the pregnant woman—and her alone. Anything else turns her into a vessel and a vassal.

That doesn’t mean men can sit back, though. After all, they have a big personal stake in keeping abortion safe and legal. I’m not talking about reproductive criminals—the rapists, hit-and-run artists, and men who refuse to wear a condom—or those who practice reproductive sabotage, putting holes in condoms or throwing away their partner’s pills. I’m not talking about men who ghost when a girlfriend gets pregnant. I’m talking about reasonably decent pro-choice men who think they have more important concerns than standing up for our rights. Because for every woman with an ill-timed, unwanted pregnancy, there is probably a man who is unhappy about it, too.

Men, too, can have their lives stunted by unwanted childbearing. They, too, suffer when a pregnancy pushes them into marriage, or into marriage with the wrong person. For men as for women, ill-timed or unwanted children can mean giving up ambitions and dreams. It can mean decades of regret for not doing right by children you didn’t mean to have or have no real connection to or perhaps have never even met. These are things women think about all the time. They know the stakes can be very high. But when you consider how few men use condoms every time, it doesn’t seem that nearly enough of them have absorbed the message. Where is the men’s mass movement demanding a male birth-control pill?

Men: With abortion becoming ever harder to access and no doubt with birth control soon to follow, you have to do better. A lot better ...

This one also makes a great deal of sense to me.

Abortion: White Panic Over Demographic Dilution? by Manuel Garcia, Jr. (CounterPunch)

What is behind the bigotry masquerading as sanctimonious religiosity fervently opposed to abortion in the United States?

One motivation for US conservatives’ opposition to abortion – “a woman’s right to choose” – as stated by demographer Ben Wattenberg (in his increasingly neoconservative later years, after the 1970s), and cited by the wonderful educator, Jane Elliott (“White Fear”, in her anti-racism teachings, is that white supremacists’ great fear is over demographic dilution.

American conservatives’ opposition to abortion is not primarily concerned with preventing Blacks, Latinos, minorities and the poor from procreating too many — and “too costly” to the public purse — non-white babies, but in fact to prevent white women from producing too few white babies. 60% of the 1.6 million abortions annually in the United States are for white women ...

To conclude, other ways of restricting abortion access.

The Subtle Ways Cities Are Restricting Abortion Access, by Sarah Holder (CityLab)

... Abortion clinic deserts can be created by local protesters, who intimidate centers into closing or out of opening at all; or by states, which—long before the latest wave of abortion bans—have implemented what are known as “TRAP laws,” or the “targeted regulation of abortion providers.” States with TRAP laws define abortion clinics as distinct from other health providers, and regulate them more strictly.

And cities have found another way to place uneven burdens on abortion clinics—by finagling their zoning laws, and fiddling with their land-use codes. Since 2013, at least nine city governments have used the strategy to shutter or restrict clinics’ operation, according to Rewire News.

Time for a pro-choice spine check, local "Let's Pretend We're Democrats."

Nationally, the question is this: To what extent will Democrats contradict themselves and gut their principles to win back the House?

Locally, it's phrased this way: To what extent will Democrats contradict themselves and gut their principles to keep Jeff Gahan in the mayor's office?

Damn -- the hypocrisy meter's flashing "TILT," and I'm fresh out of Adamite Sickness Bags.

No 'litmus test' on abortion? Shame on Democrats backing anti-choice candidates, by Jamie Peck (The Guardian)

While Hillary Clinton stood firm on the issue during her 2016 election campaign, she also said that ‘of course’ you could be anti-abortion and a feminist

As Donald Trump and his cast of flatterers continue their incompetent war on the American people, the Democrats seem more determined than ever to bungle their comeback from 2016’s humiliating defeat.

From small-thinking policy proposals (as outlined in Chuck Schumer’s New York Times editorial last week) and slogans that read like satire (“I mean, have you seen the other guys?”) to their quixotic obsession with wooing “moderate” Republicans and the rich to the detriment of progressives and the poor, their strategy is, at best, a wet fart. At worst, it’s a plan to sell out everything they once stood for.

The latest principle to be jettisoned like so much dead weight, or at least the latest one people are talking about: a woman’s right to choose.

The Nation: "The Message and the Meaning: Is 'Pro-choice' Passé?"

That's exactly my view: I believe that whether or not a woman keeps a pregnancy is up to her.

Indeed, language, words and meanings are crucial. They define humanity beyond the cave, and I see no reason why redefining them need be some exclusive right of the Right.

The Message and the Meaning: Is 'Pro-choice' Passé?, Katha Pollitt (The Nation)

... I often find public relations a bit bewildering, so maybe it’s my problem that I worry when people say the term “pro-choice” is “oversimplifying” and “extreme” and call for “moderation” and an acknowledgment of “gray areas.” To me, “pro-choice” means you believe that whether or not a woman keeps a pregnancy is up to her—the position most Americans say they support when asked about Roe. That is the “moderate” position. The exact opposite of the pro-life position would be to override the woman’s will and let others—parents, doctors, social services, the government—decide she must have an abortion, as is happening in China. An “extreme” pro-choice position would be the one pro-lifers falsely claim Roe protects: it would permit abortion on demand up until the day before birth. No pro-choice organization calls for that.

Are you a “pro-conception-to-birth, indifferent-to-life conservative?”

Back in the 1980's, I enjoyed Friedman's Middle East analyses. If you want to know precisely why Bashar al-Assad is such an asshole, Friedman's "From Beirut to Jerusalem" is a good place to start.

As an evolving advocate of localism, I've found much of Friedman's Pied Piper globalism hard to stomach. But in this op-ed, he nails the obvious hypocrisy of “pro-conception-to-birth, indifferent-to-life" conservatism.

Why I Am Pro-Life, by Thomas L. Friedman (New York Times)

... If you can name an issue, you can own the issue. And we must stop letting Republicans name themselves “pro-life” and Democrats as “pro-choice.” It is a huge distortion.

In my world, you don’t get to call yourself “pro-life” and be against common-sense gun control — like banning public access to the kind of semiautomatic assault rifle, designed for warfare, that was used recently in a Colorado theater. You don’t get to call yourself “pro-life” and want to shut down the Environmental Protection Agency, which ensures clean air and clean water, prevents childhood asthma, preserves biodiversity and combats climate change that could disrupt every life on the planet. You don’t get to call yourself “pro-life” and oppose programs like Head Start that provide basic education, health and nutrition for the most disadvantaged children. You can call yourself a “pro-conception-to-birth, indifferent-to-life conservative.” I will never refer to someone who pickets Planned Parenthood but lobbies against common-sense gun laws as “pro-life.”