August 31, 2008
The abortion issue this election
Bookworm anticipates the criticism coming Sarah Palin's way over abortion, and does some thinking. Liberals expect to win, but she thinks the Democrats may come out on the losing end, stuck in a box of their own making:
...the party faithful... don't acknowledge reasonable gradations. Instead, they see things as binary: Either abortion is unfettered or its entirely fettered. They've gotten themselves locked in a box where they can no longer have a rational debate that tries to balance the differing interests of mother and child and, as to both, to do so with an eye to life.This shrill, binary message means that hardcore Democrats, the ones who dominate the message and the media, sound dreadful. While it once appeared that they were trumpeting rights for women, they now sound fossilized. Arguments for abortion that made sense when we merely guessed at fetal development and when pre-term babies routinely died; or when babies born out of wedlock (and their mothers) were horribly stigmatized; or when birth control was impossible to obtain, sound brutal in this day and age when we see (and save) in utero babies; when out-of-wedlock children are normative (especially in Hollywood); and when birth control is sold at every grocery store.Unwanted pregnancies still happen, but the social dynamics have shifted dramatically.