Palin: Raped Women must bear Child
Palin explains that she thinks women raped, even by their fathers, should be "encouraged" to bear the child.
Although Palin says she doesn't want to send anyone to jail for having an abortion, the policies she advocates would do just that. She has already admitted that she wants justices and judges to be appointed on the litmus test of being against abortion. If Roe v.Wade is overturned,then likely each state will have its own abortion law, and certainly women would be going to jail in Alabama for violating that state's prohibition of it.
The irrationality of the American religious right is demonstrated by their attempt, in Louisiana, to make rape a capital crime. So let me get this straight. Respect for "life" means a raped woman can't have an abortion and must bear her attacker's child for nine months of her life and then risk being responsible for it for a lifetime.
But the religious right wants to kill the child's father (that is absolute respect for life?) and make sure that the child has no one who could be made to provide child support and ensure the child gets a proper education.
I wrote on a different occasion:
'Anti-abortion activism is essentially patriarchal. It insists that the woman's egg, once fertilized, is immediately a person and that the woman loses control over her body by virtue of being impregnated by her husband's sperm. It is men who dictate to the woman that she must carry the fertilized egg to term, must be a mother once impregnated by a man. For extreme anti-abortionists, even a woman who has been raped or is in danger of losing her life if she tries to give birth must be forced to bear the child. A rapist can make a woman be a mother whether she likes it or not, because his maleness gives him prerogatives not withdrawn by his mere criminality.'
posted by Juan Cole @ 10/02/2008 12:04:00 AM
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While Sarah asks us to "respect" her daughters "decision" she would pass laws that deny your daughter the "choice" of a Doctor - substituting for that "choice" the "choice" of a coat hanger.
Not good enough Sarah.
Dear Juan,
When someone with an opposite viewpoint stops making sense, and begins delivering argument and counter argument to their own position, there can be two explanations.
1. The person is delusional, and incapable of defending a position.
2. There's a larger frame that is left out of the discussion, which the arguments fit perfectly within, but which is too contentious to be discussed openly.
With the religious right, and with ultraconservatism in general, it is number 2 that carries the day.
The larger frame is their conviction that white supremacy must be defended, and that white birth numbers must be brought up, by all means possible.
Studying international birth statistics, they are seeing a decline in the number of births by white parents "of the right culture", and they see what they consider a disturbing rise in births among non-whites "challenging the right culture".
Consider this larger frame: a need to achieve an increase in the number of children being born to white parents.
Suddenly it all makes sense.
1. Rape victims must pay for rape-kits, as these include an "abortion pill."
2. Abstinence before marriage - because they know that teenagers can't stop themselves. This increases the likelihood that the mother will have more than one child.
3. Create obstructions when it comes to sex education, contraceptive methods and the distribution of contraception.
4. Adopt a rabid pro-life stance, which gives rights to the nucleus that you deny the grown-up.
5. Create obstacles for those seeking higher education. Mothers have been delaying the start of their first pregnancy, in order to achieve degrees first.
6. Keep wages as low as possible, by supporting incomprehensible Minimum Wage Levels. Low income families have more children.
7. Fight same-sex marriages and unions, as well as what they consider "the deviant behavior of homosexuality" - for the same reason.
8. Condone violent attacks on abortion clinics and on personnel involved with these.
The list is longer - but the frame suddenly makes sense. To the point where one also understands how they can defend forcing a woman to carry a rapist's child, while sentencing him to long incarceration or even to death. (Though the latter throws their rationale somewhat.)
It even makes sense of the fact that the nation's jails are filled with non-white men, to a great proportion, and not reflecting racial distribution in society. As it was once explained to me "we don't mind if they become homosexual, and we just want them away from our women."
It is a very disgusting mindset, and it is prevalent in today's America, while also gaining ascendancy in Europe, in circles that have looked at the same prognoses over future birth rates.
Sarah Palin is George Bush
She admits no mistakes.
She thinks she has GOD's mandate.
She thinks she is witty.
Bush admitted no mistakes (except for that one time when he thought he was wrong, but wasn't).
Bush thought he had GOD's mandate (or at least Dick Cheney's).
Bush thought witty meant being an asshole.
Sarah Palin is Dick Cheney
She will do anything for power.
She is secretive.
She is vengeful.
Dick Cheney lied about WMDs and, acting in his role as traitor, exposed Valerie Plame.
Dick Cheney held secret meetings on energy with oil company execs.
Dick Cheney had US attorneys fired for political reasons, and in an act of random Cheneyness, shot his friend in the face.
Sarah Palin is the Aunt from "A Handmaid's Tale."
She apparently believes that women's fertility is a property of the state.
It is nice to see someone engage Pailin on the basis of things she actually thinks. She seems to have a prepared opinion here.
Still, my main problem with her is that she looks too much like Governor Bush of Texas, circa 1999. Strongly Christian, connected to the oil business, brighter than she appears to be, able to convey an image of being "regular folks," she is also more ambitious than knowledgeable. Whatever that means from any other perspective, from the viewpoint of the neocons, she is trainable.
Since John McCain chose to embrace the neocons and take them into his campaign (losing my vote), they are in a promising position to teach Pailin her job in a way that propagates the disease of the last administration: tyranny, empire, torture, and bankruptcy.
Wasn't that the theme of Ira Levin's Rosemary's Baby?
You are absolutely right. The anti-abortion movement is about control over women's bodies.
Their entire position can easily be summarized: "You must have that baby."
These people aren't pro-life; if they were, they would oppose capital punishment, war, etc.
They are anti-abortion, that's all.
The press should stop using the term "pro-life" regarding anyone who does not also oppose post-natal killing of human beings.
"But the religious right wants to kill the child's father (that is absolute respect for life?) and make sure that the child has no one who could be made to provide child support and ensure the child gets a proper education."
And you can bet your last dollar that they won't feel ANY responsibility for that child - since it isn't THEIR child.
I believe that NO ONE who has not adopted a child should even be allowed to comment on the abortion issue, because clearly if you want abortion to stop, that means there will be children to take care of.
Katie get the Plan-B mechanism wrong. Plan-B acts as an egg-release delay mechanism, not an abortificant.
Sometimes pro-abortion can be essentially patriarchal too - I had a boy friend once who I told I would probably never have an abortion (I would have felt that I was killing off my own child) and he felt that he should have the final decision on whether I ended up on an abortion table or delivery table.
I feel it is my body, and I will do what I want with it. And I extend that right to every other person on the planet.
If you don't like abortion, DON'T HAVE ONE!!!
And men should realize that once a bodily substance leaves their body, they loose control over it.
Of course, they have total control over where and how it actually does leave their bodies. Sometimes they seem to fail to realize that.
“My god! How are they going to make her look Presidential?” she asked. “That's what everyone's saying over here.”
“They don't want her to look ‘presidential’. They want her to look ‘identical’.”
“Oh. ...oh! of course... ‘proletariat identity’; Huey Long: "I'm a hick, just like you!" This illusion that the Governor is just another ‘working mother’...”
“Angry...”
“She's a victim! She can just attack, attack... this man... as being ‘The State’ that f*cks her...”
“Vraiment. What would be the equivalent of an American "populist" thing, Over There ?”
“In France? I don't know; They roll it all up into "Le Pen"-ism. The intellectuals probably use the German expression, "Völkisch movement".”
“Blood and Soil... Doesn't have the odor of religious fundamentalism, over there, like it does over here in The States.”
“No. My god! How are they going to make him look Presidential?” she concluded.
Having been pregnant, I feel viscerally that the outlines of my body are the limit: no one should have jurisdiction over that space but me.
I fully agree with dancewater's most recent comment.
I am not "pro-abortion". I believe that a woman has the right to do with her body.
My objection is for people who call themselves "pro-life" to restrict their concern for life to fetuses, and not to born people. That is perverse.
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