Friday, January 21, 2011

Calling Planned Parenthood

Time for a better Super Bowl ad controvery over abortion rights. Thank you Dr. Mengele, I mean, Gosnell. My print column is up.

UPDATE: Christina Flowers weighs in strongly.

UPDATE II: Will Saletan, a moderate pro-choicer himself, quotes the view of his more radical brothers and sisters.
Last month, two leading reproductive rights activists, Steph Herold and Susan Yanow, published an essay rejecting the concept of time limits.

They write:

Women have no obligation to make a decision as soon as they possibly can. The only obligation women have is to take the time they need to make the decision that is right for them. Don't we believe that women are moral decision makers, and carefully consider their options when faced with an unwanted pregnancy? Don't we reject the anti-choice rhetoric that women make the decision to have an abortion callously? The pro-choice movement takes a step backward when we judge that a woman has taken too long to make what may be a life-changing decision. Shouldn't we want women to take the time they need to make the best decision, regardless of where they are in the pregnancy?
Yes, Yes. Take all the time you need Ms. Lady. That thing making your belly swell is of no more moral consequence than a kumquat.

Unless, of course, YOU decide that it is. Then you can have a BABY.

The power the pro-choice absolutist gives women over their unborn children is akin to that of a master over a slave.

Writes Saletan:
It's one thing to preach these ideas in the lefty blogosphere. It's quite another to see them in practice. That's where Kermit Gosnell, the doctor at the center of the Philadelphia scandal, comes in... Throwing Gosnell in jail won't solve the problem. The women who came to him at 26, 28, or 30 weeks will show up somewhere else. And if you won't say no to them, you will have to say yes.
That is the logic of the pro-choice absolutist.

And so they have not only lost the moral argument they have lost the political argument. Most state now restrict abortion, allowing few if any after 24 weeks. More and more Americans support even greater restrictions than that.

Meanwhile, as Flowers reminds, in New York City some 40 percent of all pregnancies end in abortion.

Pro-choice advocates have always claimed they wanted abortion to be "safe, legal and rare." Well, it is certainly not rare. It's not nearly as safe for the mother as the pro-choice left and government bureaucrats would like the public to think. (Thank you, Dr. Gosnell.) And it is never safe for its living human target.

As for legal, it is becoming less so, as more and more people come to recognize the violence it directs at the most innocent of human beings.

UPDATE II: Michelle Malkin lets loose on the "climate of death" enabled by the abortion industry.
Deadly indifference to protecting life isn’t tangential to the abortion industry’s existence — it’s at the core of it. The Philadelphia Horror is no anomaly. It’s the logical, bloodcurdling consequence of an evil, eugenics-rooted enterprise wrapped in feminist clothing.
UPDATE III/Correction: In my column I wrote that the Family Research Council produced the Tebow Super Bowl ad. It was the group Focus on the Family. Obviously, I regret the error.

8 Comments:

Blogger /mr said...

The poor man's version of Jonah Goldberg throws out a few data points from the respected source of "crap that I just made up"...

http://www.pollingreport.com/abortion.htm

January 21, 2011 at 9:06 AM 
Blogger Spencerblog said...

The very latest numbers from the CBS poll of Aug. 2010 show 62 percent of those polled want abortion either banned or more restrictions placed on it, while only 36 percent believe that abortion should be "generally available."

Even a poor man's version of Paul Krugman should be able to read the very polls he cites.

Does "/mr" stand for "/ma-roon"?

January 21, 2011 at 10:11 AM 
Blogger Dannytheman said...

Free condoms in schools, birth control pills are cheap and I hear there is a morning after pill. All this and we have woman deciding to abort after 12 weeks?

I'm sorry, I just don't get it.

Thousands of married couples are traveling to China/Cambodia/Vietnam/Africa to adopt a child, and we dispose of ours.

I just don't get it.

January 21, 2011 at 10:12 AM 
Blogger /mr said...

Your post said that more and more Americans support restrictions, that is simply not borne out by the data. The numbers of Americans who support more restrictions has remained essentially unchanged for nearly a decade. Did they teach you statistics at Denison, or were you too busy doing the elephant walk with your thinly closeted "frat brothers" to pay attention?

January 21, 2011 at 5:32 PM 
Blogger Spencerblog said...

Here is what my post said:

"As for legal, it (abortion) is becoming less so, as more and more people come to recognize the violence it directs at the most innocent of human beings."

Did they teach reading comprehension at the University of Toronto?

As for the juvenile insults, I was not in a frat in college. What did you learn at your's? How to smoke pot while you were supposed to be working? That, at least, you have to admit, has a certain ring of truth to it.

January 21, 2011 at 9:55 PM 
Blogger /mr said...

More and more Americans support even greater restrictions than that.


Your words. Maybe reading too much Michelle Malkin and the Doughy Pantload are dulling your senses?

January 22, 2011 at 4:58 PM 
Blogger Spencerblog said...

And you prefer Milky Loads Sullivan and Glenn "Sock Puppet" Greenwald? Oh, and sorry about Olby. That's going to leave a mark.

January 22, 2011 at 6:23 PM 
Blogger Spencerblog said...

Oh and by the way, from Gallup, March 2010:

Americans Aged 18 to 29 Trending More Anti-Abortion

The analysis above focused on public support for the "legal under any circumstances" option in Gallup's abortion question. There is a somewhat different pattern in the trends by age for those choosing the "illegal in all circumstances" position.

Two important changes are apparent. One is a significant drop in the percentage of seniors saying all abortions should be illegal. This fell from 32% in the earliest years of the trend to 16% in the first half of the 1990s, but has since rebounded somewhat to 21%. This long-term 11-point decline among seniors compares with a 9-point increase -- from 14% to 23% -- in support for the "illegal in all circumstances" position among 18- to 29-year-olds since the early 1990s.

As a result, 18- to 29-year-olds are now roughly tied with seniors as the most likely of all age groups to hold this position on abortion -- although all four groups are fairly close in their views. This is a sharp change from the late 1970s, when seniors were substantially more likely than younger age groups to want abortion to be illegal."

January 23, 2011 at 12:30 PM 

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