Sufficient Scruples

Bioethics, healthcare policy, and related issues.

March 24, 2006

Straining to Downplay Extremism

by @ 7:21 pm. Filed under General, Autonomy, Provider Roles, Women's Issues, Access to Healthcare, Reproductive Ethics, Sex, Healthcare Politics, Theory

One continual concern over the extremist anti-choice position is that it threatens not only to strip away women’s basic rights to bodily autonomy and control of their own lives and futures, but that it is part of a broad campaign to demonize independent and sexually autonomous women, even to the point of jailing them for exercising their rights. The obvious implications of the “abortion is murder” position hardly leave any other option available to anyone who takes that rhetoric seriously. So anti-choicers consistently soft-peddle the most viciously anti-woman implications of their own policies, pretending either that, while they are extremely upset about all these “murders”, they don’t really mind so much about the “murderers” themselves, or that they’ll make an exception for the “murderers” out of their heartfelt sympathy for the women on whom they are imposing forced pregnancy. It doesn’t really make a lot of sense, but they’ve largely succeeded in blinding the public to the end-goal of their long-term strategy.

Eric Ragle, however, attempts to argue that women who commit murder aren’t really murderers. Who is at fault, then - since this all doesn’t happen by accident? Liberals! (You didn’t see it coming?) Sadly, it’s nonsense, but an amusing try at having his cake and hating it too.

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