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.

I was asked earlier today why the new laws we see popping up against abortion by states such as South Dakota, the mother isn’t being penalized for seeking an abortion. Afterall, the Republican position has been all along, that abortion is murder. So in the grand scheme of things, isn’t the woman seeking an abortion the equivalent to a person hiring a hitman? Shouldn’t both be punished? Are Republicans backing off the “personal responsibility” mantra?

On the contrary.

For the past 30 years our government has sponsored, endorsed and basically put the big Eagle Seal of Approval on murdering the unborn. This creates an atmosphere of indoctrination. I’m 29 years old, which means I cannot remember a time when abortion was illegal. So the government recognizes this. It recognizes that there is an entire female sect that has been told the life that grows inside of you is “just a clump of cells” and really doesn’t spring to life until sometime shortly before birth. That’s indoctrination folks.

So the government is taking the personal responsiblity. That’s right, the government. They are saying, “Yes, we know liberals have told you for the past 30 years that it’s okay to kill your child. Yes, we know we’re now telling you it’s not okay. We’re sorry for that, so here is what we’re going to do until you get the idea…”

Sounds like personal responsibility to me. They are combating a monster of their own creation. Now penalizing doctors on the other hand, is exactly what needs to be done. The doctor is the one “pulling the trigger.” So while an argument can be made for the female being brainwashed, that doesn’t wash for the doctor who performs the actual killing.

[quoted in full, because it's short]

(Female sect? Now what?)

There are other conceptual difficulties: I have no idea who he means by “they”, or even “the government” – it’s obvious that the government is not “taking responsibility” for abortions, in any sense. Perhaps he means “those legislatures that have passed anti-abortion laws have also chosen to create a loophole for women who have abortions”, but that has nothing to do with “taking responsibility”; it’s just politically expedient hypocrisy. I can’t see anything in any of these restrictive laws, or even any statements by the lawmakers, that suggests that “the government” has adopted a policy position that “the government” actually holds responsibility for the fact that over 30 million women have had abortions, or that it, or they, believe that those women did not have moral responsibility for what they did in having them. This is simply make-believe stuff. If it even made sense that the government could take responsibility for the actions of private citizens who were not acting under government aegis, the simple fact is that it hasn’t done so.

At best he seems to be saying that these lawmakers believe that women who have abortions are not morally responsible for their acts because they’ve been “indoctrinated”. But that is no less hypocritical than the decision not to prosecute them while believing they are actually guilty. I can think of no other area in which people are excused from committing serious crimes – murder! – of the innocent, pre-born citizens! – simply because they have grown up in an environment that condoned it. (That they were in fact mentally incompetent at the time is a defense, but I hope Ragel’s not claiming that every pro-choice woman in America is actually legally insane.) You could make a far better case for “indoctrination” of church arsonists, anti-semitic vandals, drug dealers, political bribe-takers, and corporate fraudsters than you could for pro-choicers, yet we do not condone the crimes of the former groups. Nobody claims that simply believing it’s OK is an excuse for any crime, let alone “murder” (. . . of the innocent, pre-born citizens!).

As a legal strategy, this is just gibberish. As public policy, it’s going nowhere. But what’s even weirder is not that Ragel thinks this makes some kind of sense, but that he thinks it is actual policy, right now, as part of the anti-choice restrictive laws going up around the country. As I note above, it’s not, and nobody has said it is.

It gets dumber. How, exactly, does 33 years of telling women abortion is OK add up to “indoctrination, folks”, but 33 years of telling doctors the same thing (they had to be told, you know – or they wouldn’t know they were allowed to perform the abortions) does not have anything like the same effect even while it results in the same set of beliefs? Ragels bizarre explanation is that “the doctor is the one ‘pulling the trigger’ . . . so [the brainwashing explanation] doesn’t wash for the doctor”. WTF? If he really means (and I know it’s hard to take seriously) that women are absolved from moral responsibility because they were “brainwashed”, then the question about doctors is whether they were brainwashed, too – not whether they are the ones “pulling the trigger”. The moral argument has to do with the individual’s putative state of mind; the whole point to Ragel’s strange claim is that that state of mind (i.e., being “indoctrinated”) absolves them of responsibility for their acts. On that argument, if doctors are subject to the same indoctrination, they enjoy the same protection from the consequences of their acts. (Ragel may be arguing that “pulling the trigger” is simply so much worse than merely “hiring the hitman” that doctors don’t deserve absolution even though they have been brainwashed, but he doesn’t say that, and it doesn’t seem to make any more sense than the things he does say, anyway.) Ragel is asserting that their actions preclude their being held non-responsible for their actions on the basis of their state of mind, which is just nonsense.

And, finally, did you get the bit about “until you get the idea . . .“? How long do you think they’re going to wait for that to happen? Do you think women will get a 33-year grace period to offset their 33 years of “indoctrination, folks”? And what happens when they finally do get the idea? (Death sentences for all!, I’m guessing.)

Well, perhaps it’s unfair to pick on this dim bulb – he doesn’t appear to have any influence or stature, so his confusion may be negligible. But be aware, still, of how much plain bad thinking permeates the anti-choice community, how much hypocrisy, and how much antagonism toward women.

Women are brainwashed. They aren’t full moral agents, so we don’t have to take them seriously. Until we get all our laws passed, after which we’ll treat them as murderers for asserting their independence.

That’s misogyny, folks.