One persistent feature of right-wing objections to fairly ordinary healthcare procedures is the unapologetic ignorance they display. The bizarre distortions of the debate over intact dilation and extraction abortions were just the most effective such example; from the Catholic Church’s completely false characterizations of condoms as a bulwark against AIDS, to the familiarly bogus claims about “the abortion/breast cancer link”, “post-abortion trauma syndrome”, and most recently James Dobson’s non-existent “detachment and differentiation” as the cause of homosexuality, the far right seems to suffer from a persistent and universal failure of reading comprehension, as well as a gasping lack of basic factual knowledge. And, worse, the use it to their advantage, often it seems deliberately.

The latest example is Pamela Hennessy’s screed against an end-of-life-decisionmaking bill in New Hampshire. She grounds a panicky call to arms on an obvious misreading of the plain text of the bill, then somehow manages to paint “ethics” itself as some sort of conspiracy (of the Party of Death, no doubt). You rarely see that much weirdness appended to one paragraph of legal text, but Hennessy – for years a Schiavo Foundation spokesperson (ahhh . . . now I understand . . .!) – manages it.

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