I see I have not managed to make myself clear. My point is not that family planning rights are available to all women who need them; I know that is not the case. But my point is that the traditional vocal focus on abortion rights is not likely going to improve that situation, while another approach, paradoxically, might. An approach with less focus on overt declarations on the importance of reproduction rights, and more covert action towards those rights. A service like WOW is a clever step in that direction. Now, how many of you had heard about that possibility?
So, less tribal posturing, more eye for what gets the work done.
Which leaves the entire “argument” in the hand of pro-lifers. People never hear the other side and laws get more and more restrictive (as they already are some places) and then ISPs reports what people’ve been looking at/ordering and those women go to jail or are even executed for murder.
All I see is the field being left open for the pro-life side to get their world done without opposition. Reps can’t vote covertly.
Oh, I think you have.
It is never good policy to give up de jure rights and to settle for de facto rights. Woman have been told to do this forever: you don’t need protection of law, you just need a father/brother/husband to beat up anyone that “bothers you”. You don’t need to have explicit rights to property, a smart woman can get a man to buy her whatever she wants. These “de facto” systems have always worked well for just enough women to make the system appear fair: after all, if a woman didn’t have anyone to defend her/provide for her, she must really suck, amirite?
Does legality mean nothing to you? I would be extremely hesitant to illegally procure abortion drugs. My god, in a world where abortion is illegal, getting caught having an illegal abortion would certainly the end of my career and reputation, even if it didn’t carry much of a legal penalty.
Probably all three, one after the other.
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I think the Democrats are in a difficult spot on the abortion issue. I would say you could only drop abortion as a platform issue (and thus, perhaps regrettably, a litmus test) if you added three issues to replace it. Voters like a party that stands for something. But Democrats like being a non-ideological big tent; they don’t like having to stand for anything.
It looks like, between the collapse of organized labor and the utter contempt the party showed the anti-war movement after 2008, most of their active base are, and are going to be, vocal pro-choice feminists. They’re not just part of the coalition now, they are the working hands and feet of the party. NAACP/BLM are still there, as are advocates for the poor, but the party is the pro-choice party now, as uncomfortable as that is.
(This isn’t wishful thinking on my part. I understand that abortion is something people disagree on, and that there are probably going to be moderate restrictions on it; I wish we didn’t have to have screaming matches with abortion extremists. And I wish the party were an environmentalist party, personally, or even a socialized-medicine party.)
So, given that many progressive Democrats used to be more pro-life, and the party hates having any consistent principles or platform, why are Democrats…likely to become unable to run pro-life candidates now? I think it’s because, in fact, most Americans with a functioning uterus really want abortion to be legal. The party isn’t choosing this; it’s being dragged into it. This is America saying, protect me.
I am uncomfortable with the prospect of the USA sorting into a two-party state with a totally pro-choice party and a totally pro-life party. I do think that progressives have to engage with potential voters on other issues, and that does mean trying to appeal to idealistic pro-lifers on other humanitarian issues.
So I sympathize with the OP. I just am afraid it’s not up to the party committees now.
I’m not a Democrat, but an independent, and I believe that reproduction rights are, in fact, important and non-negotiable. It’s why I vote with you guys. This is not a tribal thing, it is simply a widely-held belief that people’s personal affairs are personal and people really need to mind their own business. Simple.
No problem is ever truly solved in our society. Don’t take my word for it. Ask the voting rights folks. “Vigilance, Mr. Worf, vigilance.”
Pro-choice position already encompasses those people who personally don’t agree with abortion for themselves, but don’t want to force that opinion on others. We welcome those people into our fold.
[Sarcastic font] Right. It’s working so well for China! [end sarcastic font]
Your basic assumption is flawed. Ordering prescription drugs from outside the country is illegal, even with a prescription from a US doctor. There are so many such orders that law enforcement can’t police them all, so they concentrate on trying to catch “Schedule 1” and “Schedule 2” drugs like amphetamines and narcotics. But a woman could easily go to prison today for ordering birth control from WoW, much less abortion drugs.
There is no question in my mind that if abortion were made completely illegal, the enforcement would ramp up and the number one job of customs and mail enforcement officers would become stopping abortion drugs and punishing women for ordering them.
And sadly, that is only one of a hundred ways in which you completely misunderstand the situation. I get that it looks simple to you, but that’s because you live in a civilized, egalitarian society.
These might help you comprehend what we are dealing with:
https://www.prochoiceamerica.org/issue/birth-control-access-pharmacies/
Nobody opposes the Democrats because we’re pro-abortion. The Democratic Party already contains 100% of the pro-life politicians in the US, and it doesn’t matter. Single-issue abortion voters vote Republican because they’ve been lied to and told that Republicans are against abortion and Democrats are for it. There is no change in policies that will be effective for the Democrats if we can’t change the messaging.
You can say that because you live in a place in which it is possible and easy to get family planning. Lots of people in the US live in places where the only pregnancy prevention methods available depend on the man’s good will and/or timing. Lots of women, minor or adult, have no access to methods that you and I take for granted. Lots of women see their access to basic medical care curtailed by their employer or their local government. Why should somebody’s employer be able to tell her that she can’t have the pill that her ginecologist prescribed?
The fight needs to be, not abandoned, but rather widened. Widened so any person can have access to decent healthcare, which in the case of women of fertile age should include pregnancy-prevention methods adequate for their individual body and their individual situation, and have them in a timely manner.
Maastricht is Dutch. And in Maastricht, unless she’s moved.
Republicans are big on keeping the government out of people’s lives. They need to live up to their own ideals.
At one month, an embryo is the size of a pencil dot or a poppy seed. At two months, the embryo is the size of a grape. Pro-choice advocates need to emphasize what we’re talking about here. I never see them do that.
Politico had an interesting article about how borh the left and the right gave up the battle against pornography. How the GOP Gave Up on Porn - POLITICO Magazine
The battle against porn was also a left wing, feminist issue, framed to combat the objectifying of women. Not just the right, but also the left gave up that fight quietly. It’s hard to say who won. The market, probably, as it usually does in these cases.
From the article:
“From the 1960s through the turn of the century, pornography played a dominant role in the American political argument—its morality and legality, its restrictions and regulations, its implications and unintended consequences. It was treated as a matter of urgency not just by the religious right, which decried the hypersexualizing of society, but by the radical left, which denounced the objectifying of women. Liberal feminists and conservative evangelicals found themselves unexpectedly allied in vilifying the adult entertainment industry. After decades of intensifying conflict, Ronald Reagan convened a Presidential Commission on Pornography in 1985; two years later, Reagan held a press conference to announce his administration’s plan to combat illegal obscenity—and issue a warning to the porn professionals: “Your industry’s days are numbered.”
Instead, the industry exploded. Today, pornography in America is a societal phenomenon and an economic behemoth.“
“The battle against porn” on “the left” was always a fairly fringe cause, not really comparable to the broad liberal support for reproductive rights. The mainstream liberal view on porn is pro-civil-liberties and anti-censorship, which is the view that has currently “won”: largely due to market forces, as you note.
There is no way that reproductive rights can be adequately defended in the US without talking publicly about birth control and abortion. Your OP appears to be wrong on two counts: reproductive rights are not an “already solved” problem, and there is no actual evidence that standing up for reproductive rights actually does “cost votes” to Democrats overall.
Planned Parenthood’s new president warns of ‘state of emergency’ for women’s health.
…I know you want to be optimistic and all, but there is a fundamental disconnect between how you imagine the abortion debate is playing out in America and how it actually is. And this absurd citation about pornography just shows how out of touch you actually are.
People who think “abortion is murder” are not suddenly going to stop fighting just because their opposition “lay down their arms.” They are going to continue to fight and they will not stop. And if the Democrats leave the issue of abortion alone, if they act like “the problem is solved” then they will get steam-rolled.
Fortunately the Democrats aren’t going to roll over on this. Because your suggestion is simply absurd. I doubt you could gather a handful of people (on either side of the debate) to support your proposition that “the problem has been solved.” They will continue to fight. Because fighting is the only way the “right to an abortion” will be protected.
Maastricht, is this a correct summary of your postion:
“Democrats should not block the passage of laws making abortion illegal, because illegal abortions will be adequately cheap and easy to get”?
If not, could you clarify?
From all that I’ve seen, pro-life advocates nearly always argue that human life begins at the moment of conception. Given that, the arguments you’re suggesting would be irrelevant to abortion foes.
No, that is not my position. Democrats should fight like hell for legislative protection of reproductive rights. But they should do so as a matter of fact. Maybe even with another rationalization ( “we’re voting against this because it intervenes in small-government, and in individual health choices, not because we’re pro-choice feminists. But we’re still voting against it.”) In politics. Smartly. Not just in defensive lawmaking, but also in pro-active lobbying. They should use any arguments they can find to do that.
What I am saying is that they should stop making it their flag, their defining issue. They should not let themselves be labeled as the pro-abortion party.
Compare, for instance, these three mission statements. All accomplish the same. Which would get the broadest support?
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“We want good healthcare for woman and child within a one-hour reach of every house in America” (which, in the small print, includes help with familiy planning)
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“We want no woman in the US to have to travel further then one hour to get an abortion”.
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“We want a Planned Parenthood clinic in every county”.
And take the idea of pro-active lobbying. Someone upthread said that it is illegal to get prescription drugs from outside the country. Is that true? And if it is true, then that seems like the kind of law a lobby group could easily dispatch with. A republican one, even. Just get together with Big Pharma and let them wreck those laws in the interest of free trade and well, whoever wants to make a buck of it. And in the smallest of small print, let this also mean that ordering drugs to end an unwanted pregnancy is no exception. Then let Planned Parenthood start an online branch ( along with a dozen reliable daughters who change name every time they’re outlawed) based in whatever country works best, that dispenses this drug under another name. That is how a smart lobbyist would do this.
And by the way, Women On Waves also gives advice on how to buy drugs at a normal pharmacy, meant for other problems, and even available without an prescription, that can be used to end an unwanted pregnancy. So that circumvents the whole problem of it being illegal. Pharmacies are everywhere.