This is what I’m talking about when I say that pro-lifers are more interested in controlling women’s sexuality than they are in actually preventing abortions:

On June 7, 1965, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down the Griswold v. Connecticut decision. The Supreme Court justices first presumed that previous Court decisions dealing with a citizen’s right to liberty and security that prohibited invasion of one’s home and acquisition of evidence that might later be used to convict him of a crime also addressed privacy within marriage. In fact, the justices argued, “The concept of liberty is not so restricted… it embraces the right of marital privacy though that right is not mentioned explicitly [emphasis added] in the Constitution” and is based on “specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights [which] have penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance.”

This confusing language, which has no relationship whatsoever to what the Founding Fathers intended, gave married women permission to use the birth control pill. The Supreme Court literally created the “right to privacy” out of thin air.

We now know, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that not only did the Supreme Court literally make up the right that you claim gives you permission to use birth control, but the most popular form of birth control, the pill, can kill innocent preborn children. If there is a chance that human beings are going to be murdered, I am going to do everything in my power to help prevent that from happening. If you knew there was a chance that someone might poison your neighbor, don’t you think you would try to notify your neighbor and do as much as you could to help save a life?

There’s so much wrong with this statement: from the faulty judicial interpretation and radical equivalence of an embryo (or unfertilized egg!) with a fully grown human being, to the totally transparent desire to restrict women’s autonomy.  But what might be the worst apart about this statement is the phrase “make up the right that you claim gives you permission to use birth control.

It’s interesting to see how many people believe that the government is an entity which gives you rights as opposed to protecting and preserving rights.  It is basically the cornerstone of much of the conservative* opposition to any number of liberal (broadly speaking) projects, from the expansion of marriage rights to even (as we see above) something as innocuous as the right to use birth control (which apparently is a problem only if women do it).

If you conceive the government as giving rights, and if the government is at least somewhat democratic, then the opposition to birth control makes sense, since - after all - who asked you if you wanted regular people to have the means to control their reproductive health?  And, since a fair number of conservatives have a jones for hierarchy, it fits in well with their number one priority: doing everything possible to maintain and ensure their place in the racial/gender/class hierarchies which dominate our society.  From their perspective, giving rights out to people willy-nilly is no way to protect one’s privileged position within the hierarchy.

Which is why I’m always amused when someone like Amy Sullivan demands that we cater to these voters.  She doesn’t seem to realize that people like this aren’t concerned with compromise or actual solutions*, if that were the case then they’d be wholehearted supporters of Democratic efforts to reduce abortion rates.  Instead, they are most interested in controlling women and maintaining the patriarchy; “taking away” the rights they feel the government has “given out.”  Catering to them, asking for their support, is tantamount to abandoning the struggle for reproductive freedom, integral to any reasonable conception of the good, and deserving of the government’s protection.

*When I say “conservative,” I’m referring to the radically authoritarian right-wingers who have attained prominence in the Bush years.

**There are pro-lifers interested in reducing abortion rates and helping women, and they are exempt from this criticism.

(h/t to Jill)

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