Pro-choice is the real pro-life position

By Libby

What strikes me the most about the so called pro-life movement is how they spin their anti-choice mania as a benefit to unborn children. Their argument completely ignore the thousands of women who died before Roe v. Wade from botched illegal abortions.

Take for instance, Melinda Henneberger who posts an incomprehensible op-ed today. I see she also wrote a book called "What Women Voters Want Politicians to Hear." Based on her op-ed I think somebody should tell her that having tea with Phyllis Schafly doesn't qualify her to speak for women voters. She sure as hell isn't telling the Democrats what I, or the majority of women, want to say. Forget the conventional wisdom she's convinced is wrong, try checking the polling. In 2004, 55% of Americans thought it should remain legal.

But here's the real irony in their position. If the anti-choicers get their way, and criminalize a woman's choice, it would simply create a black market for illegal abortions. I was a teenager when Roe was decided. Growing up just outside of New York, I remember regularly reading accounts of the latest death of some young desperate woman in the back alleys of Manhattan, who for whatever reason felt she couldn't go through with the pregnancy. If Roe is overturned, we'll be reading those stories again. No thanks.

Nobody is pro-abortion and I don't know a single pro-choicer who wants to keep it legal because they think it's such a great thing. We're pro-choice because we want to protect the mother, most of whom go on to have other children, if they don't already have them. For the so called pro-lifers, apparently the only fitting punishment for a woman making a bad choice to have unprotected sexual intercourse, is to risk infection and probably death. How is that not compounding the problem? Either way the baby still dies.

Meanwhile, Shamanic at Newshoggers points out a better way to stop abortions in the first place.

And here's the larger point: The numbers of abortions in America have been declining for nearly three decades, and declined dramatically under Bill Clinton's economic stewardship (graph). In other words, Democratic economic policies, which keep more wealth in more hands, reduces the incidence of abortion.

The Democratic Party must support safe and legal abortion, period. But that doesn't mean it can't support a reduction in abortion rates and work to build a society where abortion is less necessary for women. Where there is economic security, unplanned pregnancies are less frightening. Where there is job security, unplanned pregnancies can be brought to term. These are the policies Democrats implement in office, and this how Democrats should communicate their support for safe and legal abortion that is necessary less often.

Exactly right. If anti-choicers want to prevent unwanted pregnancies they should drop their abstinence-only sex ed folly and teach kids how to use condoms. And if they want to eliminate abortions, they should be out there agitating for economic equality instead of trying to slap their nanny laws on our bodies.