If You Don't Like Abortion, You Have to Support Choice

[I swear to god this is my last Melinda Henneberger post. For a while, anyway.]

It's easy to dismiss Melinda Henneberger as a typical wingnut--especially when she says stupid things about Terri Schiavo, and when her example of a pardon-worthy death row inmate is Paul Hill.

It's easy, but it's not quite right. She appears to be genuinely liberal on economic issues, for example. Even on reproductive rights, she doesn't have it completely wrong; here, for example, she gets it at least partly right:

It is tricky business, speculating about other people's motivations. Which never stopped me before, heaven knows. And here I am, tempted again today, when I see the news that President Bush has just appointed a man who seems not to believe in birth control to run the government's family planning programs....

We'll never know for sure what drove his decision, of course. But the effect of his choice is not at all difficult to decipher: Less access to birth control means more unwanted pregnancies, more abortions, and many more happy years of fighting over the issue....

For all her Democratic Party-bashing, I don't think she's on the other side as such; I think she wants to remake it in her own image, to reconcile her own political contradictions.

None of which is in any way exculpatory. Quite the opposite: it makes her silly column that much worse, because she should know better.

See, here's the thing: say you think abortion is bad and wrong and icky; say you would like it outlawed but, knowing that won't happen, would like to see less of it. The way to accomplish that is by embracing choice--reproductive choice (contraceptives available and affordable to everyone, comprehensive education about reproductive choices) and economic choice (better economic options than pregnancy, a wider and more comprehensive safety net for women who do choose to bear children). Anyone who claims to oppose abortion and also opposes any of these simply has nothing constructive to contribute. That would include, of course, the institutional Catholic church and various authoritarian evangelical Protestant denominations.

Based on the quote above, though, I'm pretty sure Melinda Henneberger would be on board for these things.

Now, here's where it stands: one party is actively promoting the programs whose practical effect is to reduce abortion; the other party is actively obstructing them. The party that embraces choice is trying to make abortion less necessary. The party that claims to oppose abortion is making it more appealing.

Which is why it's so maddening that Henneberger attacks the Democrats. She could do some real good explaining all of the above to her anti-choice compatriots. When she falsely portrays the Democrats as intolerant of people like her, she is directly aiding and abetting the party whose cynical exploitation of the issue effectively mandates more abortion.