NY Times Editorial: The Campaign of Deception Against Planned Parenthood

[DirkGently]

34. And I stand by my statement they hate women, period.

Put any of these people in a burning building with the choice of saving 70,000 frozen embryos in a cooler or their favorite hat, and only the hat would make it out alive.

To the extent people have convinced themselves that abortion is "killing a baby," or for one second placed the rights, safety, or health of a fetus above that of a pregnant woman, they have willfully rationalized a reprehensible urge to control women's sexuality into a nonexistent ethical question issue about "when life begins."

There are levels of things. Operation Rescue types and the various murderous fanatics they enable are full-on hateful misogynists. In the same boat are mainstream Republican politicians like Mike Huckabee and Paul Ryan, who calmly assert that there are circumstances under which a woman, regardless of whether a child has been impregnated by an abusive adult, or a woman has been raped, or a pregnant woman may die, may need to be subject to some kind of criminal consequences, depending on whether an abortion is "permissible."

And there are those who simply cannot be bothered to analyze their unsupportable belief that for one second they have the right to command a woman to carry a pregnancy to term, and so have wound themselves up to believe that there is some analogy between abortion and "killing a person."

People are responsible for the positions they take and the reasons they give for them. It is not possible to believe that women's bodies are subject to their approval, disapproval, or punishment out of a rationale that does not include the idea that women may be subjugated and abused as a result of having a reproductive system. Religion is not an excuse. "That's just how I feel" is insufficient. If you purport to punish and damage and inflict suffering on people, you need a reason. "Abortion is kind of like killing someone" is not a reason.

It's an excuse.

As far as "demonizing" anyone, the second you tell a woman that dealing with her own reproductive system as she needs is tantamount to "killing" someone, you've opened that can of worms yourself. If they want a polite conversation in which their motives are not impugned, they can quit calling medical procedures that are absolutely none of their business "murder."