Merry Blog For Choice Day!

Today is Blog For Choice Day. So I thought I would write about why I'm for legal and safe abortion. It's rather simple: because the alternative is illegal and unsafe abortions. As long as women can get pregnant, some will not want to be pregnant. I trust their judgment that most of the time, they're doing it because it's the best moral alternative. Women can be (and obviously are) independent moral agents. They don't need James Dobson's help.

But now, I would like to turn it over to Atrios, who deals with Compulsive Centrist Disorder, abortion stylee:

As we've been through many times, such as in this dialogue between Katha Pollitt and Mr. Icky himself, it's never quite clear what the abortion is icky crowd want other than for everyone to agree that it's icky and try to make people who have them feel bad. It's this crowd that causes the mushy middle to support all kinds of "compromises" which, as I said, ultimately just make it harder for poor women to have abortions. So, if your goal is to make it harder for poor women to have abortions, then go ahead and devote your time on this topic to talking about how icky it is and how people who have them are bad if they have them for reasons you don't approve of.

If that's not your goal, maybe you should talk about something else.

Safe and legal. For all.

More like this

Scott LeMieux exposes the illogic of Melinda Henneberger's NY Times op-ed about abortion and Democrats. What I can't figure out is what does Henneberger want? Once again, we have a Democratic concern troll who fails to see even the basic contours of the landscape: Do you want abortion to be…
The July 28 edition of the Lancet has a superb editorial about the need for legal and safe abortion in the developing world, particularly in Latin America (I've snipped parts; italics mine): ...Irrespective of an individual's viewpoint, the debate over abortion in Latin America cannot be ignored.…
As you might have guessed from my earlier post, I was angered and saddened when I learned of the death of Kansas doctor George Tiller earlier today. Dr. Tiller was gunned down while serving as an usher at his church while services were underway. As I mentioned earlier, the suspect arrested in the…
Inspired by this Jeffrey Feldman post, I'm putting together a post about abortion, evolution, and the dislike by some scientists of framing. Feldman argues that reframing abortion is necessary to deal with anti-abortionists like Rev. Joel C. Hunter: Abortion continues to be one of the most hurtful…

The need for abortion is inversely correlated with income - which means safe and legal is not quite enough, as some won't have money.