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