We need to LEARN from last week's Anti-Choice victory !

[Liberator_Rev]

The Radical Right won a great victory last week, as a result of concentrating most of their efforts for years on THE WEAKEST point of the Pro-Choice position, "late term abortion". (We may well be right even on this issue, but it's the one which we have the most trouble explaining and/or defending.)

If we who believe in Choice want to SUCCEED, then what we need to do is learn from this strategy and concentrate most of OUR efforts on moving the debate from OUR weakest point to THEIRS.

And what is that point? It's the fact that their insistance that human personality begins at conception makes ALL termination of life after contraception MURDER. What we need to do, therefore, is put before the American public the choice of
a) Liberal Democrats, who will defend men and women's right to practice birth-control when they engage in intercourse or
b) Conservative Republicans, who will brand them as murderers if they EVER use a pill, IUD, or any other birth-control method which prevents the conceptus from proceeding to term - all of which is just as much murder (according to THEIR LOGIC) as "late-term abortion".

Let's see whom the public will support THEN !
See MORE at : http://www.LiberalsLikeChrist.Org/ChristianChoice

[DUreader]

1. I think the lesson may be that they intentionally pass unconstitutional

legislation.

They look like they are doing something and then blame the courts.

[ant]

4. which ties right in

With the fight over Bush's nominees and why it's important for the Dems to keep up that fight.

[spooky3]

25. I agree.

[soup]

19. That's my take on it, too.

Also Coming Soon:

Look for a brutal 'librul courts' attack follow-up with the Schiavo case in Florida and jeb's quite probably unconstitutional intervention there.

I've been doing some background preparation for the firestorm that's brewing in that case. jeb, the Republican legislature, Ken Connor, and Randall Terry (among a vast cast of others) are setting up to do a major smack-down on the judicial system in FL.

>>>>
A spokeswoman for Bush said Ken Connor, an attorney and former leader of the conservative Family Research Council, has volunteered to work the case.

Connor, who lost the 1994 Republican nomination for governor to Bush, has experience in privacy law and in 1990 led an unsuccessful effort to oust now-retired Florida Supreme Court Justice Leander Shaw over an opinion upholding the privacy rights of women to have abortions.

Reached at home, Connor declined to discuss the case, noting it was one of ``great magnitude.''
<<<<<<
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/2003/10/30/news/state/7136459.htm

I'm out the door to run some errands here, so don't have time to do a more in-depth post. Sorry. Just wanted to note it's gonna get even more ugly very soon.

[Name removed]

2. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[ima_sinnic]

6. after searching your posts today

why do I get the feeling that you are, er, "visiting" from another board?

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

8. You can take that to the bank.

n/t

[ima_sinnic]

15. good riddance to bad rubbish n/t

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

"Our" assume "Us".

You got a mouse in your pocket?

[Webster Green]

10. Really?

How about the ten thousand or so innocent Iraqis that your boy slaughtered? After reading your lame posts, I suspect you were loving every second of the massacre.

[Iverson]

12. yeah, I'm against bombing civilians too

But what does a phony war against an abstract noun have to do with this issue?

[Webster Green]

13. The hypocrisy.....

Life is either sacred, or not. To oppose the destruction of a fetus, evem when the mother's life is at risk, but then have no problem murdering humans once they are out of the womb is ridiculous. These wing nuts could care less about the sanctity of life. They are control freaks.

[Malva Zebrina]

20. Life is sacred or it is not

I agree that logical consistency is necessary in order to be a true "pro-lifer" Bush does not meet that criteria--look at his record of signing off the death penalty persons--most famous of them all, now deceased at the hand of Bush, Carla Fay Tucker. The Vatican, at least, recognizes the inconsistency, so must speak against the death penalty.

The real crux of the matter--the real philosophical question behind it is the question of when life begins. No one has yet to define that in a satisfactory manner.

[Liberator_Rev]

23. The ? shouldn't be "when LIFE begins".

I think I know what you meant, Mariane. But there's been a lot of wasted ink and breath over the ? of "when LIFE begins".

There's obviously life from the beginning of conception and it doesn't even "begin" there because it's transmitted from the life of the two living parents. The ? should always be understood to be "when does a DISTINCT Human being begin", even if it is often shortened to "when LIFE begins".

[ant]

3. I disagree about the weakest point

Well, maybe I'd rephrase that to say there's another, equally as weak point.

The moral argument over abortion is a tough one for either side to win, mostly because it comes down to a matter of personal belief and opinion. Philosophers, politicians, religious leaders, and everyone else have been debating "when life begins" since life began.

It's time to stop making this a moral debate and start making it a POLICY debate. Government does NOT ban things just because they are immoral. Adultery isn't illegal, after all, neither is lying, etc. Time to change the context.

I think the anti-choice crowd needs to be held accountable for the policies they want to implement the way any other group would be held accountable. How are their policies going to be enforced? How much is it going to cost? What are the consequences for medical privacy? You get the picture.

This is never discussed in the public debate on abortion. The debate always centers on the morality of abortion, which is irrelevant. What we should be discussing is what kind of policy the antis are imagining and what the consequences would be. Make this about POLICY rather than MORALITY.

Edited for grammar/spelling.

[TheDalaiMama]

7. I am Pro-Choice.....late term abortions are hardly ever done....they may

have won a victory in their eyes..not in mine.

Abortion is an extremely difficult choice.. and..it's one that should remain as an option.

I will rethink my posiiton when I see the right wingers taking care of the kids on the planet who are not, and never were wanted.

Many of these people have private, personal axes to grind. Some had abortions and are operating out of guilty consciences.

[ant]

29. ever see this?

Your comment, "Many of these people have private, personal axes to grind. Some had abortions and are operating out of guilty consciences." made me think of this:

http://www.prochoiceactionnetwork-canada.org/anti-tales.html

[Liberator_Rev]

31. Thanks for this link, Ant. I hadn't seen it before and it's great.

[Liberator_Rev]

11. You may be right, Ant, but

hasn't the Pro-Choice been trying to make that very argument from the moment it came into existence? And they haven't succeeded, have they.

By the way, I make that argument myself on our http://www.LiberalsLikeChrist.Org/ChristianChoice pages. While it may be true that their instance on imposing their morality through legislation is unjustified, we haven't been able to move the enough of the public to our side using that argument by itself. What I propose is using an example that may move the public OUR way.

[ant]

28. I think they have succeeded

I think most people in the US ARE pro-choice, which is why the right can only go after abortion in these back door ways. Note that Bush had to play to the middle on this issue during the election.

And let's face it, this "victory" really isn't. The "pba" ban is a gift to the base. It's going to be struck down, and if it isn't, we'll have a perfect oppportunity to address the policy issues related to enforcement.

[noiretextatique]

5. this picture says it all

no comment...

[Don_G]

That Pic

Reminds me of a Fundie's idea of the "Last Supper" for some reason. Must be celebrating the anticipated passing of our civil rights.

[IndianaGreen]

16. Don't give a pass to the Democrats that voted for this bill

Our own Evan Bayh (D-IND), who is also the current DLC Chair, continued his anti-choice record by voting for this ban. As Governor, Bayh signed a bill that forced women seeking abortions to see pictures of aborted fetuses.

Evan Bayh deserves as much venom and condemnation as the men in that photograph. The "D" after his name does not grant him immunity!

[Liberator_Rev]

18. Agreed. But he's an illustration of my point . . .

that the Right was shrewd to fight a battle that they could WIN, rather than the BIG ONE, that they might well lose.

So we should learn by our mistakes and focus on all of the forms of birth-control that THEIR Position would make illegal.

[noiretextatique]

34. none of them get a pass from me

but this picture is classic. think all those smirks are for the "unborn?" i don't :puke: it's a perfect illustration of the problem with this "debate." none of these people will ever be faced with "the choice." they are smirking because they have the opportunity to assert their false sense of superiority...and their very real power over the lives of women :puke: it's payback to them.

[Selwynn]

9. I disagree with what you think is the weakest argument

I think to get into a debate over where "life" begins is a mistake. For one thing, the people saying "abortion is murder" are even the biggest problem. The strongest argument against abortion is the no-abortion/no-death penalty stance that argue that in the case of the unborn, regardless of where life beings the mere potential for life is sacred.

Anyway, that doesn't matter - it is an absolute mistake to go down to their level and argue about it as a moral issue. We need to keep the issue always and forever about these things:

1. pro-choice is not the same thing as pro-abortion, it is a stance that supports the right and need of a woman to make medical decisions about her own body in consultation with a doctor.

2. Pro-choice acknowledges that the abortion issue is one of the most, if not the most, difficult and complicated issues causing people to ask medical questions, philosophical questions, ethical questions, etc. It is an issue that requires much deep soul searching. I refuse to let the government take away the right of woman to wrestle with this complicated issue PRIVATELY and come to personal decisions about their own lives and bodies.

Those are the points, I believe. I don't want to get into a debate over the "abortion is murder" phase because to me it is just a way to cheapen this argument. Not only that, but the fact is that abortion is about causing something living to not live anymore. Is it a baby? No. Is it murder? No, in very much the same way that scratching skin cells off your is not murder even though it is taking something that is living and making it not live anymore. But the issues center around personal rights to struggle with personal questions and person rights to make medical decisions privately and without interference of the state. To me this is much better than bringing the issue of abortion "down" to the level of the "baby killers" crowd.

[Liberator_Rev]

14. Stating your position again doesn't change anybody's mind

Selwynn, the object of the game is to WIN in the courts, in the legistlatures and in the court of public opinion. How does your stating the standard Pro-Choice position change the current trend of LOSING to the Pro-Lifers?

THEY have been winning the hearts and minds of the public by arguing that life begins at conceptions and that abortion is a culture of death leading to "partial-birth abortion".
We LOST that debate because we let them make "partial-birth abortion". I propose that we WIN the debate from here on in by making "birth-control" - which MOST Americans favor AND PRACTICE - the focus of the debate.

[Selwynn]

21. I disagree

We already DO WIN in the courts. Before Bush even signed the bill the courts had already issued an injection keeping it from taking place. We win in the courts PRECISELY because we have the better argument. And I don't believe you change people's minds by coming down to the lowest common denominator.

Also, we didn't LOSE the debate. This law wasn't passed by public opinion. This law was passed by a congress full of majority republican white men and embarrassingly weak democrats and WOULD HAVE STILL BEEN PASSED no matter what public opinion said.

People who are fundamentally religiously committed to an abortion is murder belief are not going to change their minds. There brainwashed into their cult of blind dogma, and it is a hopeless useless argument to try to argue with the on that level.

I don't debate the issue with such people. However with people who are on the fence, I focus my argument over concern for the life the mother, compassion, and the acknowledgement that such painful complicated and difficult issues must not be made FOR any person. I'm not interested in a silly and micro technical pseudo-philosophical discussion about what "life" means.

[Liberator_Rev]

26. Feel free to disagree, but

when you claim as evidence that we are not losing the abortion debate at the present time that "This law was passed by a congress full of majority republican white men and embarrassingly weak democrats".
aren't you conventiently overlooking the fact that the reason there are so many more Republicans (and weak Democrats) is that the public is CHOSING those representatives over our candidates?

I realized the power of this issue on election day in 2000 when I spent the whole day campaigning and stopped for lunch at a McDonalds in a working class city neighborhood. There was a bunch of old white bulls like myself talking politics, so I asked if I could join them. As soon as I expressed a Liberal Democratic viewpoint about something other than Choice, although they were all working class stiffs, being screwed by the G.O.P, right and left, they all jumped down my throat for supporting "baby-killers".

[Selwynn]

27. No, no buts... just feel free to disagree, period.

They aren't CHOOSING them over the issue of abortion, my friend.

[DemExpat]

36. I believe abortion advocates 'lost' the debate at Roe vs. Wade

....by using judicial review and court activism (by a liberal Supreme Court) to gain abortion rights from the Constitution instead of the slower and painstaking route through winning hearts and minds and getting legislation passed.

This judicial activism started an immediate Conservative backlash from abortion opponents.......leading up to this day, this administration, and this legislation against 'partial-birth abortion'.

Judicial activism (interpreting the Constitution in a certain light/ideology/issue) is fine if the outcome is what you want and reflects what you believe in, but if it isn't, this causes big problems.

But of course, abortion rights on a federal level may never have been won at all if not fought through the courts, but this DOES bring the high risk of eventual backlash IMO.

The ONLY way to truly win is through public opinion in a democracy, so this issue may 'never' be resolved....

DemEx

[IndianaGreen]

17. In 1919, Lenin and the Bolsheviks gave women abortion rights

It was an absolute right to abortions. Here we are in America 2003 and women have yet to have the same rights and political influence Soviet women had under Lenin.

The origins of women's oppression

While middle class feminists regard the oppression of women as an inherent biological trait of men, Marxism explains that the root of women's oppression lies not in biology, but in social conditions.


The oppression of women has been a key question for Marxism. After all, women constitute half the human race, and have faced discrimination and degradation in many areas of life. The oppression of women in the third world has reached abominable levels. It is accompanied by child prostitution, bonded-labour and slavery. It is capitalism in the raw. Recently, an Iranian Islamic court found a woman guilty of adultery. For this heinous crime, she was sentenced to death by stoning. Here, in its most cruel and brutal form, is reflected the worse features of class society. In the 'civilised' west, working class women are treated as second-class citizens, many of who are forced into the menial jobs on poor wages. Despite equal pay legislation, employers still continue to discriminate against women in terms of pay and conditions.

Unlike the petty bourgeois feminists who see the oppression of women as the inherent biological trait of men, Marxism understands that the root of women's oppression lies not in biology, but in social conditions. While feminists blame men for all the ills of women, Marxism sees the liberation of working class women as a part of the struggle for the liberation of the working class as a whole. While feminists set women against men, the socialist movement attempts to forge solidarity between male and female workers in a common struggle against capitalist exploitation. The emancipation of women can never be achieved under capitalist society, which holds working people, both women and men, in subjugation.

Marxism has a duty to win the best women workers to its banner, as from this oppressed layer - "a slave of a slave", to use Engels' words - will come the best class fighters for the socialist revolution. It is no accident that women began the Russian Revolution of 1917 on international women's day.

http://www.marxist.com/women/origin_womens_oppression.html

[Eroshan]

22. Much of our personality

is in our genetic makeup. You cannot win the arguement about when "life" begins. The message needs to be "do women want to be forced to become vessels for embryos" with recent prosecutions of woman for endangering unborn by drugs or alchohol use. How long will it be before women will be prosecuted for walking up stairs while pregnant or doing anything that may endanger the fetus?

[elfin]

24. I think the weakest point is to have the goverment in this at all

This point was made by one of the women standing in front of the Supreme Court giving reaction to the signing. It was one of a group of women (and one man) legislators and planned parenthood officials.

One told of a friend who was having a VERY difficult last trimester experience with both her health and that of the fetus. She was talking to doctors, family and clergy in deciding her future. The legislator asked her "Would you like the government to make this decision for you?" -- NO NO NO

True conservatives don't want government messing in their lives. GW could even lose some conservative support over this horrendous act.

[Eileen]

30. No! It was an AAPI victory.

The Radical Right won a great victory last week, as a result of concentrating most of their efforts for years on THE WEAKEST point of the Pro-Choice position, "late term abortion". (We may well be right even on this issue, but it's the one which we have the most trouble explaining and/or defending.)

Your analysis is totally incorrect and actually demonstrates the point that the 'victory' gained was not so much a victory of the RRR (Radical Religious Reich) but a victory for the Anti Abortion Propaganda Industry (AAPI). The fact that you still believe the propaganda slogan for a phantom procedure "PBA" refers to some actual "late term abortion" procedure and actually equate them in the sentence quoted shows that you yourself have been caught by the AAPI and have adopted their vocabulary. The weakness in the Choice Supporter camp was the failure to counter the term "PBA" effectively and to permit the term to enter the vernacular - not only of the media but also consequently of the general public.

It is my contention that if a counter term had been adopted right from the start, when Choice Supporters recognized that the term was supposed to refer both to a procedure and when the procedure was performed, then the term "PBA" would have led to the derision it fully deserved. My suggestion for some years has been to use "Phantom Procedure" instead of the so called 'PBA' term and a number of supreme courts, includingg the USSC have agreed that 'PBA' has no real definition, therefore "PHANTOM PROCEDURE" accurately describes the term.

I would contend that rather than "late term abortion" being a weak point in the choice platform it is probably the strongest point in that it is extremely difficult to dismiss the choice of abortion where fetal anomaly is so severe that death very shortly after delivery is a certainty; or where a woman is heading for death from a coronary condition precluding surgery that will continue to become more certainly fatal if the pregnancy progresses any further.

You really need to understand what Bill S3 does NOT ban and also what it COULD ban because perhaps then you will understand that the AAPI actually were simply lobbing another volley this week in an eleven year war of words. That information is http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=669272"> - here - in a previous post or http://eileen.undonet.com/Main/PBAinfo/WhatIsS3.html"> - on my web page -

- Eileen`s always in process page -


Eileen

Edited to correct typos.

[loyalsister]

33. VERY well said!

"The weakness in the Choice Supporter camp was the failure to counter the term "PBA" effectively and to permit the term to enter the vernacular - not only of the media but also consequently of the general public."
This is exactly it! It's all in the language\propaganda.

[loyalsister]

32. Except it's NOT about

"late term abortion."
We really have to get this point across!! I am so tired of people using "partial birth abortion" and "late term abortion" interchangeably. "Partial birth abortion" refers to the specifics of PROCEDURE not the specifics of the timing.

[Woodstock]

35. It would be refreshing if we play the game as aggressively as they do

I'm tired of being in reaction mode to the Republicans.