Using Coburn to hoist them on their own petard

[lawladyprof]

OU alumn here with a red hot idea that really very few in the country could do. OK, now you have one of the nuttiest, right-wing senators in the country. Make it work for us instead of against Dems and progressives.

Here's the idea. You are all (hold your noses) constitutents of Senator Lesbian Encounters in Public School Bathrooms Coburn so he has to listen when his "conservative" constituents bombard him with a request. What you want is for him to pass a federal law making the prescribing of birth control on the grounds that they are abortifacients (causes the abortion of preborn babies by preventing them from finding a safe home in their mother's womb) AND outlawing in vitro fertilization (destruction of human life). Actually, you'll have edit out my sarcasm.

The point is to push the Republican to wildly unpopular positions, stances, and actions (proposing legislation) by pushing them to the logical endpoints of their positions. And this is just the issue to do it because tens of millions of couples (married and unmarried) are just not going to sit still to be pushed back to barrier methods of contraception. The point is to use their own belief systems (its an inviolate human life the instant the sperm penatrates the egg) to drive a wedge between the real fruitcakes (Coburn) and his only slightly less nutty colleagues and at the same time alerting the population to where this could all end up (taken to its logical conclusions). And you need to get a grassroots campaign going. "We elected you and now we want you to do this for us." At some point you could enlist (might be useful as cover) some local right-wing conservatives (surely you have a few), which you could find through the information below.


Here's an article http://www.prevention.com/article/0,5778,s1-1-93-35-4130-1,00.html
to help you get started.

Note from the article

" signed the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, which gives a fertilized egg, embryo, or fetus separate legal status if harmed during a violent crime." Note fertilized egg protection.

Your letters and calls to Coburn make great hay out of the protection this law affords fertilized eggs from violence while millions of their brother and sister preborn babies (honest, I don't think I can write "fellow fertilized eggs") are denied the safety of their mothers' wombs and thus are killed by their very own mothers. It's not fair that only some are protected in life when all should be.

and I'm sure you can find more information here (from the article)
anti-Pill organization Pro-Life America on the group's Web site, ProLife.com.

and also from the article

"In the past decade or so, the "hormonal birth control equals abortion" view has quietly grown roots in the antiabortion underground. It's spread from doctor to doctor, through local newsletters, in books with titles such as Does the Birth Control Pill Cause Abortions? (written by Randy Alcorn, an Oregon-based antiabortion pastor and author). . . . An Internet search turns up thousands of Web sites containing articles with titles such as "The Pill Kills Babies," "Are Contraception and Abortion Siamese Twins?" and "The Dirty Little Secrets about the Birth Control Pill."

Come on, you can do it, Sooners, hoist them on their own petard. Your state just handed all of us (with your help) an unmatched opportunity. And don't let Coburn weasel out. Keep pushing and pushing and pushing. Drown him in entreaties to do this and don't let up.

[lawladyprof]

1. No takers? This strategy is worthy of Rove himself

Going to be off-line for a day or so while computer is getting a tune-up. If anyone is interested, PM me and I'll pick it up when I get it back. Hey, we could get the Pennsylvania people to try to get Santorum to bite, and I could look for some other loony tunes senators.

[RoyGBiv]

2. Certainly ...

I've advocated things like this myself, although I hadn't thought of the spin on the abortion issue. It's such a tinderbox issue that I'm afraid of just how much insanity certain people would actually support, especially in OK.

Oklahoma has one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in the nation, and one of the reasons for that is that people think allowing teenagers to use birth control is sinful. That's a problem in and of itself, but it's the gift that keeps on giving. Not having been inculcated with the importance of birth control, these teenagers, both male and female, grow up with the idea that birth control is somehow wrong or unnecessary (whether they strictly think of it as sinful or not) and so don't use it, have a mess of children with no way to support them and then pass on these cultural traits to their own children.

The point of my mentioning all that is to note that a lot of people around here might fully buy the idea that birth control is the same as abortion and should be outlawed altogether.

[lawladyprof]

3. While what you say is true

That perhaps a greater percentage of Oklahomans would support banning birth control, there are three issues. First, I believe the vast/overwhelming number of people (even in Oklahoma) be absolutely appalled at the notion that the government (yeah, that hated govmint)would compel them to use barrier methods. And second, this is a national strategy that uses the most right-wing (easily influenced) senators to drive a wedge into the Republican Party (even as they used gay marriage as a wedge issue against the Dems) because at this time the American people simply wouldn't stand for it. Coburn couldn't enact this in Oklahoma because he is a US senator. Third, a major point is to highlight their hypocrisy and bring media attention to the inconsistency of their positions. But you, you have the perfect opportunity to do the Republicans real harm by encouraging one of their more extremist senators to take a totally untenable position.

[RoyGBiv]

4. I hate to disagree...

But, I do.

Regarding point 1)

What you believe about Oklahomans may or may not be true. The fact remains that the people who vote either aren't appalled at such a notion or simply do not care. I encourage my liberal friends to get down in the trenches with real people and determine what moves them. The reason I do so is that the conventional wisdom does not usually apply to average Oklahomans. I know many, many people who can, without a hint of irony, proclaim that teenage pregnancy is a terrible problem affecting our state and also say that organizations like Planned Parenthood, et al should be abolished, that sex education should not be taught in schools, that sex education should not even be taught in the home, and that preventing teenagers from having sex is an achievable goal.

Point 2)

I understand the national strategy, but your original message did not indicate that this was a primary purpose. Further, I don't know that the influence of an Oklahoma Senator would have any national impact. Inhoffe is widely considered as a lunatic. He espouses positions that are abhorrent to many people, regardless of political affiliation, but a backlash against the Republican party due to his has not occurred. If anything, his idiotic rantings have energized the hard right and religious fundamentalists who put their personal faith above logic, just as Bush's inchoherent ranting during the Presidential campaign energized these same groups.

Point 3)

Highlighting the hypocrisy of these people has been a goal for a very long time. Doing so requires a truly independent 4th estate, which we haven't had for years and which is getting worse by the day. Encouraging Coburn does little in this regard but hurt Oklahomans. The national press will not pick it up, for many reasons, and the local press will spin his rambling as though he were expressing fundamentally sound ideas.

All that said, I do understand your point and agree with it, but starting in Oklahoma, one of the reddest of the red states, is not the way to go about it, imo.

[smartasspol]

5. brilliant

absolute genius.

and it'd be easy to get some of these guys to go along with it. i've met quite a few on the right that are opposed to in-vitro.