Which life matters more

The nasty guy and his minions will issue a rule saying federal money will be withheld from any healthcare facility that even mentions the word abortion.

Melissa McEwan of Shakesville quotes from a New York Times article. Here’s a bit of the quote with McEwan’s response:

The policy, she said in a statement late Thursday, is "designed to make it impossible for millions of patients to get birth control or preventive care from reproductive health care providers like Planned Parenthood. This is designed to force doctors and nurses to lie to their patients. It would have devastating consequences across this country."

Which, of course, is the entire point.

McEwan again discusses why abortion needs to stay legal, available, and affordable. Abortion is healthcare. I’ll summarize her discussion. It is worthwhile to read her entire post.

No one is compelled to use their body to support another for several months – no one is obliged to give up an organ for another. People asked to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term are being asked to do something no other people are asked to do.

The fetus does not have an equivalent value to the person carrying it. We value some lives more than others such as inmates are valued less than free people. In the same way a woman should be valued more than a fetus.

The debate about when life begins is bogus. The anti-choice people try to cover that by saying the fetus is “innocent.” Isn’t the child who dies because of inadequate healthcare also innocent? What about the person who dies because of a crumbing bridge? It isn’t about when life begins. It’s about which life, woman or fetus, matters more.

Do we recognize women as humans of intrinsic value with their own autonomy and consent? It is only because a vast swath of our population won’t answer that with a resounding “yes” is there even space for this bogus debate about when life begins.

I’ll let McEwan conclude:

I have previously noted on many occasions that I'm hard-pressed to see why I should be any less contemptuous of a man (or woman) who sits at a big mahogany desk in a government building making decisions about my body without my consent than I should be of the man who used physical force to make decisions about my body without my consent.

It is an observation by which anti-choice folks are outraged. They are horrified to be compared, even obliquely, to sexual predators. As well they should be. I am horrified to have to make it. But anyone who holds the position that they should be able to legislate away my bodily autonomy and supersede my consent about what happens to my body shouldn't be too goddamned surprised by the comparison.

One must be ridiculously incapable of self-reflection to simultaneously argue that sexual assault (forcing a woman to do something with her body she doesn't want to do) is a Terrible Thing, but the denial of abortion (forcing a woman to do something with her body she doesn't want to do) is a Moral Imperative.