Why Abortion Is Losing While Gay Marriage Is Winning

[Novara]

Why Abortion Is Losing While Gay Marriage Is Winning

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While abortion and same-sex marriage are both about constitutional and human rights, they are culturally distinct. Same-sex marriage is framed as an issue of love, commitment and normalcy. Abortion, on the other hand, is about sexual activity, reproduction, and bodily autonomy. As The Nation columnist Katha Pollitt put it a few weeks ago, marriage equality is about love and abortion is about sex.

Marriage is about inclusion, about committing to your partner in a traditional, government-sanctioned way. Though many people have varying marital arrangements (not all marriages are monogamous), we think of marriage as a responsible, inevitable choice. The opposite is true for abortion. You can’t help who you love, but you can help whether or not you have sex, we think. Women who have abortions are framed as lazy, lascivious and irresponsible: “If you didn’t want to get pregnant, you shouldn’t have had sex.” We easily isolate women who have had abortions, rather than see ourselves in them.

Marriage is a public act; it is declaring your partnership and commitment to the government and the public. Abortion is the opposite of a public act. Abortion is, according to the Supreme Court, about privacy. It is about an individual woman’s right to privacy and personal bodily autonomy. As such, abortion then becomes an individualized issue, despite the fact that one in three women in America will have an abortion in her reproductive lifetime. It may be incredibly common, but abortion is relegated to the shadows. We don’t talk about abortion at the dinner table, but we do talk about our relationships and spouses.

It’s also worth noting the kinds of cases that liberals have been “winning” this term at the Supreme Court. Some of these cases were based on the flimsiest of terms, like the transparently cynical King v. Burwell that hoped four words taken out of context could unravel health care for millions of Americans. Some, like the squashed threat to the Fair Housing Act, were predicated on the wrongheaded assumption that systemic racism is over and therefore, discriminatory housing practices no longer exist. These are the kinds of the cases that the Supreme Court decided to take on. While it’s heartening to come out with a win in some of these critical cases, the bar has been set depressingly low.

For now, safe abortion clinics in Texas and Mississippi are still open. That’s worth celebrating. But just one day after the Supreme Court allowed those clinics to stay open, Governor Kasich signed Ohio’s budget into law, containing more egregious abortion restrictions designed to close safe clinics. This is a national crisis, one that will continue to wage until the Supreme Court either puts a stop to it, or abortion opponents close every safe clinic in America.


Read more: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/why-abortion-is-losing-gay-marriage

[Demeter]

1. What BS!

There's MONEY behind that Marriage Equality Movement--BIG money, IMPORTANT money. Out of the closet money.

After all, women have the children, and spend their money on their kids. Women have nothing left to fight for their own rights. The only reason we have the birth control pill is a wealthy widow financed it. It wasn't Big Pharma, or Government, or any university. It was a woman with money. (And damn good lawyers, a pet scientist, and some women activists like Margaret Sanger).

It's still a man's world, and unless and until men get the message....it will stay that way. Or a wealthy widow or 5 puts their money behind it.

[Novara]

2. There's also the theory that....

....since men are half of the LGBT movement, there's legitimacy there. Men are fighting the marriage equality movement; who fights for women's rights?

Florynce Kennedy was right: if men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.