Stop talking about abortion!

[truthpusher]

We did not bring this to the table THEY DID!!

Why are we still talking about this?

We should have stopped talking about it in 1973. We got what we worked for. A womens right to choose. The only reason we are still talking about it is; they keep bringing it up!

From now on if somebody asks me if I am pro-choice or pro-life; I will tell them it doesn't matter. It would be like somebody asking me if I am pro-slavery or pro-freedom. Both of these issues were already decided by the courts! These are legal issues! I can't do anything about them!

[slackmaster]

1. Abortion! Abortion! Abortion! Abortion! Abortion!

Neener-Neener!

:evilgrin:

...they keep bringing it up!

Yeah, "they" sure do.

:dunce:

[Daisey Mae]

2. YOU JUST MIGHT BE ON TO SOMETHING...makes sense to me....

[OldLeftieLawyer]

3. You tell them you're neither.

You tell them you're in favor of following the law.

That "pro-choice" and "pro-life" bullshit has muddied the waters long enough. I hope we effete liberal types will stop buying into the rightwingnut corruption of the language, and simply state our case:

"We follow the law. We're good Americans."

(Thank you for bringing this up. It's been on my mind. For thirty years.)

[jdj]

22. ask "with regards to American fetuses (feti?) or Iraqi?"

[sangh0]

4. yep

100% correct

[MsTryska]

5. Agreed.

If we're not talking about a black person's right to vote, why are we still talkign about abortion.



it's legal. done deal, in the consitution. so far anyways. *sigh*


if we'd just not talked about maybe we wouldn't be in the situation we're in today.

[ClassWarrior]

6. Excellent point. We don't need to change our position.

We just need to shut up.

I like to tell people who use abortion as a political cudgel that this issue is too important to leave in the hands of a bunch of opportunistic politicians.

NGU.

[okieinpain]

18. wow, why not. let the repugs go nuts about it.

[hexola]

7. Yeah - but they are winning on their position...

So do we stick with a position that is losing strength...?

[catzies]

8. I too would like it off the table and permanently settled but they won't

let us. It's legal. It should stay legal and left alone.

It's another way to keep us divided. As long as we have to have this endless national discussion about it, we're too busy to fight other fights. But we can't stop fighting or they win.

I use a football analogy to explain my position on this:

Roe v. Wade was our Hail Mary pass back in 1973. We thought we had won the game with one spectacular play, but then the other side got the ball back.

They were't able to even the score with one play, but they have been very successful in pushing us down the field a few yards at a time, with chips at RvW with parental notification, exceptions, lack of access, waiting periods, lack of new trainees in procedures in our med schools, clinic bombers and protesters, etc. etc. Each new effort eroding Roe has been like a first down for them, which is why they've been able to keep the ball all these years.

They haven't been able to score yet (by overturning it outright), but neither have we been able to make other gains because we're still busy playing defense. As long as we're stuck playing defense, we can't do anything else. And they like it that way.

They have us backed up all the way down field, and we turn around and stare at our own end zone again and say, "How did we get here? Weren't we just at the other end of the field?"

[truthpusher]

12. There still playing the same game with civil rights, but that is becoming

more fringe and the only thing they have really been able to make any impact on is affirmative action. Maybe we will have some issues with partial-birth and parental notification but I am not sure if they will get much further than that.

[Warren DeMontague]

9. Well, the right wing is all set to move on to the birth control pill...

I guess they figure they have abortion in the bag.

[truthpusher]

30. Let them, people are not stupid...

...they know when they are being controlled, they just don't like it when people tell them that they are too stupid to figure that out for themselves.

[Kazak]

10. Agreed...let them eat this:

"If the pro-life people in the late 1960's and the early 1970's had been willing to compromise with the pro-choice people, we could have had an abortion law that provided for abortion only for the life of the mother, incest, rape, and defective child; that would have cut the abortions down to three percent of what they are today. But they had an all-or-nothing mentality. They wanted it all and they got nothing."

-C. Everett Koop

[ClassWarrior]

14. They didn't exactly get nothing though...

They got a fight that they can use to distract the American people from their wholesale looting of our taxes and ransacking of our rights. I really don't think the Radical Rightwing leadership of the GOP cares one bit about the fight against abortion. They want the war.

NGU.

[truthpusher]

27. Exactly...this is their big draw and we have been suckered to...

...keep it alive.

Let it die - Repukes and Fundies love the confrontation. Let's stop giving it to them. Let's fuck with their heads by telling them it's a non-issue and we don't want to talk about it.

We need to tell them this is a legal issue, it's out of our hands, we can't do anything about it. We'll leave this one up to the lawmakers.

We should stop trying to win over the public on the abortion issue. Let's make them try to win over the public. everybody is already on one side or the other on this issue. Let's let the fundies irritate everybody by trying to force their beliefs down everybody's throat. Let's drop it and start talking about something that we have open ears on. Abortion is not the issue.

[jasmeel]

11. I could not agree more!! I've been pro choice my whole life

but we've lost tons of votes over it. Normal people who would be democrat have turned to repub over it. They vote for fetuses but don't care about people. It's disgusting and it's a red herring!! I wish I could open their eyes.

[orpupilofnature57]

13. These are the same ass holes, opposed to welfare for the poor

[Djinn]

15. Are there any areas in the US

where slavery is still practised? the way I understand it there are plenty of places in the US where it's impossible to get an abortion because so many doctors are unwilling to perform them now.

Abortion being technically legal isn't much good when you're young and broke and unable to access one without a cross country journey.

[truthpusher]

16. then we can talk about that specifically..

...my problem is the debate that is still raging over pro-this, pro-that. It is a right and we are still waving the flag for this right as though it has not been granted yet.

[bicentennial_baby]

21. Yes

There's a booming domestic slave trade in the US, as well as sex slavery. I heard a piece about it last year on NPR. I think there was a story in the New Yorker

[Djinn]

25. good point

therefore EITHER question in the original post is quite valid

[0rganism]

17. This is not a dead issue

We are two SCOTUS appointments (O'Conner, Stevens) away from overturning Roe in favor of state-by-state determinations.

[truthpusher]

29. I do think that it should be dead as a topic of discussion...

...of course it should be worked on in the background - through any means possible. But as far as telling people you are pro-choice, again would be like telling somebody you are pro-freedom and not pro-slavery. The issue of abortion has already been decided on. The government has no jurisdiction regarding a womens right to choose.

I also think we can elevate the level of absurdity regarding the effort to appeal this right; we can do this by exposing other attempts and/or binds that the government has on our freedoms.

[theorist]

19. I wish we could tell the anti-choicers this:

"Love it or leave. Abortion is legal here, and if you don't like it, you can just move to Russia." Unfortunately, we still have some fighting to do.

[jdj]

23. I once heard that Russian women had had an average of 3 or 4 abortions.

Did something change? As far as I understood, it's a form of birth control over there.

[theorist]

26. I couldn't think of a country that didn't allow abortions, so

I picked a country that they would be very uncomfortable living in. It was a bad choice, but I don't feel like changing it now. Boy am I lazy tonight.

[truthpusher]

31. Why can't you tell them that? They say that all the time when we...

...complain (except for the Russia part; maybe USSR would have been better ;-) ). And they are usually right. We shouldn't be complaining. And frankly, that's exactly what they are doing with abortion, they are complaining. It is not going to make a difference. If they don't like it they should move to a Country ruled by an Islamic Theocratic government(one suggestion).

There needs to be an understanding that there can not only be some freedoms in America. If we are a supposed free country than we need to be all free!

[Cleita]

20. I said this a long time ago when I first came to DU

before the 2002 election. There were so many abortion threads going on then and I was suspicious that the religious right was keeping the dialogue up. Right after the election, they disappeared until this election. It's true they are defining the issues not us.

We need to start pushing social issues like homelessness and people who die because they don't have access to medical care and children who are dying in Iraq because they can't get the medical care they need in time after being shot by our troops. We have to do this. Put their Christian asses on the line for genocide abroad and the social inequalities at home that are happening because they can't focus on anything else than bogus moral values.

[jdj]

24. I think we are castrated. We don't own the media, and

therefore we don't get to decide which issues get pushed.

The only fair medium is the internet, and I'm sure they'll be coming after that soon.

[truthpusher]

32. I agree...

"We need to start pushing social issues like homelessness and people who die because they don't have access to medical care and children who are dying in Iraq because they can't get the medical care they need in time after being shot by our troops."

Every item on your list should be a talking point. we have been so busy talking about abortion that your comment about medical care for the people our troops are shooting, is the first I heard like it since I have been visiting DU.

[prof_science]

28. Umm...

...I think you would say that you are pro-freedom. Just because slavery is outlawed doesn't mean there aren't people who still think it would be ok.

What is my point? Man, why'd you have to go and ask that???

[truthpusher]

33. Yep...