"Abortion and the Tea Party"

[ellenrr]

----you'll rarely see me quoting from The New Republic...but this article is very significant imo. It suggests that attacking reproductive rights, repealing Roe v Wade, are the motivating force behind the right-wing agenda. Not the anti-govt drivel, or anti-spending drivel or other drivel. This article was written before the Congressional attack on Planned Parenthood.


"The anger associated with the entire Tea Party movement is, I
suspect, traceable among many activists to endless frustration of its
desire to end the "genocide" of legalized abortion, to which the GOP
"establishment" has given little more than lip service."

For all the endless and interminable talk about "constitutionalism" on
the right, it's rarely acknowledged that lurking in the background is
wrath about Roe v. Wade.

Ignoring abortion is a persistent blind spot in political commentary.
Perhaps because the national media tend to be secular, we are
persistently underestimating the role that abortion plays in right-
wing politics.

It is worth remembering that the "Right-To-Life" (that's right to life
before birth, not after) movement considers abortion analogous to the
Holocaust, and pro-choice politicians to be enablers of monstrous evil—
at worst conscious advocates of genocide.

This fact should inform the way we think about this year's right-wing
groundswell, and the role of Sarah Palin in particular. How many
pundits recognized that her famous Facebook post, which declared that
health care reform would authorize “death panels,” contained a dog
whistle to her fellow right-to-lifers?

Her statement that Trig Palin would be a likely victim of said death
panels was the clear tip-off; the subtext was that godless liberals,
frustrated by her refusal to kill Trig in the womb, had figured out an
alternative means of finishing him off. This is unfortunately standard
reasoning for committed anti-abortion activists, who are enraged by
politicians and pundits who refuse to take their cause seriously.

The same is true with the rage about health care reform; if you read
a lot of right-wing blogs, as I do, you'd note that fear about
Obamacare producing a massive expansion of publicly-funded abortion
was a major motivator of right-wing opposition.

House Minority Leader John Boehner knew his constituency when he made
this statement just prior to the House vote on health reform:
"A 'yes' vote for this government takeover of health care is a 'yes'
vote for sending hard-earned tax dollars to pay for abortions."

Palin: “The biggest advance of the abortion industry in America has
been the passage of Obamacare.”


http://www.tnr.com/blog/jonathan-cohn/77748/abortion-and-the-tea-party-ed-kilgore