-Caveat Lector-
GO BUSH!!!!!!!!! GO ASHCROFT!!!!!!!!!
On Thu, 1 Feb 2001 19:42:47 EST William Shannon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
writes:
> http://www.thenation.com/docPrint.mhtml?i=20010219&s=pollitt
>
>
> COLUMN | February 19, 2001
> KATHA POLLITT
>
>
> No Olive Branch: Subject to Debate
>
>
> How many times did we hear during the endless campaign that Bush
> wouldn't go
> after abortion if elected? Republicans, Naderites and countless
> know-it-alls
> and pundits in between agreed: Pro-choice voters were too powerful,
> the
> country was too divided, the Republicans weren't that stupid and
> Bush didn't
> really care about abortion anyway. Plus whoever won would have to
> (all
> together now) "govern from the center." Where are all those smarties
> now, I
> wonder? Bush didn't even wait for his swearing-in ceremony to start
> repaying
> the immense debt he owes to the Christian right, which gave him one
> in four
> of his votes, with the nominations of anti-choice die-hards John
> Ashcroft for
> Attorney General and Tommy Thompson to head Health and Human
> Services.
> On his first full day in office, Bush reinstated the "gag rule"
> preventing
> international family-planning clinics and NGOs from receiving US
> funds if
> they so much as mention the word "abortion." (This action was widely
> misrepresented in the press as being a ban on funding for performing
> abortions; in fact, it bans clinics that get US aid from performing
> abortions
> with their own money and prohibits speech--whether lobbying for
> legal changes
> in countries where abortion is a crime or informing women with life-
> or
> health-threatening pregnancies about their legal options.) A few
> days later,
> Thompson announced he would look into the safety of RU-486, approved
> by the
> FDA this past fall--a drug that has been used by half a million
> European
> women over twelve years and has been more closely studied here than
> almost
> any drug on the market. In the wake of Laura Bush's remark to NBC
> News and
> the Today show that she favored retention of Roe v. Wade, both the
> President
> and the Vice President said the Administration has not ruled out a
> legal
> challenge to it, placing them to the right of Ashcroft himself, who
> told the
> Judiciary Committee he regarded Roe as settled law (at least until
> the makeup
> of the Supreme Court changes, he did not add).
> Don't count on the media to alert the public. The press is into
> champagne and
> confetti: Who would have thought "Dick" Cheney would be such an
> amiable talk
> show guest! Time to move on, compromise, get busy with that big tax
> cut. "Who
> in hell is this 'all' we keep hearing about?" a friend writes, "as
> in 'all
> agree' that the Bush transition has been a smashing success?" An
> acquaintance
> at the Washington Post, whose executive editor, Leonard Downie Jr.,
> claims to
> be so objective he doesn't even vote, says word has come down from
> "on high"
> that stories must bear "no trace of liberal bias"--interestingly, no
> comparable warnings were given against pro-Bush bias. So, on
> abortion, look
> for endless disquisitions on the grassiness of the anti-choice
> roots, the
> elitism of pro-choicers and the general tedium of the abortion
> issue. Robin
> Toner could barely stifle a yawn as she took both sides to task in
> the New
> York Times ("The Abortion Debate, Stuck in Time," January 21): Why
> couldn't
> more anti-choicers see the worth of stem cell research, like
> anti-choice
> Senator Gordon Smith, who has several relatives afflicted with
> Parkinson's
> (but presumably no relatives unwillingly pregnant); and why can't
> more
> pro-choicers acknowledge that sonograms "complicate" the status of
> the fetus?
> In an article that interviewed not a single woman, only the fetus
> matters:
> not sexuality, public health, women's bodies, needs or rights.
> Now is the time to be passionate, clever, original and urgent. I
> hate to say
> it, but pro-choicers really could learn some things from the antis,
> and I
> don't mean the arts of arson, murder and lying to the Judiciary
> Committee.
> Lots of right-wing Christians tithe--how many pro-choicers write
> significant
> checks to pro-choice and feminist organizations? Why not sit down
> today and
> send President Bush a note saying that in honor of the women in his
> family
> you are making a donation to the National Network of Abortion Funds
> to pay
> for a poor woman's abortion (NNAF: Hampshire College, Amherst MA
> 01002-5001)?
> March 10 is the Day of Appreciation for Abortion Providers--send
> your local
> clinic money for an abortion "scholarship," flowers, a thank-you
> note, a
> bottle of wine, a Nation subscription for the waiting room! (Refuse
> & Resist
> has lots of ideas and projects for that day--call them at
> 212-713-5657.)
> The antis look big and powerful because they have a built-in base in
> the
> Catholic and fundamentalist churches. But (aha!) pro-choicers have a
> built-in
> constituency too: the millions and millions of women who have had
> abortions.
> For all sorts of reasons (privacy concerns, overwork, the ideology
> of
> medicine) few clinics ask their patients to give back to the cause.
> Now some
> providers and activists are talking about changing that. "My
> fantasy," Susan
> Yanow of the Abortion Access Project wrote me, "is that every woman
> in this
> country gets a piece of paper after her procedure that says
> something like,
> 'We need your help. You just had a safe, legal abortion, something
> that the
> current Administration is actively trying to outlaw. Think of your
> sisters/
> mothers/daughters who might need this service one day. Please help
> yourself
> to postcards and tell your elected representatives you support legal
> abortion, join (local group name here), come back as a volunteer'
> and so on."
> If every woman who had an abortion sent her clinic even just a
> dollar a year,
> it would mean millions of dollars for staff, security, cut-rate or
> gratis
> procedures. Think how different the debate would be if all those
> women, and
> the partners, parents, relatives and friends who helped them, spoke
> up
> boldly--especially the ones whose husbands are so vocally and
> famously and
> self-righteously anti-choice. If women did that, we would be the
> grassroots.
> * * *
>
>
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