Daily Kos shows that the artificial hysteria accompanying this politically named medical operation — a rare and radical procedure by any standards — is just a tactical maneuver meant to open up a wider attack on women's (and doctors') medical and reproductive choices:
Now if this quote from Bush doesn't scare everyone who cares about Choice, then nothing ever will:
"Partial-birth abortion is an abhorrent procedure that offends human dignity, and I commend the Senate for passing legislation to ban it," Bush said in a prepared statement. "Today's action is an important step toward building a culture of life in America."
Note Bush's choice of words: "an important step". All those who decry "slippery slope" arguments, that the ban on this rare procedure doesn't mean Bush and GOP will ban all abortions, need only read those words once again:
Today's action is an important step toward building a culture of life in America.
Code-word alert: "important step" equals "we're not stopping here," and "culture of life" means "we'll do anything that ultrapoliticized Christians from the South tell us to do."
We're not talking about the wholesale slaughter of near-term babies. We're talking about a rare situation...where two doctors, unrelated to abortion, come together and agree that the pregnancy should end for medical reason. The extremists, who have no problem executing children and men on death row, have problems terminating pregnancies where the mother's health is in trouble. It's murder, they say. God told them so.
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If the health of a pregnant woman is in an immediate danger that could be alleviated through termination of that pregnancy, shouldn't we stop relying on providence and instead rely on science? Shouldn't each situation and medical decision be left to the doctors involved, instead of some fundy fruitcakes who get their marching orders from On High?
Providence only gets you only so far before the shackles are applied and enlightenment is shadowed by repression. The fundamentalists have show us that much.
Those favoring the ban are, logically, predominantly Republican and male. There are a total of 14 women senators, who represented 25 percent of the votes against the ban.
Simultaneously, the Republican House voted to remove accountability from medicine by placing an arbitrary cap on malpractice damages, replacing the role of judges and juries with numbers chosen at random by Republican lobbyists. So according to the compassionate logic of the conservatives' plan, Linda McDougal, who had two breasts accidently removed by her doctors, will be entitled to damages of only up to $125,000 per surgically removed healthy breast.
Punitive awards are considered taxable by current IRS standards. The $250,000 lifetime cap on malpractice damages becomes especially ludicrous when you realize that Dick Cheney received $278,103 in 2001 in dividends alone which, through the magic of Republican reasoning, they are proposing to make totally tax-free.
Then, when you consider that 75 million Americans have gone uninsured within the last two years — coincidentally the reign of the oxymoronic "compassionate conservatism" — you realize that the Republican party is systematically attacking and debilitating American citizens by preventing their access to health care, to reproductive choices, and to meaningful remedies for medical errors.
And all GOP posturing is now done in the name of God, which makes it seem respectable and holy, but in fact it's homicide in slow motion. More than a few of the 2.8 million newly unemployed, and their children who go without health care, will get sick and many will die — all while the Republican-controlled Congress, Supreme Court, and White House play patty-cake with Christian zealots who are actively invading your bedroom, your workplace, your courts, your schools, your libraries, and your privacy in and out of your doctor’s offices.
As in every other area of policy, this administration places political expediency over common sense, justice, decency, and the personal liberties of American citizens. There is no freedom — and no morality — without choice.
Who is best equipped to handle the speculum: your doctor, or Karl Rove*?
*Remember that Karl Rove helped Christian zealot Ralph Reed get a $500,000+ kickback from now-ailing and abandoned Enron Corporation, which, like Arthur Andersen, has since outlived its political usefulness to the White House and is now left out in the cold to die a slow death.
