The slippery slope
WARNING: Contains political/feministic rant. If you regularly disagree with me on issues of politics and/or gender, you might want to givethis one a miss for our friendship's sake.
I’m no great fan of the slippery slope argument.
You see it used frequently in political discourse-most famously, to my mind, in two scenarios: first, in the Cold War it was used to justify intervention in South Asia (also called the ‘domino theory’). The argument went something like this-“If we do not stop these communist revolutions then they will gain momentum such that the entire region will become communist”. The argument was flawed, (though I’ll leave modern historians to debate-and they have- the degree to which it was patently false) but as a rationale for killing nearly 60,000 Americans and somewhere in the region of 4,000,000 Vietnamese it is highly dubious.
The second form in which I’ve seen it is in recent conservative discourses-where the argument goes “If we legalise sodomy/gay marriage, that will mean that we have to legalize polygamy, bestiality, paedophilia, incest and punching your mother in the mouth!” This argument is so flawed it makes my head spin-first, it works from an assumption that anything progressives want to do in the US is vile and absurd-the “if we give them a gay inch, god knows what kind of horrible kink-ridden miles they’ll take!”. Second, it morally equivocates homosexuality with bestiality, paedophilia and incest, which very clearly are not morally equal (for reasons I don’t want to get to because that isn’t actually the crux of this post, though ask me if you want a further rant). Rick Santorum gained his entertaining frothy neologism for engaging in this kind of repugnant logic.
The problem is that I have found myself thinking more and more in slippery slope terms in the current political climate and the current battle over women’s reproductive rights. I don’t want to, but I have.
For most of my adult life, conservatives have used abortion as the largest of their populist drums. I have visited the largest cross in the western hemisphere in Texas (found here: http://www.crossministries.net/), which among the numerous bronze statues at its base, features one with Jesus himself holding a teeny tiny foetus and openly weeping (seen here, amongst their ot-at-all-ironic ‘awesome views’: http://www.crossministries.net/awesome%20views.htm). Considering Jesus’ stance on abortion, which can roughly be summed up as “…“, it was more than a little curious, and frankly, a bit disturbing in the baking-hot shadow of a nineteen story cross.
Christian Conservatives have taken on the banner of the war on abortion (or perhaps the war to choose whether or not to get an abortion) as part of their core philosophy. It is the most famous of their breaks from truly conservative principles (which states that the government should not interfere in your personal business). I thought, perhaps misguidedly, that if they got their wish, if Roe v. Wade was overturned, that they would celebrate and then shut up. But that is clearly not the case.
Since the wins of 2010, Republicans in the House and, to a much greater degree, in local and state legislatures, have been making unprecedented attacks on abortion rights, making it more and more difficult to get an abortion to such a degree that in many states, while it is de jure legal to get an abortion, it is de facto impossible to do so. In political discourses, abortion providers have had their morality questioned. This is no new thing, but never in my lifetime have the attacks been put forward by people not seen on the slightly nutty fringe: the castigation of Planned Parenthood for daring to provide abortions inamongst all of the other things that they do, and being put forward as the greatest moral carbuncle on America today was shocking and reprehensible-and even more reprehensible because they got away with it politically unscathed.
It is unclear exactly what their endgame is, what the end goal of their philosophy that begins with overturning abortion is. But it seems as if we are seeing a slippery slope form in the shape of the birth control pill. I could not have imagined that this was the next step in the culture war, but it seems as though it is.
The new cries of the Republicans against the birth control pill are cloaked in a veneer of fiscal conservatism and protection of religion-things they always enjoy taking a stand on. The logic goes, 1) We collectively should not have to pay as part of our insurance premiums for women to get birth control pills, either because we are stingy or because we do not believe that birth control pills are morally right. 2) We do not believe that insurance companies of religious institutions should have to issue birth control pills if those institutions believe them to be morally wrong.
Firstly, let’s make it clear that the health insurance companies are against this measure simply because the pill helps their bottom line. Pills are less expensive than emergency contraception, a lot less expensive than abortions, and holy-hell-on-a-stick a whole lot less expensive than deliveries. So the insurance industry, for once, is quietly disagreeing with the Republicans on this.
But why the pill specifically? There are other things which can be argued against both on grounds of stinginess and grounds of religion that are not under fire here. Viagra coverage is the most apt example, but there are others. Why should braces or treatments for acne (both of which I have had) be covered? God made you that way, why should you change! And why should I pay for you to look pretty? Evolution doesn’t exist, so why do we need all of these flu shots? And why should I pay so you don’t get the sniffles in the winter? Why should I pay for the antibiotics to cure your syphilis, Mr Man, when you shouldn’t have been having such dirty sex to begin with? And wouldn’t it be cheaper for us to just let you get the brainworms?
And since when have any Christian groups other than the Catholic Church been against contraception anyway? Did I miss a memo?
There are loads of other roads down this slippery slope, but the Republicans always aim for the vagina. A friend recently asked me, why? Why are they so intent on regulating a woman’s sex life by regulating the results of that sex? Why do they assume that women don’t make rational choices, by forcing them to stare down the blobulous sort-of-head-thing of their unborn child before deciding, as they had done over agonising days and hours beforehand, to kill it, because it is the right thing for them to do. Because we trust rational adults to make decisions for themselves, even when those decisions are agonising.
Note: not mincing words.
It’s difficult to say for sure. Perhaps because it’s low-hanging fruit. Women’s reproductive rights have been under assault for so long, it only makes sense for Rick Santorum and the gang to knock on the next door they see in that row. Perhaps because there is an assumption that women are irrational, that ‘if only they knew the consequences, they would surely not get an abortion’. Perhaps it is a religiously-fuelled failure of empathy-that they don’t believe that put in the same situation that they might make the same, tough decision.
But now, Republican politicians’, presidential candidates’ and lawmakers’ attack on birth control (like this one: http://jezebel.com/5893011/law-will-allow-employers-to-fire-women-for-using-whore-pills) casts it in a somewhat different light. They simply do not want women having sex on their own terms. And if they do, they want everyone to know about it-and, presumably, shame them for it.
Birth control pills have done immeasurable good for society from just about every conceivable metric. Lowering birth rates and permitting women and couples to decide when to have children and how many to have increases wealth and creates a world in which the children who are had are born to people much more willing and better able to take care of them. Fact.
And stopping birth control and shaming women will not stop them having sex, and signing them up for abstinence classes only makes it more likely that they will burst their bonds with a little dangerous sex. This is such a truism that it even became a subplot on Glee. Glee.
But unlike in Glee, or Friends, or the other shows where not-strictly-desired children have popped up, they don't just disappear when it's convenient. From then on, they rule your life. Kudos to the moms out there, I could not do it. Doubly so if my child was not wanted, or I had to raise it by myself.
So why? Why do Republicans, even some women Republicans (coughFoxNewscough) allow this to proceed? Why do men? Ever since I was eighteen, every woman I have dated has used hormonal birth control of some kind (sorry, mom). I'm glad for it, and would only be happier if they could finally perfect a similar one for men so I could use it too. Why are men, the husbands, the boyfriends and for god’s sakes the sons of women who use birth control, not rising up against this with bloodcurdling rage?
Because this isn’t just about abortion any more. It’s a slippery slope that leads to punching our mothers in the mouth.
I’m no great fan of the slippery slope argument.
You see it used frequently in political discourse-most famously, to my mind, in two scenarios: first, in the Cold War it was used to justify intervention in South Asia (also called the ‘domino theory’). The argument went something like this-“If we do not stop these communist revolutions then they will gain momentum such that the entire region will become communist”. The argument was flawed, (though I’ll leave modern historians to debate-and they have- the degree to which it was patently false) but as a rationale for killing nearly 60,000 Americans and somewhere in the region of 4,000,000 Vietnamese it is highly dubious.
The second form in which I’ve seen it is in recent conservative discourses-where the argument goes “If we legalise sodomy/gay marriage, that will mean that we have to legalize polygamy, bestiality, paedophilia, incest and punching your mother in the mouth!” This argument is so flawed it makes my head spin-first, it works from an assumption that anything progressives want to do in the US is vile and absurd-the “if we give them a gay inch, god knows what kind of horrible kink-ridden miles they’ll take!”. Second, it morally equivocates homosexuality with bestiality, paedophilia and incest, which very clearly are not morally equal (for reasons I don’t want to get to because that isn’t actually the crux of this post, though ask me if you want a further rant). Rick Santorum gained his entertaining frothy neologism for engaging in this kind of repugnant logic.
The problem is that I have found myself thinking more and more in slippery slope terms in the current political climate and the current battle over women’s reproductive rights. I don’t want to, but I have.
For most of my adult life, conservatives have used abortion as the largest of their populist drums. I have visited the largest cross in the western hemisphere in Texas (found here: http://www.crossministries.net/), which among the numerous bronze statues at its base, features one with Jesus himself holding a teeny tiny foetus and openly weeping (seen here, amongst their ot-at-all-ironic ‘awesome views’: http://www.crossministries.net/awesome%20views.htm). Considering Jesus’ stance on abortion, which can roughly be summed up as “…“, it was more than a little curious, and frankly, a bit disturbing in the baking-hot shadow of a nineteen story cross.
Christian Conservatives have taken on the banner of the war on abortion (or perhaps the war to choose whether or not to get an abortion) as part of their core philosophy. It is the most famous of their breaks from truly conservative principles (which states that the government should not interfere in your personal business). I thought, perhaps misguidedly, that if they got their wish, if Roe v. Wade was overturned, that they would celebrate and then shut up. But that is clearly not the case.
Since the wins of 2010, Republicans in the House and, to a much greater degree, in local and state legislatures, have been making unprecedented attacks on abortion rights, making it more and more difficult to get an abortion to such a degree that in many states, while it is de jure legal to get an abortion, it is de facto impossible to do so. In political discourses, abortion providers have had their morality questioned. This is no new thing, but never in my lifetime have the attacks been put forward by people not seen on the slightly nutty fringe: the castigation of Planned Parenthood for daring to provide abortions inamongst all of the other things that they do, and being put forward as the greatest moral carbuncle on America today was shocking and reprehensible-and even more reprehensible because they got away with it politically unscathed.
It is unclear exactly what their endgame is, what the end goal of their philosophy that begins with overturning abortion is. But it seems as if we are seeing a slippery slope form in the shape of the birth control pill. I could not have imagined that this was the next step in the culture war, but it seems as though it is.
The new cries of the Republicans against the birth control pill are cloaked in a veneer of fiscal conservatism and protection of religion-things they always enjoy taking a stand on. The logic goes, 1) We collectively should not have to pay as part of our insurance premiums for women to get birth control pills, either because we are stingy or because we do not believe that birth control pills are morally right. 2) We do not believe that insurance companies of religious institutions should have to issue birth control pills if those institutions believe them to be morally wrong.
Firstly, let’s make it clear that the health insurance companies are against this measure simply because the pill helps their bottom line. Pills are less expensive than emergency contraception, a lot less expensive than abortions, and holy-hell-on-a-stick a whole lot less expensive than deliveries. So the insurance industry, for once, is quietly disagreeing with the Republicans on this.
But why the pill specifically? There are other things which can be argued against both on grounds of stinginess and grounds of religion that are not under fire here. Viagra coverage is the most apt example, but there are others. Why should braces or treatments for acne (both of which I have had) be covered? God made you that way, why should you change! And why should I pay for you to look pretty? Evolution doesn’t exist, so why do we need all of these flu shots? And why should I pay so you don’t get the sniffles in the winter? Why should I pay for the antibiotics to cure your syphilis, Mr Man, when you shouldn’t have been having such dirty sex to begin with? And wouldn’t it be cheaper for us to just let you get the brainworms?
And since when have any Christian groups other than the Catholic Church been against contraception anyway? Did I miss a memo?
There are loads of other roads down this slippery slope, but the Republicans always aim for the vagina. A friend recently asked me, why? Why are they so intent on regulating a woman’s sex life by regulating the results of that sex? Why do they assume that women don’t make rational choices, by forcing them to stare down the blobulous sort-of-head-thing of their unborn child before deciding, as they had done over agonising days and hours beforehand, to kill it, because it is the right thing for them to do. Because we trust rational adults to make decisions for themselves, even when those decisions are agonising.
Note: not mincing words.
It’s difficult to say for sure. Perhaps because it’s low-hanging fruit. Women’s reproductive rights have been under assault for so long, it only makes sense for Rick Santorum and the gang to knock on the next door they see in that row. Perhaps because there is an assumption that women are irrational, that ‘if only they knew the consequences, they would surely not get an abortion’. Perhaps it is a religiously-fuelled failure of empathy-that they don’t believe that put in the same situation that they might make the same, tough decision.
But now, Republican politicians’, presidential candidates’ and lawmakers’ attack on birth control (like this one: http://jezebel.com/5893011/law-will-allow-employers-to-fire-women-for-using-whore-pills) casts it in a somewhat different light. They simply do not want women having sex on their own terms. And if they do, they want everyone to know about it-and, presumably, shame them for it.
Birth control pills have done immeasurable good for society from just about every conceivable metric. Lowering birth rates and permitting women and couples to decide when to have children and how many to have increases wealth and creates a world in which the children who are had are born to people much more willing and better able to take care of them. Fact.
And stopping birth control and shaming women will not stop them having sex, and signing them up for abstinence classes only makes it more likely that they will burst their bonds with a little dangerous sex. This is such a truism that it even became a subplot on Glee. Glee.
But unlike in Glee, or Friends, or the other shows where not-strictly-desired children have popped up, they don't just disappear when it's convenient. From then on, they rule your life. Kudos to the moms out there, I could not do it. Doubly so if my child was not wanted, or I had to raise it by myself.
So why? Why do Republicans, even some women Republicans (coughFoxNewscough) allow this to proceed? Why do men? Ever since I was eighteen, every woman I have dated has used hormonal birth control of some kind (sorry, mom). I'm glad for it, and would only be happier if they could finally perfect a similar one for men so I could use it too. Why are men, the husbands, the boyfriends and for god’s sakes the sons of women who use birth control, not rising up against this with bloodcurdling rage?
Because this isn’t just about abortion any more. It’s a slippery slope that leads to punching our mothers in the mouth.