Why I am tempted to be a single-issue voter

[hymnia]

Because it seems like most of the people who support the pro-choice candidate in any election don't get what the problem is. Mr./Ms. Casual Pro-choicer just seem so ignorant about what the abortion rights movement actually does and tries to do. And it feels like anyone who speaks up and tries to explain is dismissed as just some right-wing nut-job

Comments

Part II

[blpurdom]

That, I believe, could be why so many people are extremely offended that McCain used air quotes to talk about the mother's health as a reason for abortion in a tiny number of extreme cases; it is not only insulting to women who want to be able to have some measure of control over their own bodies, to have their health reduced to inherently sarcastic air-quotes, it is hugely insulting to the professionalism and judgment of their doctors. I am familiar with many, many doctors, having previously worked at the National Board, which creates the tests that doctors across the country must pass to be able to work; they are exceptionally hard-working and principled people who are constantly having to worry both about safeguarding their patients' health AND about whether something they have decided, in good faith, might bring a malpractice suit down on their heads. (Some people I know in med school right now say that they are all told, "It's not a matter of IF you will be sued; it's a matter of WHEN.") I believe that if a doctor says a very late term abortion (which almost never, ever occur at ALL) is necessary to save a woman's life then it is; I think the idea that doctors might be looking for "excuses" to perform such procedures is simply another bit of anti-choice rhetoric, and it shows absolutely no compassion or understanding of what doctors or pregnant women go through who reach such a crossroads and must make difficult choices.

The thing is this: if a pregnancy has reached a very late stage and is only terminated because of the mother's health, then chances are it is because that baby was wanted. The mother took a chance, and unfortunately, it didn't work out. Now she and her doctor must make a difficult choice, and very likely a devastating one for the mother. To layer onto that poor woman the accusation that she is "getting rid" of her baby for "convenience" and not because her doctor wants to save her life is horrific; no one should ever have to go through wanting a baby and not being able to carry it to term because of health concerns, IMO, but there is no way anyone should have to go through all of that AND then be accused of having only trivial, selfish concerns and making up excuses. The lack of thought and consideration for what these mothers and their doctors go through in these situations shows a staggering lack of imagination and a single-minded dedication to the movement's rhetoric that I find galling.

In that Obama does in fact want to reduce the incidence of abortion by making comprehensive sex education again a part of our schools' curricula, not to mention the availability and affordability of contraceptions and vastly improved health care (so that a woman knows that, if she's pregnant, she can afford proper prenatal care and, later, a pediatrician for her baby) I think that it's really clear who voters can support if they're not completely anti-sex (since that is a common component of some anti-abortion groups). If someone is not opposed to sex on principle but would like people to be more responsible and reduce the number of abortions by reducing the number of pregnancies, McCain is the last person that voter should support.

Re: Part II

[warrioreowyn]

If someone is not opposed to sex on principle but would like people to be more responsible and reduce the number of abortions by reducing the number of pregnancies, McCain is the last person that voter should support.

I would dispute that. Canada has public health care, sex education, and a better welfare system than the US; our abortion rates are rising, while those in the US have been falling for the 20 or so years at least. The determining factor for how common abortions are is not any of the above things, but the social acceptability of the practice - in the US it is still a big issue in public discourse, AS IT SHOULD BE. In Canada it is political suicide to even bring it up, it is only ever described as "reproductive rights" - utterly ruling out even the possibility of any sincere dissenting view - and the pro-abortion groups do everything they can to block it from any public discourse. In my university, a group was BANNED from the campus purely for putting up pro-life posters suggesting a focus on alternatives to abortion, despite saying nothing about changing the laws that make it utterly unrestricted up to the moment of birth,

Public sentiment here is genuinely pro-abortion. My seventeen-year old cousin recently became a father and the general opinion of people I've spoken to outside the church is that keeping the child was a bad idea, that kids that age aren't ready to have babies - and that abortion is the best of the possible options. That is why I am skeptical that pro-life groups can make any gains by ceding ground on abortion - giving up ground makes pro-abortion advocates more extreme, not less, and ends up ending any honest public discussion on the issue.