How I Always Win the Abortion Argument

From Daily Kos:

By SemDem  

This past Friday, Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam signed the deceptively named “Tennessee Infants Protection Act,” a bill that does nothing for infants but prohibits physicians from performing abortions after the 20th week of pregnancy. Tennessee Republicans blocked all efforts from Democrats to include exceptions for incest, mental health, or even rape. (After all, if a woman is raped, GOP lawmakers say it must be God's will.)

The “pro-life" movement has never been about "life," it has, and always will, be about control. Control over a woman's reproduction—taken from the individual and given to

GOP legislators, like Republican Billy Long (pictured).  The

entire movement has been a scam from its inception: it all began with a single disingenuous conference call to come up with ways to gin up support for segregationist Bible colleges. Up until that point, churches didn’t have any problem with it. Why should they? The Bible says nothing about it. Even though abortion was practiced way back in Jesus’ time, He never said one word about it. 

Yet when the Tennessee law was debated, among the countless other patriarchal attacks on women, I hear the same tired argument over and over again. I hear it in other statehouses, including my own, whenever the GOP tries to regulate women’s pregnancies. Unfortunately, I always see Democrats trying to argue on their terms, and falling for the same trap. So let’s talk:

As many of you know, I live in a conservative paradise: no services, few jobs, and guns—lots of guns. The same rednecks who brag about mowing down a family of deer or discussing their fantasies of killing folks they don’t like are always the same ones getting on their soapbox about the sanctity of life when it comes to abortion. One of my neighbors went on and on about “killing babies"—right after he made a joke about what to name a dead Syrian toddler. (I won’t repeat it. I couldn't even pretend to like him after that. )

A politician isn’t usually that blatantly crass. (Although the new Trump-era GOP politicians are really testing the waters.) But they all make the same argument that frames it very black and white: God makes the baby,  and the evil woman kills the baby. (After all, she is just an empty vessel.) The zygote, however, is no different to them than an infant. To them, terminating a pregnancy—even if the cells are smaller than a dot (.)—is exactly the same thing as strangling a newborn baby. It’s crazy, but that’s how they think. Arguing with any rightwing politician or supporter with this kind of framing is a losing proposition every time.

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