Abortion vs. Birth Control

In Carhart II, Justice Ginsburg writes, "Women, it is now acknowledged, have the talent, capacity, and right to participate equally in the economic and social life of the Nation. Their ability to realize their full potential, the Court recognized, is intimately connected to their ability to control their reproductive lives."

Okay. Can I just point out that Carhart II is not a case about birth control? If we were litigating Griswold all over again, I could see you making the argument for a woman's ability to control whether she is going to get pregnant or not. Because Griswold would be the birth control opinion. As it stands, with birth control freely available at any drug store, all of us do indeed have the ability to control our reproductive lives. I don't know if it's necessary in each and every abortion opinion for the liberal Justices to write as if those damn Republicans are about to deny our right to birth control.

It's rhetoric, okay. I know we all use rhetoric. But is abortion actually our ability to control our reproductive lives? Or is it more honest to say that abortion is something we do when we have failed to live up to our ability to control our reproductive lives? If you say, "hey, I'm not using any birth control," okay. You are choosing not to control your reproductive life.

Later on, you might say, "I want to control it! I want to control it!" But that sperm is out of the bag. So to speak.

I know, you had an accident. It happens. All right. People have accidents. I just wish the signs were, "I have a right to clean up my mess when I fuck up my birth control." I know that's not as persuasive a sign. Just more honest, maybe.

"Are we okay on the birth control?"

"Oh yeah, don't worry about it. I'll just have an abortion. No biggie."

I'm just not sure abortion fits comfortably under the birth control umbrella. Flushing my sperm-filled condom down the toilet, that would be birth control. Inducing labor and delivering a retarded infant and ripping him into pieces, that would be abortion.

"Hey, not every abortion involves inducing labor and delivering a retarded infant, you know. A lot of early abortions are simple and easy to do. For instance, the RU-486 is a pill that you can take. That's really simple."

Okay. Good point. Way to keep me on my toes. Not every abortion is the same. Abortion becomes more morally problematic as we go through the pregnancy. Aborting an embryo is less bothersome to a lot of people than injecting poison into a retarded kid's neck. So I'll watch my rhetoric. Not every abortion is a homicide. I'm pretty sure I said that already, but I'll say it again. Right-wingers, you can't just call something a homicide just because it makes you mad. You have to have some objective basis for saying it's a homicide.

That's why I like death statutes. Pay attention to the death statutes, liberals. You know, the ones we apply to us.