Deep Politics Forum

The New Tork Times
September 1, 2012

Scaring the Voters in the Middle
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

THE claims of Representative Todd Akin that women don't get pregnant from "legitimate rape" now live in infamy. But a few things you may not know:

¶If an American woman in uniform is raped and becomes pregnant, Congress bars Tricare military insurance from paying for an abortion.

¶If an American woman in the Peace Corps becomes pregnant, Congress bars coverage of an abortion and there is no explicit exception even if she is raped or her life is in danger.

¶When teenagers in places like Darfur, Congo or Somalia survive gang rapes, aid organizations cannot use American funds to provide an abortion.

¶A record number of states have curbed abortions in the last two years. According to the Guttmacher Institute, which follows reproductive health, 55 percent of American women of reproductive age now live in one of the 26 states deemed "hostile to abortion rights."

¶The Republican campaign platform denounces contraceptive education in schools. Instead, it advises kids to abstain from sex until marriage.

All this boggles the mind. Republican leaders in 2012 have a natural winning issue the limping economy but they seem determined to scare away centrist voters with extremist positions on everything from abortion to sex education.

Most Americans do not fit perfectly into "pro-choice" or "pro-life" camps. Polls show that about one-fifth want abortion to be legal in all situations, and another one-fifth want abortion to be illegal always. The majority fall somewhere between, and these voters are the ones who decide elections.

Bill Clinton won their support with his pragmatic formula that abortion should be "safe, legal and rare." Then social conservatives won ground with a shrewd strategic decision to focus the abortion debate where they had the edge.

They fought battles over extremely rare procedures they called "partial-birth abortion." They called for parental consent when a girl seeks an abortion, and for 24-hour waiting periods before an abortion. In polls, around two out of three Americans favor those kinds of restrictions.

But change the situation, and people are more in favor of abortion rights. Four out of five Americans believe that a woman should be able to get an abortion if her health is endangered, or if the pregnancy is the result of rape.

So it's astonishing that Republicans would adopt an absolutist platform condemning abortion without offering an exception even for rape.

Mitt Romney insists that his position on abortion is crystal clear. In fact, his policy is so muddled that he doesn't seem to know it himself. So, Mr. Romney, let me help you out.

On your campaign Web site, you say that life begins at conception and that you favor overturning Roe v. Wade. As with the Republican Party platform, you give no indication there that you favor an exception for rape or to save a woman's life.

Likewise, you seemed to endorse a "personhood" initiative like the one in Mississippi last year that would have treated a fertilized egg as a legal person. It failed because of concerns that an abortion, even to save a woman's life, could be legally considered murder. It might also have banned in vitro fertilization and some forms of birth control.

These days, Mr. Romney, as you seek general-election voters, you insist that you do, in fact, accept abortion in cases of rape, incest or a pregnancy that endangers a woman's life. In an interview with CBS the other day, you added another exception, for the health of the mother.

Mr. Romney, if you don't know your own position on abortion, how are we supposed to understand it?

More broadly, you've allied yourself with social conservatives who are on a crusade that scares centrists and mystifies even many devout evangelicals.

"Representative Akin's views don't represent me," Richard Cizik of the New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good told me. "They also don't reflect the theological and ethical, not to mention scientific, view of evangelical leaders, who understand the rationale for exceptions: God's grace and mercy. Akin and company are the political and theological minority, but they have captured the G.O.P.'s platform process."

Americans are deeply conflicted on abortion, but I think most are repulsed by the Republican drive to impose ultrasounds in some cases invasive ones on women before an abortion. Five states now require a woman, before an abortion, to endure an ultrasound that may use a probe inserted into her vagina. Four of those states make no exception for a rape.

And if the Republican Party succeeds in defunding Planned Parenthood, the result will be more women dying of cervical cancer and fewer women getting contraception. The consequence will probably be more unintended pregnancies and more abortions.

Or there's sex education. Today in America, more than one-third of teens say that when they began having sex, they had not had any formal instruction about contraception. Is this really the time for a Republican Party platform denouncing comprehensive sex education?

Some Americans don't even seem to have had any sex education by the time they're elected to Congress. Like Todd Akin.


Adele

Republicans are Troglodytes, as well as being anti-information/knowledge/science/logic/ - and compassion [the big, if not biggest, philosophical point to their 'saviors'' ethical program]

For Troglodytes only:

[video]http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/056ffa6b76/legitimate-rape-pharmaceutical-ad?rel=player[/video]

Peter said:

Quote:Republicans are Troglodytes, as well as being anti-information/knowledge/science/logic/ - and compassion [the big, if not biggest, philosophical point to their 'saviors'' ethical program]

Agreed, Peter. Nicholas Kristof usually gets it right; he's a favorite of mine on the NY Times Op-Ed pages.

Adele

Keith Millea Wrote:For Troglodytes only:

[video]http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/056ffa6b76/legitimate-rape-pharmaceutical-ad?rel=player[/video]

Keith,

Where do you find these videos (Funny or Die, etc.)?

I'm passing it on....... Thanks.

Adele

Adele,

That one came from one of the two web pages that I get my reading news from.

http://www.commondreams.org/further/2012/08/31-1

Home page:

http://www.commondreams.org

Adele Edisen Wrote:

Keith Millea Wrote:For Troglodytes only:

[video]http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/056ffa6b76/legitimate-rape-pharmaceutical-ad?rel=player[/video]

Keith,

Where do you find these videos (Funny or Die, etc.)?

I'm passing it on....... Thanks.

Adele

Yeah, that's a 'keeper'!.....even momentarily got me out of my depression.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]3976[/ATTACH]

In case you're distressed about the possibility of a Romney-Ryan government, here's some good news:

There are many people in the United States who are reluctant to be active against US foreign policy, or even seriously criticize it, because a Democrat is in the White House, a man promising lots of hope and change. Some of them, however, might become part of the anti-war movement if a Republican were in the White House, even though pursuing the same foreign policy. And we can be sure the policy would be the same for there's no difference between the two parties when it comes to foreign policy. There's simply no difference, period, though each party changes its rhetoric a bit depending on whether it's in the White House or on the outside looking in.

Similarly, the movement for a national single-payer health insurance program has been set back because of President Obama. His health program is like prescribing an aspirin for cancer, but the few baby steps the program takes toward bringing the United States into the 21st century amongst developed nations is enough to keep many American health-care activists content for the time being, especially with Obama facing a tough election. They are satisfied with so little. With a Republican in the White House, however, there might be a resurgence of a more militant health-care activism.

Moreover, if the Republicans had been in power the past three years and done EXACTLY what Obama has done in the sphere of civil liberties and human rights, many Obamaites would have no problem calling the United States by its right name: a police state. I mean that literally. Not the worst police state in the history of the world. Not even the worst police state in the world today. But, nonetheless, a police state. Just read the news each day, carefully.

Sam Smith, editor of the Progressive Review, has written: "Barack Obama is the most conservative Democratic president we've ever had. In an earlier time, there would have been a name for him: Republican."

Oh but there's Social Security and Medicare, you say. Can Romney be trusted to not make serious cuts to these vital programs? His choice of running mate, Paul Ryan, is practically a poster child for such cuts.

Well, can Obama be trusted to not make such cuts? Consider this recent comment in the New York Times: "[Obama] particularly believes that Democrats do not receive enough credit for their willingness to accept cuts in Medicare and Social Security." 6

As somebody once said, the United States doesn't need a third party. It needs a second party.

The only important cause that might significantly benefit from a Democratic administration is appointments to the Supreme Court, if there is in fact an opening. But does this fully override the benefits of Obama being out of office as outlined above?

Dear Reader: I truthfully do not want to be so cynical. Despite the quips, it's not really fun. But how else can one react to the Republicans and Democrats given their behavior at their recent conventions? If they can so obviously ignore the wishes of their own delegates, what can the average American citizen expect? Have a look at these remarkable scenes caught on video or read this account of the voice votes at the recent conventions.

How many voters does it take to change a light bulb?

None. Because voters can't change anything.

So what to do?

As I've said before: Inasmuch as I can't see violent revolution succeeding in the United States (something deep inside tells me that we couldn't quite match the government's firepower, not to mention its viciousness), I can offer no solution to stopping the imperial beast other than this: Educate yourself and as many others as you can, raising their political and ideological consciousness, providing them with the factual ammunition and arguments needed to sway others, increasing the number of those in the opposition until it raises the political price for those in power, until it reaches a critical mass, at which point ... I can't predict the form the explosion will take or what might be the trigger ... But you have to have faith. And courage.

Some further thoughts on American elections and democracy:

Richard Reeves: "The American political system is essentially a contract between the Republican and Democratic parties, enforced by federal and state two-party laws, all designed to guarantee the survival of both no matter how many people despise or ignore them."

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832): "In politics, as on the sickbed, people toss from one side to the other, thinking they will be more comfortable."

Alexander Cockburn: "There was a time once when 'lesser of two evils' actually meant something momentous, like the choice between starving to death on a lifeboat, or eating the first mate."

U.N. Human Development Report, 1993: "Elections are a necessary, but certainly not a sufficient, condition for democracy. Political participation is not just a casting of votes. It is a way of life."

Gore Vidal: "How to get people to vote against their interests and to really think against their interests is very clever. It's the cleverest ruling class that I have ever come across in history. It's been 200 years at it. It's superb."

Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius: "The opinion of 10,000 men is of no value if none of them know anything about the subject."

Michael Parenti: "As demonstrated in Russia and numerous other countries, when faced with a choice between democracy without capitalism or capitalism without democracy, Western elites unhesitatingly embrace the latter."