Lawrence O'Donnell has an essay in the Huffington Post today essentially asking why there is so much outrage over NFL player Michael Vick killing dogs when there is no concern that dogs are killed and eaten in Asia, and when we consider hunting and fishing positively virtuous. He also refers to the moral relativism (my term) of euthanizing sick pets and injured race horses.
If Lawrence O'Donnell will indulge me, I would like to expand on his thesis to talk about the same inherent gut-thinking in regards to American attitudes towards food and abortion. Why are we bothered by the dead dogs on Michael Vick's property, when we are not bothered by the steaks he may have in his freezer? What if he had dog steaks in his freezer? Monkey steaks? And what does this have to do with abortion?
Let's talk about food first. American have two unspoken rules, and one cultural exception, in regards to meat. The first rule is, we only eat from an extraordinarily short list of animals - cows, pigs, chicken, turkey, fish. Maybe a few of us will occasionally eat sheep or goat, but not so much. Dog, horse, rodents, insects, monkey? Live scorpion on a stick? (I actually saw this last one recently in China) Absolutely not! But these are all excellent protein sources, and are commonly eaten in other cultures.
The second rule is, we do not "display the corpse". I got this phrase from a Spanish friend when I contrasted American meat displays with other countries', where the entire cooked or uncooked body of the animal is proudly arrayed to entice the customer. This is a big turn-off for Americans, who prefer foods that do not bear much resemblance to the animals they came from. We don't want to think too much about the history of our steak before it became a pristine, plastic-wrapped package. Precooked, hermetically sealed meat, and pseudo-cuts of meat like chicken nuggets and McRibs, are particularly American. (How do they make that stuff? Do they grind up unmentionable meat products into a paste and extrude it?) Readily identifiable parts like kidney, heart, eyeballs, and intestines enjoy a negligible popularity. The salient point is that most of us don't know much about where our food comes from, and frankly, we prefer it that way.
(The big cultural exception, of course, is hunting, where the corpse is the point. But that is a topic for some else's diary.)
So what does this have to do with abortion? To address that, first I am going to propose that there are two groups of people who will self-identify in polls as "pro-life". The first group includes the demonstrators outside clinics, and the leadership of organizations like Operation Rescue, Focus on the Family, etc. Their defining characteristic is that - they also oppose birth control. Their real agenda has a religious base. It has nothing to do with protecting "pre-born Americans" at all, and has everything to do with controlling sexuality. This group has managed to wield political clout out of all proportion to their numbers.
However, there is a much larger group of people who will also self identify to a pollster as being "pro-life". Members of this group will never hold up a dismembered fetus photo or scream epithets in front of an abortion clinic. They are your reasonable, rational, friends and neighbors. They are solidly among the 98% of Americans who use contraceptives to plan their families. They may even "blame" women with unintended pregnancy for not using adequate protection. Their defining characteristic in terms of abortion is, that - they don't want to think about it. They are not so much opposed to people being able to get an abortion as they are squeamish about the idea and images that come to mind when they are forced to think about it, which is more often than they would like. This group's silent numbers and willingness to be counted with the first group under the label "pro-life" is part of what makes the first group more powerful than it deserves to be.
Another American taboo, just as deep-seated as the one that says we do not eat dog, is the one that says we do not discuss sexual plumbing in public, particularly women's plumbing. Sex, yes. The biological nitty-gritty? No. Think about the ads for tampons. If you did not know what they are, you would never be able to guess from the ads that they have anything to do with menstration or (gasp!) vaginas. And abortion? No other medical procedure in the history of humankind has ever been described in the same lurid, inflammatory prose. This is effective precisely because it breaks the taboo. If patients had to run a gauntlet of 6 foot high photos of colonoscopy and listen to the same type of description of that procedure, few of us would ever have one. (I had one recently, and was damned grateful that the entire process was designed to put a protective gloss on the actual reality of it.) It is a testiment to the determination and desperation(!) of women with unwanted pregnancies that the abortion rate is as high as it is in spite of the anti-abortion rhetoric that has permeated our society - not to mention the frightening and inaccurate mis-information passed out at crisis pregnancy centers, and required by many state laws.
There have been some wonderful posts recently by people involved in abortion care. They have done a terrific job of making women who seek abortion care more three-dimensional by sharing their stories. I am grateful to them for their eloquence. It is much more difficult to demonize someone you are able to understand and empathize with to some degree. I hope that those diaries have made people more open to the need to keep abortion care safe and legal, and aware of problems concerning access.
This diary is for those people who are firmly in favor of preventing unintended pregnancy, but who call themselves "pro-life" simply because they prefer prevention or would really prefer not to have to think very much about the abortion procedure. I believe there are many of you. And the time has come when it is crucial that you speak out! Republican candidates in particular need to be challenged at every opportunity on their positions on family planning programs and how they intend to reduce the number of unintended pregancies in this country. If they equivocate, or respond along the lines of wanting to "eliminate the culture of contraception that leads to abortion", then RUN, RUN, RUN to support their opponents. Refuse to support any candidate who says they are "pro-life", but who will increase the number of abortions and unplanned child bearing in this country by refusing to support family planning services.