In another sad attempt to prove prolife movement is really just out to get into people's bedrooms and prevent them from having non-procreative sex (because we all know killing unborn children is just a side issue that prolifers drum up for support to regulate all sex), Planned Parenthood's Susan Yudt
interviewed abortion advocate Cristina Page about her new book.
You can tell by the title of the book,
"How the Pro-Choice Movement Saved America: Freedom, Politics and the War on Sex" that Cristina has some delusional beliefs about the pro-choice movement.
An excerpt:
What it boils down to, Page aptly argues, is that anti-choice extremists are not merely anti-abortion. "[A]bortion isn't the keystone issue anymore," she writes. "It's birth control, and more to the point, Americans' sex lives...."
According to Page, the Puritan impulse to bully and shame Americans out of non-procreative sex is what drives this powerful minority of anti-choice extremists to fight tooth-and-nail against birth control — the very thing that reduces the rate of abortion.
That's right. I mean take a look at National Right to Life's web site and material and the web sites and written material of other mainstream prolife groups (say Focus on the Family or Family Research Council) and you'll see that the focus is on stopping birth control and stopping people from having sex. They obviously don't give a rat's behind about the lives of unborn children. They just want to prevent Jim and Sarah from having sex if the intent of the sex isn't to procreate. /sarcasm off
Reading the interview/excerpts from Page's book, I'm left wondering, "Where's the evidence for all these assertions?" She mentions a vote in the Congress and one doctor from Texas. Where's the evidence that powerful prolife organizations are opposed to birth control and want to stop non-procreative sex. Where's the survey that says prolifers are opposed to birth control?
Cristina Page seems to be an individual who's advocacy for abortion has forced her to live with a large amount of intellectual dishonesty.
For example, in 2003, she co-wrote
an editorial for the New York Times with a Right to Life of Michigan employee. The editorial calls on prolife and pro-choice groups to come together to "achieve real progress" and to focus on the "surprising number of important issues on which we agree." It also says, "many unintended pregnancies could be prevented by ensuring that women have health insurance coverage for the most effective contraception methods."
The editorial also says, "We can no longer tolerate inflammatory terms that serve only to divide us further and create conflict." What happened in 3 years so that Cristina is now arguing that the "anti-choice extremists" are against birth control and non-procreative sex when she co-wrote an editorial with a prolifer who said unintended pregnancies could be reduced if health insurance covered birth control?
The editorial also notes that the decrease in abortion "(w)hether (it) has come through better education on contraception or through programs that discourage premarital sex, pro-life and pro-choice advocates should celebrate such an achievement together and acknowledge each other's role in it."
Here's what Page thinks of prolife efforts now - "Yet, as Page points out, these measures haven't reduced the number of abortions — they've merely forced women to postpone first-trimester abortions and seek more risky second-trimester abortions."
Cristina Page has gone from hoping the prolife and pro-choice movements could work together on a number of issues to deceptively labeling prolife organizations as being against birth control and non-procreative sex. How sad is that? Especially when she personally knows a prolifer who agrees with her on birth control issues.
Being almost wholly unable to provide good reasons for why it should be legal to kill developing human beings throughout pregnancy, the pro-choice movement is forced to try to yoke birth control with abortion and accuse most prolifers of wanting to be the sex police.
The article is filled with a ton of "What? You didn't just say that did you?" quotes like:
"[T]oday society accepts our sexual urges. Sexual desire isn't marginalized, isn't correct in some instances and disgusting in others." So then is society accepting of the sex urges of pedophiles? Society accepts the sexual urges of men who cheat on their wives? Or maybe, just maybe, some sexual desires are still marginalized and considered disgusting?
This upswing in fidelity (there are supposedly less extra-marital affairs now than in the 50's) is likely a result of "the more lengthy and thoughtful trying-out of marriage partners, the freer expression within marriages of different desires,"Or maybe (if it's actually true) it's because divorce is more common and accepted. Plus, where are her 50's affair statistics coming from? My guess? Alfred Kinsey.
"Everyone uses birth control, and we're all in favor of it, especially because it prevents the need for abortion."If everyone uses birth control and birth control prevents the need for abortion, then why are there more than a million abortions in the U.S. every year?
Page argues that the attacks on abortion rights are a prelude to a much more sweeping goal: "the creation of a society in which the only acceptable reason for sex is procreation."How did she find our playbook? Who gave it up? How does she know prolifers really want to stop sex among infertile couples, people who have had hysterectomies, tubal ligations, or vasectomies and sex among those too old to have children? /sarcasm off
Posts
