New York Times Op-Ed: Abortion Is Normal

Representative Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.), chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said in a recent interview with The Hill that the DCCC will not necessarily withhold funding for pro-life Democratic House candidates in the 2018 elections. Rep. Luján argued that “candidates that fit the district” are key to winning a House majority.

To say this didn’t sit well with Lindy West, author of “Shrill: Notes From a Loud Woman,” and the activist behind the “Shout Your Abortion” social media campaign, would be an understatement. She promptly took to the New York Times Op-Ed page to state: “abortion is not valid fodder for such compromise.” In other words, Democrats should not have a choice as to whether they are pro-choice. She called the idea of funding a pro-life Democrat “putrescent.” Chilling.  

West wrote: “Nineteen hyenas and a broken vacuum cleaner control the White House, and ice is becoming extinct. I get it. I am desperate and afraid as well. I am prepared to make leviathan compromises to pull us back from that brink. But there is no recognizable version of the Democratic Party that does not fight unequivocally against half its constituents’ being stripped of ownership of their own bodies and lives. This issue represents everything Democrats purport to stand for.”

Ms. West, abortion is literally the stripping of ownership of the babies’ own bodies and lives…for the simple convenience of those bigger beings who’ve engaged in undisciplined- if not immoral- behavior. Unlike their potential offspring, those women that choose to have an abortion get to keep their bodies and lives. Kind of a key point.

Ms. West summarily dismissed the concerns of any pro-life Democrats, arguing that “abortion is not controversial on the left.” Neither were Fidel Castro or Che Guevara, but that didn’t make them right.

“Democratic candidates are perfectly welcome to refrain from terminating their own pregnancies,” she wrote, magnanimously, “But to be anti-choice on a policy level is absolutely indefensible from an economic justice, racial justice, gender justice and human rights standpoint. And if the Democratic Party does not stand for any of those things, then what on earth is it?”

 On second thought, her piercing intellect and peerless logic may be changing my mind…to a degree. I am now willing to consider allowing federally-funded abortion…for/of Democrats only…to continue unabated and unchallenged. In this way, perhaps that party will expire before the country does.

She continued with her screed: “Abortion is normal. Abortion is common, necessary and happening every day across party lines, economic lines and religious lines. Abortion is also legal and, contrary to what the pundit economy would have you believe, not particularly controversial. According to the Pew Research Center, nearly 70 percent of all Americans oppose overturning Roe v. Wade, while 75 percent of Democrats believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases. These are not numbers that indicate controversy.”

On a roll now, she sailed on: “So what does it say that so many lefty men are willing to scrap it in an attempt to pander to some vague fantasy of a vast, disgruntled, anti-choice center? What kind of cringing, bewildered invertebrates roll over and capitulate to the losing side of a debate at a time when they’ve never had more leverage?”

Republicans, of course. But please continue, Ms. West.

She does so: “What contortionist of logic came up with the proposal that alienating 75 percent of one’s constituents, and declaring half to not deserve control over their bodies, can strengthen a party’s numbers? This is not broadening our coalition; it’s flagrantly shrinking it.” Actually, abortion is. More minority (and female) babies are aborted than white ones.

Ms. West termed Republicans “an abattoir of clown meat” before averring that their “top policy priority seems to be ‘poor people deserve to die of preventable diseases.’”

She issued this plea: “Come on Democrats, be something. Unite and move left. The center will follow or lose.” Move left? Of where the American Democratic Party is now? One more step to the left would have them falling off their (party’s) plank and tumbling off a California cliff, lost forever to the vast blue abyss.

The author and activist summed up her views by declaring: “Abortion is not a fringe issue. Abortion is liberty.”

Abortion is liberty?! That is a far more preposterous euphemism/statement than the NAZI’s “Arbeit Macht Frei” (“work will set you free”) that appeared over the gates of some World War II concentration camps.  And just as dangerous.

The definition of abortion: “any of various surgical methods for terminating a pregnancy.”

The definition of liberty: “freedom from arbitrary or despotic government or control.”

The two terms are not the same, Ms. West, nor are they analogous. They can be effectively used in conjunction with one another, however: “Abortion is any of various surgical methods for arbitrarily terminating a pregnancy, due to despotic control of a more powerful being, sometimes funded by a government, depriving the baby of his or her right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

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(Planned Parenthood’s President, Cecile Richard, and other “pro-choice” activists, were nearly unanimous in their praise of Ms. West’s op-ed piece).