COLUMN: Conservatives hypocritical when it comes to abortion
Last spring, a group of anti-choice students strung sheets filled with painted red dots across USU campus in order to raise awareness about the number of abortions happening in the United States each year. Although these “shock and awe” tactics are new from the conservatives on campus. This was an obvious attempt to illicit a gut-level response in the form of a Kotex commercial gone wild. Since Roe v. Wade, conservatives have been framing the abortion debate very irresponsibly.
The right’s puditocracy and Republican members of Congress have been relentless in name-calling and labeling pro-choice individuals as irresponsible “baby-killers.” It’s shocking that the same right-wing president who is responsible for 152 executions while governor of Texas and the lives of nearly 2,000 U.S. soldiers has the audacity to call himself “pro-life.” However, the conservative stance on abortion (much like their stance on everything else) is less about the betterment of society and more about being able to regulate and punish others.
So many times I have discussed this issue with my right-wing peers, and they are all under the impression that birth and babies are “natural consequences,” rather than a decision that should be made from the desire and ability to love and care for a child. This heartless ideal that women should be punished simply because they have sex is at the height of the right’s chauvinism. No man or group of men should be able to tell a woman how she can make health decisions and invade on her privacy. Nobody should be able to tell a woman that she is being punished with pregnancy and motherhood. Also, no child should ever come into this world with the burden of being a woman’s consequence.
The anti-choice lobby wants to dictate a policy of punishment toward women who have sex. If they were truly concerned with the well being of the child they would want to do more in order to help women take care of them. Since the beginning of President Bush’s reign, he has made massive cuts in spending for education and the Child Health Insurance Programs. For a party that professes to care so much about the rights of the unborn, its actions seem to say that once a baby is born they can stop caring. This Republican standard policy of “Love the fetus, punish the child” is just exemplary of right-wing hypocrisy.
The hypocritical right, if truly concerned with curbing abortion, should be doing everything in its power to stop the practice. This would include full disclosure and education of our youth about birth control and condoms. Because pre-marital and extra-marital sex is inevitable, prevention would be a logical solution. However, the same side of the aisle that advocates banning the practice of abortion is also the side that advocates abstinence-only birth control. The conservatives obviously don’t want people to have access to means of prevention, because that would ultimately allow people to avoid the right-wing ideal of punishment, the “natural consequence.”
Conservatives will have you believe that that women who have abortions are plainly savage, selfish, uncompassionate, sadistic nymphomaniac women who are continually on the prowl for the father of their next kill. No woman comes to the decision to have an abortion lightly. It is probably the hardest decision a woman would ever have to make. Most women who have an unexpected pregnancy will decide to keep the child if they feel that their educational goals and economic well being aren’t going to be threatened. Republicans feel that slashes in welfare in order to give corporations tax cuts is the way to go. This gives women depending on welfare, or educational grants a feeling of hopelessness, and the inability to care for themselves, much less a child. Women need to be able to control when they have children in order to get a good education, a good job and ultimately be able to care for the children want to have or already have. The right would have you believe that a woman having to lose sight of her goals is another “natural consequence.” “She made that choice when she chose to have sex.” But, in neo-conworld, that standard and those punishments are not applied to men.
Republicans are also actively misleading Americans by letting them think that their regulation will stop abortion completely. This is entirely untrue. In the 100 years prior to Roe v. Wade it was estimated that 1.2 million illegal abortions were happening each year. These abortions were happening underground, making them incredibly expensive and dangerous; thousands of women were getting injured or died as a result. Prohibition of abortion in the United States did not end the practice but instead ended the life of the woman as well as discontinued the development of the fetus. Studies show that more than half of the abortions happening in the world today are happening in countries where the practice is illegal. Government regulation cannot stop abortion. It will just have abortions being preformed with wire hangars. As much and I hate to agree with Joan Crawford, wire hangars are barbaric.
The right’s need to punish has hurt our country significantly. They have a need to promote “natural consequence” and discourage personal choice. They are willing to bring children into this world who will likely be under-privileged, abused and ultimately unwanted, without giving them the tools they could use to be upwardly mobile. This perpetuates the right’s ability to impose punishment and gives them a new generation of children to punish with substandard education, lack of health care and increased crime rates. Conservatives may call themselves “pro-life,” but they have failed to mention or do anything about the quality of life.
Cy Martz is a senior majoring in public relations. Comments can be sent to cmartz@cc.usu.edu.