Saturday, December 5, 2009

Stupak et al

I've long thought that the reason Our Leaders have allowed the ridiculous abortion "debate" in this country to go on as long and as viciously as it has (aside from the fact that it conveniently distracts everyone who cares about it from realizing what else the said leaders are doing, especially as concerns the Supreme Court's rulings on corporate issues) is that the court decision that forced abortion to be legalized nationwide did so while establishing a constitutional right to privacy. In other words, I thought that those in the political/media class who are interested in overturning Roe v. Wade (I say nothing of the members of the Great Unwashed who share this interest) were interested in doing so because overturning it would throw into question this right to privacy, opening wide the door to even more widespread and omnipresent surveillance.

But this Stupak thing has me confused. Do they really, actually care about abortion itself? Right now it seems that way. Maybe it's a longer-term strategy, where they figure someone will challenge the Stupak amendment on Roe v. Wade grounds, thus giving the Court the opportunity to overturn that ruling, but I dunno, that seems overly complicated.

Incidentally, if this doesn't convince all the people who are rabidly pro-choice (among whose number I certainly count myself, as I tend to think that abortion should be encouraged where applicable, although, again, I consider things like the mass murder of brown people for profit more important, if we must rank issues) that the Democrats aren't on their side any more than the Republicans are, I don't know what will. But then, I've said that before about other things.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

stupak? not sure, maybe to get some righties on board the "national insurance" scam?

but excellent point on the general privacy issues in roe v. wade.

Ethan said...

Thanks!

I have a hard time believing that anything in the bill was done to get right wingers on board, seeing as for one thing the bill was written by the right wingers, and for another thing, the Republicans weren't going to vote for it anyway because they have to maintain the appearance of competition between the parties. That said, I could see it being in there as a fop (that's not right--sop? What's that expression? Did I just make it up?) to their constituents, make it look like they're doing something in their interest. Who knows. All I know for sure is, shit's fucked.