Below are some excerpts from an editorial by Cari Lynn Hennessey, opinion Columnist in the Cavalier Daily at UVA.
In a way, I feel like a bully picking on a poor college kid doing an extra curricular activity at the student paper, … but, as she states, there are real consequences to abortion law, … and her trite arguments are so typical of the grown-ups in charge of the left, that this editorial by this young acolyte of the left is as good a proxy for the so-called pro-choice crowd as any:
Her column follows; my comments in italics
SOUTH Dakota is for real. It might seem like a far away state that has little relevance to University students, but the state’s new law banning almost all abortions has serious implications for every young woman in the United States.
Ironically what many feminists fail to see is this, … abortion is the ultimate solution for irresponsible men. For an irresponsible guy, legal abortion makes the issue of an illegitimate child ALL the responsibility of the woman, and makes the baby go away.
The movement represented by South Dakota’s new law has been eroding reproductive rights for decades, and the Supreme Court appointments of John Roberts and Samuel Alito should make us afraid for the future.
Reproductive Rights? What about reproductive responsibility? My right to free speech and assembly and to bear arms are all tempered by certain responsibilities to society – and those rights are clearly spelled out in the Constitution, … not implied through a Supreme Court case in 1973. You want to exercise your right not to have a baby, then don’t get pregnant. Once you have created a baby your rights get tempered with responsibility. Decding to kill the baby you’ve created by your actions is not a right.
You may have a “right” to drink alcohol, but once you drink a certain amount you give up your “right” to drive because you might hurt someone. You have a “right” to smoke, but not just anywhere you want because it might bother someone. The left buys into all sorts of codified restrictions on rights.
Why is not the left worried about other curbs on reproductive rights? You don’t have a right to conceive a baby with someone who you are attracted to but who doesn’t want to do so with you, or with a mentally incompetent person, or with a minor, or with an enlisted person if you are an officer (or vice versa) if you are federal employee under the employment of the Pentagon. Or, empirical evidence via case law, would suggest, you really don’t have the right to make a baby with any one in your work place. You certainly don’t have the right to make a baby in a public place either. Are these curbs on reproductive rights? What are these rights? Would someone from the crowd who invokes them be so kind as to define them for the rest of us so we can have a debate about their relevance? that might make a good column, or term paper, for Ms. Hennessy.
Considering the social conservatism of our own General Assembly, the young women of Virginia should take this possibility very seriously. Residents of states with solidly pro-choice legislators might not be immediately affected by the overturn of Roe v. Wade, but the Virginia General Assembly routinely considers bills that would restrict the access of women to abortion clinics and even to contraceptives.
We can only assume that last line means the morning after pill controversy form a couple years ago and simply taking legislative action to say that taxpayer dollars dedicated to education cannot go to subsidize the morning after pill on state run school campuses is hardly restricting access to contraceptives.
And secondly, as an aside, the GA has such debates because the Supreme Court in Planned Parenthood v Casey has ruled that such restrictions are indeed Constitutional – the pro-choice crowd’s gambit on that case backfired.
It’s important to understand that the end of legal abortion would not mean the end of abortions but a return to underground, unregulated clinics and life-threatening attempts by desperate women. We have all seen the coat hanger as a chilling symbol of illegal abortions, but most college students are too young to remember the years before the Roe v. Wade decision.
Good point. Passing laws against bank robbery and murder and cyber crime hasn’t stopped any of those. Let’s keep bank robbery safe and legal!
Ask your mothers and your grandmothers what happened to women before 1973 — what happened to their female friends or their college roommates when unwanted pregnancies occurred.
Instructions on how to perform an illegal abortion have already circulated online in response to South Dakota’s new law. A blogger calling herself Molly Blythe made headlines when she posted a graphic guide for do-it-yourself abortions intended for women who would lose access to legal clinics under a ban. It might be premature to worry about women attempting such a procedure on their own, but the instructions are a reminder of what women will attempt without access to legal clinics.
OK, … if abortion is gruesome if not performed by professionals with the best of medical technology, then why does the pro-choice crowd oppose having abortion clinics meet the same standards as hospitals?
For years, the abortion issue has rallied the Christian Right in support of the Republican party, but Republicans might find themselves losing popularity with the wider public if abortion bans become a reality.
I would argue that Democrat’s dgmatic position of “abortion on demand” has cost them popularity – and we are seeing a spate of old traditional pro-life democrats come back on the scene. Just check out Pennsylvania politics over the past decade.
I thought about calling this article, "penny wise and pound foolish," because that's exactly what this 