Well said!
For me, the dead giveaway is the exemption for rape or incest; any supposed 'pro-lifer' who is okay with that is obviously all about the slut-shaming, and the 'life' part of the thing is just pretext.
The thing that blows my mind is that they hardly even talk about their sham concern for life anymore; they go straight into slut-shaming.
I'll even allow that if "fetal life" is an absolute, then it's absolute even in the cases of rape or incest.
Where the slut-shaming becomes agonizingly obvious is when these people fight to make contraceptives inaccessible. As Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon is forever pointing out, contraceptive and sex education are the only things proven to actually reduce abortion.
The other good slut-shaming tell is when those "pro-life" folks are also pro-death penalty.
The anti-abortion folks have become an industry now, and if abortions were significantly reduced in number ("safe, legal, and rare"), they would no longer be able to use scare tactics and shame to raise money. That, combined with their hatred and fear of female sexuality, provides major motivation to fight comprehensive sex education, the HPV vaccine, and the continued development of safe, effective contraceptives. Disgusting. But their "holy" mission will always trump the life and health of individual women.
I don't think there's anything more disgusting, more anti-life, and more hateful in all this world than the campaign against the HPV vaccine.
Amen to that, Deborah.
Oh, Deborah, please tell us what you said to that woman in your preliminary calling encounter?! Or were you rendered speechless?
ahab, I was a little rendered speechless, and engaging was also off-purpose. I was calling as a representative of MoveOn, so getting in a fight was inappropriate. The phoning was to create a list of Democrats and undecideds to call back (which I later did). We were supposed to thank Republicans politely and hang up. So that's what I did. But YUCK.
Well, Jim Webb is in the US Senate, so your efforts paid off, Deborah. I think he's going to be a real wild card for the next six years, starting with tonight's State of the Union response. Webb is the most exciting thing to happen to the Senate in a long, long time. He'll be well worth the occasional weirdo you had to tolerate.
I did a lot of calling, and by the last 2 days, most of my calls were to Virginia. Gotta say, whatever drop in the bucket difference I made, I'm proud of it.
You and Michael J. Fox changed history!
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