Monday, September 28, 2020
Amy Coney Barrett's Opponents
It's about Roe v Wade. Nothing else. That in turn is not about actual women having actual abortions, but a proxy for a "one of us" tribal membership. Once you apprehend that, all their statements point back to it. I don't like the words always and never in disputes, but I have yet to see an example where this was not framed in the extremist language of overthrowing abortion rights in their entirety, as if any modification of notifying parents, restricting late-term or even partial birth abortion, imposing waiting periods, the giving of information about the procedure or notifying of alternatives, or returning some or all of the decisions to the various states, are all just the same thing as sending women to back-alley abortions forever. That is the sign that the surface issue is not the actual issue, but a proxy.
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Ditto for claims it's about 'healthcare', ostensibly overturning the dead letter ACA.
There's so much fear that I think generic tribalism is only part of it. They talk of something like powerlessness, and perhaps we should take them at their word. They are saying something like "Unless I have the power to kill, I am completely defenseless."
Of course they'd never dream of buying an icky gun, but their attitude is very much like that of the 2nd Amendment devotees. The use cases even sound superficially similar, if you fudge the meaning of phrases like "my life." And they do.
It's a funny thing that the upper middle class white women (my sisters for example) are huge on this but none of them would I think even consider an abortion for them or their daughters. It's all about I can live completely independent of men in any aspect of my life if I so choose. So if states passed their own abortion laws, this would not be sufficient since it does not fulfill the unsaid intent. Now birth control is much more advanced, easy to get and safe their stated issue does not apply. That's why Hillary Clinton was so beloved by this group, as she had to put up with Bill and now it was her turn.
@ dmoelling - a good additional example. That Hillary was more than just an enabler, but an assistant and also a persecutor in her own right never registered. Persecuting actual women didn't matter. What mattered was being the symbol of a certain style of womanhood. She got in trouble for saying in the 1992 primaries that she wasn't going to Stand By Her Man, which was a cultural nod to a particular crowd. But that's exactly what she ended up doing, isn't it? Far more than Tammy Wynette ever did. Symbolism over reality.
Both Trump hatred and Trump support show this as well. People who really like peace deals, withdrawals of troops, and criminal justice reform still can't stand him, while people who hate NYC billionaires, or others who dislike coarse attitudes are still lining up behind him. There are some logical explanations behind these things, yet I wonder how much of that is post hoc reasoning.
It's obligatory to frame it "a woman's right to choose," in the smuggest tone you can muster.
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