By VictorM: Atrios says:

As I've long said, ultimately the country is very pro-choice-for-me-but-not-for-thee. People assume that they, personally, will be able to make sensible reproductive and health decisions with their doctors, but are "uncomfortable" with the thought of other people making decisions they don't approve of and therefore there's more support for chipping away at these things around the edges. People fail to understand that such things have the potential to affect them personally, and fail to understand that Judge Santorum or someone will be intervening in their private medical decisions.

Ultimately, brave people are going to have to stand up and start talking about their personal experiences with these things in a way which communicates "this could happen to you" to people.

I don't think it's going to sink into the American conscience that easily. Americans need to be shocked with the reality of seeing innocent white girls from "good" neighborhoods and "good" families being arrested and piped in living color into our living rooms for it to sink in that it could happen to anyone.

There was a time when "righteous" people won out and the law of the land made consumption of alcohol illegal. After several years, that law was repealed. That topic is not even discussed anymore. Yet, alcohol is responsible for tens of thousands of deaths in our highways and it destroys a massive number of families. But society decided that those consequences were worth having for the right to choose. Lifting Prohibition forced no one to drink; it merely let citizens choose. The rest of us who could die getting hit by a drunk driver have accepted that as a worthy risk. Despite the grim numbers associated with alcohol deaths or illnesses, there is virtually no movement to bring back Prohibition. The same may need to happen with abortion.

It will take repeated cases of 13 year old girls getting raped, coerced, used, and abused by older boys, teachers, uncles, even fathers or brothers, and then thrown in jail for an act of desperation, shown in living color on all the networks -- oh they will compete ferociously for the most sensational stories -- to show the true consequences of a society gone medieval.

If they treat abortion as murder, then, and only then, will a majority recognize that every single woman who has a miscarriage will be suspected of murder. Either by action of an overzealous district attorney - and there are plenty of those - or by accusation of a malicious neighbor, a rejected former boyfriend, or simply the opinion of a doctor, every woman who miscarriages not only will have to deal with the trauma of losing the fetus, but will have to be questioned by the police. Did she miscarriage because she went horseback riding after the doctor told her not to go? Negligent homicide! Did she have sex after the doctor told her she shouldn't? Negligent homicide! Did she exercise more strenuously than the doctor said? Negligent homicide! Did she once, out of desperation, while carrying groceries say, "I wish I wasn't pregnant"? Will that constitute the basis for suspicion by her born-again Christian neighbor that her miscarriage was really an abortion, and therefore murder?

Many females would suffer if abortion become illegal, but history shows us that in most struggles for justice and fairness, there have been heavy prices paid. We need to do all we can to make sure it doesn't get to this, but sadly, it may have to happen before American society finds resolution on abortion.


Tags: abortion, abortion is murder, illegal abortion,