The Right to Choose is a semi-regular feature of GPWOW designed to highlight the lies, hypocrisy, and logical fallacies associated with most pro-abortion arguments and the people who make them.
The latest meme spreading through the leftosphere is that only rightwingers threaten their opponents (see here, here, and here for starters).
Conveniently, these same people, so outraged at this behavior from fringe righties, aren't so offended when lefties say such things to women on the right.
Today, Chris Bowers is wringing his hands in a post that compares abortion clinic violence with numbnuts who send vile e-mails. He cites some statistics:
According to statistics gathered by the National Abortion Federation (NAF), an organization of abortion providers, since 1977 in the United States and Canada, there have been 17 attempted murders, 383 death threats, 153 incidences of assault or battery, and 3 kidnappings committed against abortion providers.(...)
According to NAF, since 1977 in the United States and Canada, property crimes committed against abortion providers have included 41 bombings, 173 arsons, 91 attempted bombings or arsons, 619 bomb threats, 1630 incidences of trespassing, 1264 incidences of vandalism, and 100 attacks with butyric acid.
What those stats really mean is that in 30 years, there have been far fewer attacks on abortion providers than on your average woman walking down the street. Of course, when you look at that stat that way, it's not quite so forceful. I'm not condoning abortion clinic violence, but Chris lumps all abortion proponents, both those acting within the legal system and those renegade actors, as being murderers. This kind of rancid hyperbole from the left needs to stop. But Chris doesn't.
Over the past fifteen years, conservatives have had every possible democratic, legislative, and judicial tool at their disposal to outlaw abortion, at least somewhere. However, all of their attempts on these fronts have failed miserably. The only thing hat has worked for them has been violence committed against abortion providers. When I write "violence," I am being as nice as humanly possible. Take another look at the list of acts I quoted above, described, and tell me that it doesn't smack of a coordinated, terrorist campaign against abortion providers. Sadly, it has largely been successful. The reason there are only one, two or three abortion providers in two dozen states is because of the terrorist campaign conducted against abortion providers. As all democratic means have failed them, the only tool conservatives have successfully used to slow down abortion has been a campaign of terrorist violence against abortion providers.
The lies in this paragraph are numerous. First of all, conservatives have placed many restrictions on abortions over the last 15 years, from waiting periods to informed consent to parental notification to facilities regulations. Pro-choicers have fought every single restriction, no matter how sensible, as being an attack on "the right to choose.
Secondly, once Roe v. Wade was established, states could no longer ban abortion, and those states with abortion bans on the books had to nullify those laws. In other words, states couldn't outlaw abortion. Not that most states want to completely banish the procedure anyway. What the South Dakota case actually means is that people don't want abortion abolished without any exceptions. People usually want to make exceptions for life, rape, or incest. The South Dakota law had none of these exceptions and that's why it failed.
Finally, it has only been in the last year or so that enough conservative justices have been on the Supreme Court to possibly make any difference to Roe v. Wade, anyway. And conservative judges don't typically make law from the bench like liberal ones do. That's because they believe in stare decisis, the idea that precedent matters. That means that even laws they disagree with--like Roe--have to be applied. Chief Justice Roberts made this point during his confirmation hearings:
"Roe v. Wade is the settled law of the land… There is nothing in my personal views that would prevent me from fully and faithfully applying that precedent, as well as Casey."[
Chris's scurilous analogy between legal activities to limit abortion with violence and terrorism is as disgusting as the e-mails of which Amanda complained. And I'm still waiting for a lefty or two to admit that the right doesn't have a lock on such hate mail. But I'm not holding my breath waiting.
UPDATE: Dan Collins at Protein Wisdom has a good post on this situation.
To say that (William) Donohue doesn’t have the right to characterize these comments is as absurd as the claims of these womyn that they’ve been smeared by the practice of having their own writings reported. So, must people who feel compelled not speak out against abortion because some lunatic might grab a rifle and shoot an abortion provider? The speech is protected; there is no right, on the other hand, to protection from the fall-out that such speech might provoke. You are free to criticize someone’s beliefs or behavior, but you are not protected from having your own criticized in return. And as Jeff points out, these womyn seem to have learned nothing through this episode that may cause them to rethink their own behavior. They simply believe that others who hew to religious belief ought therefore to evince more forebearance than they themselves do, or they’re hypocrites, just as those whose religious precepts may sometimes appear to condone violence are therefore exempt from such proscriptions.
UPDATE x2: Darleen Click has an excellent post on this subject.
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