Rice Slams Non-Inclusive United States
The Washington Post writes up an interview with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice:
Arguing that Iraq shows signs of becoming an inclusive state — it even “declared Christmas a national holiday” — Rice said that if the country eventually emerges as a democratic, multiethnic state that has friendly ties with the United States, “that will be more important than what anybody thought in 2002 or 2003.”
My colleague Amanda Terkel observes that here in the US we don’t meet Rice’s standard of inclusiveness. Christmas is a national holiday, of course, but this is a majority Christian country. Religious minority groups get no federal holidays for our key religious observances. Nevertheless, one suspects that in the ways that matter the US is still a more inclusive country than Rice’s Mesopotamian paradise.
58 Responses to “Rice Slams Non-Inclusive United States”
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January 13th, 2009 at 3:25 pm
The surge defeated the War on Christmas. Take that “X-mas!”
January 13th, 2009 at 3:40 pm
It’s good sign. The peaceniks used to try to make fun of the Iraq war by saying we installed a religious fundamentalist party with ties to Iran. Turns out the Iraq political elite aren’t so fundamentalist.
January 13th, 2009 at 3:41 pm
Not only does the federal government fail to recognize non-majority religious holidays, but private efforts to recognize non-majority religious holidays are met with public condemnation. Just ask Tyson Foods.
January 13th, 2009 at 3:42 pm
Here’s a radical idea: How about no state-sanctioned religious holidays.
January 13th, 2009 at 3:46 pm
Considering that Iraq was secular before we attacked it, isn’t it a low bar to be crowing that the government is so non-fundamentalist now that Christmas has been made into a national holiday?
January 13th, 2009 at 3:46 pm
Rice has always used political correctness to castigate skeptics of the Iraq invasion as racists. Recently she was interviewed on Meet the Press:
GREGORY: …do you think that the president pursued a humble foreign policy as he, as he said he would, as he said it was important for the United States to?
RICE: Well, I think it’s very humble to believe that there is no man, woman or child who should live in tyranny. That people who say, well, maybe Arabs just aren’t ready for democracy or maybe Africans just are going to have corrupt governments, that seems to me arrogant.
GREGORY: Hm.
RICE: To say that those people deserve the same, the same life that we have, the same freedoms that we have, that seems to me, humble. I think it’s humble to say that the United States, which has been given so much, should give back and to launch the largest health program in history, the president’s emergency plan for AIDS relief, or to quadruple foreign assistance to Africa, or to double it to Latin America.
January 13th, 2009 at 3:50 pm
not until they also celebrate Thanksgiving — that would be inclusiveness we could believe in
January 13th, 2009 at 3:51 pm
The peaceniks used to try to make fun of the Iraq war…
Actually, smart people generally do make fun of the Iraq war. People like yourself who continue to pimp for it are not to be taken seriously, since you’re clearly lacking any kind of moral or intellectual credibility.
January 13th, 2009 at 4:03 pm
The peaceniks used to try to make fun of the Iraq war by saying we installed a religious fundamentalist party with ties to Iran.
Great point. Now we peaceniks make fun of the Iraq war by mocking insipid blog comments from asinine Bush deadenders.
January 13th, 2009 at 4:10 pm
Every time some dunce in the U.S. wants to point out how wonderful and advanced and democratic another nation is they have to enumerate all the attributes that nation is slowly coming around to having in common with us. Look, they have Taco Bell! And Christmas! They drive Ford F-150s and read Playboy! Don’t forget cell phones, they have cell phones! Levi jeans! 50 Cent and Ludacris blaring in the streets! My oh my, aren’t they advanced and civilized! Practically our 51st state!
January 13th, 2009 at 4:19 pm
It’s just too bad Christians are being ethnically cleansed out of Iraq, so they won’t get to enjoy this wonderful new holiday.
January 13th, 2009 at 4:24 pm
Actually, the staged Christmas holiday in Baghdad, so pleasing to rightwing war bloggers, marked a new moral low for the Bush administration, which has presided over the utter decimation of the 5 percent of the population that was Christian in Iraq. They have either fled or been killed. When they emigrate, internally, generally towards the Kurdish regions, they keep getting killed – there was a pogram of Christians in Mosul in October of 2008, for instance.
So, how vile and disgusting is Rice for this idiocy? I don’t think MY’s off the cuff jab captures it. The idea isn’t that the inclusiveness is pallid and nonsensical. One could as well talk about the “inclusiveness” of Saddam Hussein, who included a prominent Christian, Tariq Azziz, his foreign minister, in his government. No, the vileness is that it is an utterly bogus claim, a sort of Potemkin village only foolinng the ignorant American press corps, which years to mark Iraq down as a ‘victory’.
January 13th, 2009 at 4:24 pm
1) Actually, I would hope that someday the United States would become so “inclusive” that our elites would no longer feel complacent about murdering 4000 of our citizens just to whore for campaign donations from billionaires.
2) It would be even better if our leaders didn’t also feel complacent about lying through their teeth in ways that insult our intelligence. When did Condi, George and Cheney ever support the “spread of democracy” in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, or Azerbaijan?
Or even in Dade County , Florida for that matter? Remember all those Negros who were told they couldn’t vote by Jeb Bush?
Something is being spread here, but it’s not democracy.
3) I would call Condi Rice a deceitful whore but that would be a deeply unfair insult to all those crack-addicted, AIDS-infected working girls giving blow jobs in dirty allies. After all, there are some things that whores won’t do for money. Not even for Chevron.
January 13th, 2009 at 4:25 pm
Given it’s been proven their IQ levels are much lower than the average American, I don’t see why I can’t call them murdering rag-head terrorists.
January 13th, 2009 at 4:26 pm
They drive Ford F-150s and read Playboy!
Actually, Playboy readership is a pretty good index of personal and social freedom in a society.
Even better, Krispy Kreme. When Iraqis start munching Kripy doughnuts I will be convinced that their problems are behind them. Another good measure of progress would be the penetration of American Eagle and Abercrombie; both require a decent degree of an affluent society as well as social liberalism.
January 13th, 2009 at 4:26 pm
Considering that Iraq was secular before we attacked it
I thought Iraq was nucular before we attacked it
January 13th, 2009 at 4:30 pm
Although I am a bit dismayed that the Iraqis forgot Easter. Kidding, of course.
January 13th, 2009 at 4:33 pm
All that glisters is not gold,
Often have you heard that told…
Gilded tombs do worms infold.
Had you been as wise as bold,
Young in limbs, in judgment old,
Your answer had not been inscroll’d.
Condi really should have read her Shakespeare.
January 13th, 2009 at 4:45 pm
THAT’S what Iraq needs: MORE religion!
January 13th, 2009 at 4:49 pm
Even better, Krispy Kreme. When Iraqis start munching Kripy doughnuts I will be convinced that their problems are behind them. Another good measure of progress would be the penetration of American Eagle and Abercrombie; both require a decent degree of an affluent society as well as social liberalism.
Actually, Tom Friedman had a theory about McDonalds franchises and wars which he proclaimed with much seriousness. About a month after that column a McDonalds was blown up. It was like the terrorists were reading his column.
January 13th, 2009 at 4:52 pm
Although I am a bit dismayed that the Iraqis forgot Easter. Kidding, of course.
That would have been funny if they declared Festivus a national holiday and everyone would have been like “Festi- what?”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Festivus
The Sunnis and Shias and Kurds could have an Airing of Grievances.
January 13th, 2009 at 4:57 pm
I think that wrestling is pretty big over there, so the Feats of Strength would be popular; and from what I’ve heard, they’ve already got a supply of aluminum tubes that could be adapted for the purpose of the holiday.
January 13th, 2009 at 5:45 pm
Re: Actually, Playboy readership is a pretty good index of personal and social freedom in a society.
Behold the moral and spiritual emptiness at the heart of Stephen Myles’ cosmopolitan liberalism.
You can keep the Playboy magazines, thanks very much. I will keep the Eucharist.
January 13th, 2009 at 5:51 pm
For what it’s worth, Syria (culturally not too dissimilar from Iraq, although not that similar either) does keep Easter (both Gregorian and Julian dates) as a national holiday. As well as, oddly, Mother’s Day. Of course, Syria is still 10-15% Christian, unlike Iraq.
January 13th, 2009 at 5:58 pm
Though most Iraqis want to kill any woman who has an abortion, so there are some good aspects to it.
January 13th, 2009 at 6:16 pm
Is this Matt’s way of angling for goyim to share in the fasting on Yom Kippur?
January 13th, 2009 at 6:23 pm
To whoever is using my name…..Aren’t you a little too old for this juvenile game?
January 13th, 2009 at 6:24 pm
For the record, I believe that women who have abortions should be treated as victims, not perpetrators. I think that the “Project Rachel” approach that is currently pursued by the Church of Rome is the right one.
January 13th, 2009 at 6:26 pm
When my Dad worked in Malaysia, he got the Christian, Muslim AND Hindu holidays off… 17 days a year on top of his regular vacation days. There is definitely something to be said for inclusiveness!
January 13th, 2009 at 6:29 pm
Project Rachel, however, hasn’t had the funding that Project Pedophile Priest did. Women don’t seem to attract the same interest.
January 13th, 2009 at 7:11 pm
The notion of me being a “cosmopolitan liberal” is too hilarious for words
January 13th, 2009 at 7:42 pm
We don’t have federal holidays for non-Christian religious holidays but it is against the law to retaliate against people for refusing to work on them. So non-Christians basically get the Christian holidays off along with everybody else and then also get their own religious holidays off. Sounds like real victimization to me.
January 13th, 2009 at 9:15 pm
# Peter K. Says:
“It’s good sign. The peaceniks used to try to make fun of the Iraq war by saying we installed a religious fundamentalist party with ties to Iran. Turns out the Iraq political elite aren’t so fundamentalist.”
Fucking moron. Once again, completely twisting the words and missing the point.
Iraq is led by two Shia political parties with direct ties to Iran. Nothing was said about them being “fundamentalist” for the last five fucking years. No doubt some of them are. It’s irrelevant to the main point that Iran is the primary beneficiary of the Iraq war, not the stupid US neocons who babbled about a democratic Iraq friendly to the US.
What Rice is doing is recycling the same old, same old right wing neotard nonsense about how “someday” Iraq will be a wonderful democratic society who are friends with the US.
Dream on, morons. The Iraqis will be of one mind about the US: the people will hate the US for being responsible for a million of their relatives dying and four million more being displaced, and the Iraqi elites will be operating in accordance with Iran to screw the US whenever they get the opportunity, starting by kicking out the US over the next two years.
January 13th, 2009 at 9:27 pm
Fake Steve Sailer at 4:25, but there is no record of Sailer using the word raghead or rag-head in any of his posts or articles in a google search of his two sites. I see one of his commenters used the word once, so that just puts Sailer in the same boat as MY. Why would he assert his right to call Iraqis that here when he has never used the word in his own writings? You need to try a little harder. This isn’t rocket science. I think you just don’t want to be fake Sailer hard enough.
January 13th, 2009 at 10:29 pm
Correct you are, anon. Steve Sailer may be a racist asshole, but he’s a polite racist asshole.
January 14th, 2009 at 12:22 am
““For the record, I believe that women who have abortions should be treated as victims, not perpetrators.”
As my rather longer comment is awaiting moderation, a shorter version:
My wife is a person, with intelligence, decision-making capacity, and agency, you sniveling homunculus; if there ever comes a time where she decides that getting an abortion is necessary – however regretted, however complicated, however all of these things that would be none of your fucking business – well that’ll be her fucking choice, you sanctimonious little fetus-sucker (even constrained as all human choices may be, and all the more so in such cases because your allies would almost all rather screech about baby holocausts and harass born women than do anything to actually help people).
(Is it any surprise that these folks got all het up about Terri Schiavo? She was their perfect woman.)
Victims, not perpetrators? No. You don’t get to do that.
January 14th, 2009 at 8:45 am
Re: however regretted, however complicated, however all of these things that would be none of your fucking business – well that’ll be her fucking choice,
Um, no. No, it won’t. Not any more than enslaving or murdering your next door neighbor is a choice- not in a decent society, at any rate. Next?
January 14th, 2009 at 9:53 am
Whaddya mean? There’s always get a holiday for the birth of Mithra. This year we got Zartusht-no-diso, but that was by Presidential fiat, not by law.
January 14th, 2009 at 10:51 am
So, Hector, if I murdered my next-door neighbor, I’d be a victim rather than a perpetrator? Was Susan Smith a victim?
Dan S is absolutely right. You can’t call abortion a hideous act of murder but cover your ass by denying agency to the person who commits it. If you want to be taken morally seriously, you need to explain what the consequences should be for someone who, by your account, pays for her child to be murdered. Otherwise it’s clear, as I’ve previously said to you in this space, that the “it’s murder” stance is pure moonshine and that your objection lies elsewhere: in the idea of women with sexual agency.
January 14th, 2009 at 11:43 am
Tomemos,
Nice try, but no. I said that abortion was analogous to murder. I have never said, nor will ever say, that abortion IS murder, for two reasons.
1) Murder requires the ‘mens rea’, element of intent. Most women (and men) in our society, due to social conditiconing and lack of proper moral education, are not aware of the fact that fetuses are persons and deserving of human rights. Their ignorance, while regrettable, means that they cannot be held culpable.
2) Yes, at least some women do have abortions in full knowledge of what they are doing. However, the law isn’t capable of distinguishing the different degrees of culpable intent, and therefore in the name of charity it should be assumed that all of them are exempted due to the lack of the mens rea.
3) Not all homicides, not even all immoral homicides, should be punished equally by the law. I think that the bombing of Hiroshima was unjustifiable under just-war doctrine, and that it was therefore murder. That doesn’t mean I want Truman to be put on trial for it.
4) Killing a fetus is a grave moral crime, but it isn’t _as bad_ as killing a person, due to the fact that the person is not only a human has emotions, thoughts, hopes, fears, etc. that you are ending, whereas a fetus doesn’t. I think I would rather, if I had to choose, spare the life of a born human being rather than the life of a fetus, as would most of us.
I realize you would prefer to resort to hipster discourse about ‘agency’, but these are the facts.
January 14th, 2009 at 12:28 pm
“Um, no. No, it won’t. Not any more than enslaving or murdering your next door neighbor is a choice- not in a decent society, at any rate. Next?”
Ah, now we’re getting somewhere. After all, one doesn’t say of neighbor-murderers or neighbor-enslavers that they should be “treated as victims rather than perpetrators” – that’s pretty absurd, because we recognize that whatever the circumstances (with pretty rare exceptions), they have agency. It’s understandable why the anti-choice movement is increasingly telling the public – and probably themselves – that it’s all about protecting women (who are, of course, foolish, emotional ,and easily confused) from the horrible consequences of being misled and manipulated by the evil pro-abortionists. But when you get down to it, this moral system – your moral system – requires that not just the doctors but all these women are criminals, some of whom, in your “decent” society, will have to be punished if not otherwise deterred.
January 14th, 2009 at 12:41 pm
Ah, new comments. More later, but –
let’s say I purchase and keep a slave (this does still happen here, albeit extremely rarely and secretly). Our society has moved on, but I believe – or could maybe believe – that my action is acceptable. Am I a victim? What should happen to me?
Or, let’s say I give my underage daughter to an older man in marriage in exchange for beer, meat, and cash. I believe (or could believe) that what I’m doing is fine. Am I a victim? What should happen to me?
January 14th, 2009 at 2:49 pm
Umm, no offense Hector, but you seem to have miscounted your reasons.
If you’re looking for credibility, this is not likely to help…
January 14th, 2009 at 3:13 pm
“I realize you would prefer to resort to hipster discourse about ‘agency’”
Uh-huh. Love how you dismiss basic selfhood as ‘hipster discourse’ My comment is still in moderation, but let me drag out this link:
““ . . . If women are not able to choose abortion, then someone must be making them choose it. And public enemy No. 1 in this campaign — and in the task force report — are abortion clinics, which push women into the procedure without providing them with information on the purported health risks or informing her that “the procedure would terminate the life of a human being.” Indeed, the vision of women as victims, not agents, of choice is so stark that the report asserts that clinics lead unwitting women into acting contrary to their “very nature as a mother”: “It is so far outside the normal conduct of a mother to implicate herself in the killing of her own child. Either the abortion provider must deceive the mother into thinking the unborn child does not yet exist, and thereby induce her consent without being informed, or the abortion provider must encourage her to defy her very nature as a mother to protect her child. Either way, this method of waiver denigrates her rights to reach a decision for herself.”
Responding to the characterization of women as weak, emotional, and confused decision-makers in the task force report and the state’s 2005 informed-consent law — a law justified in part on the grounds that women seeking an abortion might suffer from “an emotional crisis” and “clouded judgment” — minority members of the task force retorted that these legislative findings rested on “a sexist, insulting, condescending, and inaccurate stereotype of women,” and objected to the exclusion of all nonconforming testimony from the task force report. Kate Looby, the South Dakota state director of Planned Parenthood and a member of the task force who walked out before the final vote on the report, is outraged at the paternalism of the women-protective argument. “The idea coming out of the members of the task force [is] that women just really aren’t smart enough to figure out what they want, they need to be told,” says Looby. “And [what] they need to be told is, of course, coercion into the pregnancy.”
Janet Crepps, staff attorney in the domestic program at the Center for Reproductive Rights, says South Dakota has argued that “women are not capable of being informed decision-makers in the context of abortion, which is shocking.” It is “the first time you have a whole legislative body adopting this kind of bad abortion science and this kind of fairly outrageous statement of their view of the proper role of women in society“
January 14th, 2009 at 6:43 pm
By the way, Dan S, for your education, if your comment is being “moderated”, it means you’ve posted a comment with more than two links and your comment is heading for the bit bucket. It will never appear.
There is no moderation on this blog. That message is misleading.
January 14th, 2009 at 8:47 pm
Ah – thanks, RSH. I was wondering.
Well, for the intersection of people still reading and people with any interest in my overlong rant – which I suspect is {}:
“For the record, I believe that women who have abortions should be treated as victims, not perpetrators.”
Of course he does – desiring to strip women of their Constitutional rights and their reproductive freedom, it is no surprise that he would deny them agency as well, would try to erase any tell-tell trace of their uniqueness and selfhood. And of course these efforts are often one and the same – see Justice Kennedy’s decision in Gonzales v. Carhart, which is basically that a) women are too foolish to understand what they’re doing (rather, what’s being done to them, what they’ve been tricked into), b) when they finally realize the awful truth, they”ll be devastated, therefore, c) we have to protect them from their own foolishness (and men’s perfidy) by, well, taking that option away from them. The decision is to be made for them. It’s anti-choice in the truest sense, by insisting that women lack the capacity to make a choice, so they must be prevented from doing so, just like you wouldn’t let a 6 year old play with guns or drive or run a country or vote. See [my comment #47, with the TAP link and quote]
(And see, of course, Justice Ruth Ginsburg’s dissent in Carhart:
“Revealing in this regard, the Court invokes an antiabortion shibboleth for which it concededly has no reliable evidence: Women who have abortions come to regret their choices, and consequently suffer from “[s]evere depression and loss of esteem.” … Because of women’s fragile emotional state and because of the “bond of love the mother has for her child,” the Court worries, doctors may withhold information about the nature of the intact D&E procedure. .. The solution the Court approves, then, is not to require doctors to inform women, accurately and adequately, of the different procedures and their attendant risks. … (“States are free to enact laws to provide a reasonable framework for a woman to make a decision that has such profound and lasting meaning.”). Instead, the Court deprives women of the right to make an autonomous choice, even at the expense of their safety. . . .
This way of thinking reflects ancient notions about women’s place in the family and under the Constitution—ideas that have long since been discredited. Compare, e.g., Muller v. Oregon,… (1908) (“protective” legislation imposing hours-of-work limitations on women only held permissible in view of women’s “physical structure and a proper discharge of her maternal funct[ion]”); Bradwell v. State, …(1873)… (“Man is, or should be, woman’s protector and defender. The natural and proper timidity and delicacy which belongs to the female sex evidently unfits it for many of the occupations of civil life. … The paramount destiny and mission of woman are to fulfil[l] the noble and benign offices of wife and mother.”), with United States v. Virginia, … (1996) (State may not rely on “overbroad generalizations” about the “talents, capacities, or preferences” of women; “[s]uch judgments have … impeded … women’s progress toward full citizenship stature throughout our Nation’s history”); Califano v. Goldfarb… (1977) (gender-based Social Security classification rejected because it rested on “archaic and overbroad generalizations” “such as assumptions as to [women’s] dependency” . . .”
(To turn and speak to my fellow guys – who they’re talking about is our mothers, wives, sisters, friends, lovers, cousins, daughters . . . . And what they’re saying, deep down,perhaps without ever thinking it out, is that women-people are fundamentally stupid – simple, childlike creatures who are good for adornment and sex and childrearing and light companionship, but not much more; certainly not for making decisions about their own bodies. ) It’s Eve in the Garden all over again, bamboozled by the wily Snake – and indeed, there are those, like the late Jerry Falwell, who saw “abortionists” (along with other fundamentalist demons) as somehow bringing about a very modern Fall only a few autumns past.
And of course, once it becomes clear that women – weak, irrational, foolish, emotional women – don’t have the capacity to choose in matters of their own bodies . . . well, one wonders what other decisions will seem best removed from their aimlessly grasping fretful little hands, for their own good of course, to protect them from harm? Perhaps the heavy burden of participation in our body politic, which surely would be overtaxing to their delicate facilities, not to mention a dangerous diversion from their natural duties? And then there are the hazards of being public bodies, given their easily-led, innocent natures; wouldn’t they really be safer sequestered inside, or at least shielded in some way from public view?
Anyway – to be fair to Hector, he doesn’t seem to be driven specifically by fear/hatred/contempt for women: brief bits I’ve read of his comments suggesr to me that he’s fairly equal opportunity in his un-self-realized loathing of free people, and wants all humanity shackled in chains of ignorance and submission – and more, for them to insist in one voice that this is freedom, to call their fear and degradation love, as he imagines they are. Say, a kind of theological version of that boot in a human face, forever (and when they forever, they mean forever). But what of it? It doesn’t matter what they say their motivations are; it doesn’t matter what their motivations are. Ultimately what matters is what the antichoicers do, and what the antichoicers want to do is first deny women their agency, then their rights and freedoms, and ultimately – as those of us familiar with the history of just a few short decades ago, or the current events in countries more ideologically favorable to them, know – perhaps their lives as well.
January 14th, 2009 at 10:16 pm
“1) Murder requires the ‘mens rea’, element of intent. Most women (and men) in our society, due to social conditiconing and lack of proper moral education, are not aware of the fact [sic] that fetuses are persons and deserving of human rights.”
Of course, this isn’t a “fact”, and your complaint here is that most people in our society don’t share your specific sectarian (and at best unprovable) belief. Indeed, many people who do nevertheless come to a vastly different conclusion; while grieved and sickened by abortion, they nevertheless recognize that given the nature of the world, this ultimately has to be a decision for the woman whose body it is.
I am not very conversant in law, to say the least, but reading the wikipedia entry for mens rea and links thereof [what a statement!], my uninformed impression is that the category you’re describing here doesn’t exist. There is, of course, the concept of mens rea and its various modifications – criminal intent, so that someone who kills a peanut-allergy sufferer through food isn’t culpable unless they knew (or reasonably should have known) what could happen. There are also certain crimes that involve the specific intent to break a law (the example given is tax evasion). And of course there is the insanity defense.
But none of these seem to get the result you want. Few if any women getting an abortion fail to understand that it will lead to the termination of a pregnancy, that there’s a human fetus in there, opposed to a watermelon or something, and that if not terminated, the pregnancy will fairly likely – if all goes well – result in the birth of a human baby. (Of course, any actual such cases would be a whole ‘nother matter, but I hope we agree that the vast majority of women do know what an abortion is and are, by common standards, able to understand the result.) Nor is anyone arguing that abortion is horrible because these women are intentionally intending to violate (currently nonexistent) laws. And finally, I hope we agree that the vast majority of women getting abortions are not legally insane. So you seem to be pushing for a verdict of ‘Not Guilty for Reason of Social Conditioning and Lack of Proper Moral Education. Gee, Officer Krupke, I’m not aware of such a thing – perhaps you are?
“ However, the law isn’t capable of distinguishing the different degrees of culpable intent, and therefore in the name of charity it should be assumed that all of them are exempted due to the lack of the mens rea.”
This don’t seem to be (in general terms) the case. My impression is that the law often does work to distinguish degrees of culpable intent. There may be individual cases where it’s effectively impossible, and certainly charity is a virtue, but nonetheless I don’t think we usually see this kind of blanket ‘get out of jail free’ card-playing.
Finally, of course, even if one accepts these seemingly exotic and extraordinary claims (and if I’m wrong, let me know), they only apply insofar as abortion isn’t criminalized. Now, it may be that your anti-choice stance is akin to mine re: vegetarianism (where I believe that the killing of animals for meat is wrong, but don’t advocate criminalizing carnivory), and you want to educate, convince, provide support and alternatives – but not legislate. In that case, you avoid the issue. If you want abortion banned, however, you run into a major problem. If abortion is outlawed, then in essence society is drawing a boundary beyond which no-one can step. Before, you can try to make an appeal, however incoherent, and whether for PR or a kind of crippled mercy, that the poor things know not what they do (or at least, you can’t prove it. After – no. That’s when the jailings would have to start. Or the executions. The stonings, perhaps; that would seem very appropriate. Or, of course, one could take the passive-aggressive route, the one that involves women dying in hospital wards or in some terror-stricken room (ah, the good old days).
And what if a tip to the fetus protection squad pays off, and they nab a women just handing over payment to some underground abortion-doctor? Whatever level of responsibility you imagine she has, the law would presumably at least require that she be prevented from carrying out such an act. So – what? A bed with restraints until she gives birth? Round-the-clock observation in a padded room with no hard edges or blunt objects? (Presumably restraints would still be necessary, at least for any desperate cases who would simply keep beating and beating themselves in the belly to try to induce an abortion).
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