[To view the video of Rep. Jackie Speier, go to
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ky2gylhdXRA
-- moderator.]

This Is What "Pro-Life" Means?

By Rebecca Traister
Friday, Feb 18, 2011 18:12 ET
http://www.salon.com/news/abortion/index.html?story=/politics/war_room/2011/02/18/traister_speier_abortion

As part of their stated mission to focus on jobs
(specifically, the job of preventing women from getting
healthcare), House Republicans this afternoon voted
240-185 to bar federal funding for Planned Parenthood.

This is a big win for Rep. Mike Pence, the Indiana
Republican whose deficit-minded crusade against Planned
Parenthood hinges not on the argument that taxpayer
money shouldn't pay for abortions (the Hyde Amendment
put a stop to that in the mid 1970s), but on the
conviction that taxpayer money should not go to
organizations that provide abortion services,
regardless of what else they might do.

Pence's plan, which will likely stall in the Senate,
would mean the end of federal support for an
organization that each year provides more than 800,000
women with breast exams, more than 4 million Americans
with testing and treatment for sexually transmitted
diseases, and 2.5 million people with contraception,
which, not for nothing, is the stuff that prevents
unintended pregnancy, and thus abortion, to begin with.

In Friday’s Washington Post, former Catholics for a
Free Choice president Frances Kissling suggested that
the current, harrowing onslaught against reproductive
rights should force the pro-choice movement to alter
its path and redirect what has indeed become a slightly
stale message.

Though I'm not sure I see eye-to-eye with Kissling on
which particular path to take, I agree that now is the
time for women and men who believe in women’s rights,
health and liberty to reclaim the language of morality
and life, long coopted by abortion foes, as our own.
Because what the Republicans have made clear in the
weeks since they took over the House is that there is
most certainly morality at play here, there are most
certainly lives at stake: the lives and the moral value
not of the unborn, but of the living, breathing women
of this nation.

Pence and his fellow Republicans are not simply taking
aim at a particular medical procedure -- one that, I
would nonetheless submit is an integral component in
women being able to control their bodies, their health,
their careers and thus their economic, social and
political freedom. But this isn't simply about the
question of abortion itself. What Pence and the House
of Representatives did today was devalue women's lives,
women's rights and women's ability to participate fully
in the democracy. The excuse used by Republicans is
that we are saving taxpayer money. Saving money in
exchange for breast exams, cervical cancer screenings,
STD testing and care: Welcome to the movement that has
long billed itself as "pro-life."

In the midst of the House battle, two congresswomen
underscored precisely these points, and in doing so,
offered vivid evidence of why, exactly, it makes a
difference to have a governing body that includes
members of differing genders, races, classes,
perspectives and experiences.

In response to Rep. Chris Smith, a New Jersey
Republican, who had taken to the floor to read aloud a
description of a second-trimester abortion procedure
he'd found in a book, Democratic Rep. Jackie Speier of
California described a second-trimester abortion
procedure she'd had in her life. Speier told of a
procedure she'd had at 17 weeks pregnant, when
something went wrong with her pregnancy. "For you to
stand on this floor and suggest that somehow this is a
procedure that is either welcomed or done cavalierly or
done without any thought, is preposterous," Speier
said, directing her comments at Smith. "Planned
Parenthood has a right to operate. Planned Parenthood
has a right to provide services for family planning.
Planned Parenthood has a right to offer abortions. The
last time I checked, abortions were legal in this
country ... I would suggest to you that it would serve
us all very well if we moved on with this process and
started focusing on creating jobs for the Americans who
desperately want them."

Meanwhile, late Thursday night, Georgia Republican Rep.
Paul Broun had trotted out the old canard about Planned
Parenthood being a bunch of eugenically motivated
abortion enthusiasts, pointing out that "there are more
black babies killed through abortion proportionally
than there are white babies or any other colored
babies."

Responding to Broun's deep concern for the well-being
of black babies (a concern that apparently ends when
those black babies grow up to need breast exams or
cervical screenings) Wisconsin Democrat Gwen Moore
said, "I know a lot about having black babies. I’ve had
three of them. And I had my first one ... at the ripe
old age of 18. An unplanned pregnancy."

Moore told the story of her labor, of not having had a
phone or a cab or the money for a cab to the hospital.
She went on, "I just want to tell you a little bit
about what it’s like to not have Planned Parenthood.
You have to add water to the formula to make it
stretch. You have to give your kids Ramen noodles at
the end of the month to fill up their little bellies so
they won’t cry ... It subjects children to low
educational attainment because of the ravages of
poverty. You know, one of the biggest problems that
school districts have in educating some of these poor
black children who are unplanned is that they are
mobile; they are constantly moving because they can’t
pay the rent ... [P]ublic policy has treated poor
children and women who have not had the benefit of
Planned Parenthood with utter contempt. These same
children, it has been very difficult to get them health
insurance through CHIP."

This is rhetoric that must now be blasted from the
rooftops. Those of us who have been raised on and come
to rely too heavily on the limp language of choice must
listen and then yell it as well. Opponents of
reproductive rights are working -- successfully, today
-- to prevent women from receiving the healthcare that
they and their families require; they are working
against the well-being of women.

Morality is not the exclusive domain of the unborn,
whatever we have been told for decades. Morality is on
the side of women, on the side of children, on the side
of a society that offers aid to its impoverished and to
its young and does not discriminate against half its
population. In Moore's words, "Planned Parenthood is
healthy for women, it’s healthy for children, and it’s
healthy for our society."

___________________________________________

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