No disrespect meant, but since progressives have been outmanuevered on this issue for the past 40 years, you can't really call it a "surprise."

My post from a few days ago, plus a pertinent comment:

Abortion Not A Moral Issue - It's a Class Issue (6+ / 0-)

Recommended by:

Odysseus, Brooke In Seattle, big annie, mchestnutjr, JC from IA, OhHai

This is one where the Democrats have gotten played for decades, and this has never made sense.

Before I was Virginia Common Sense, I lived near Philadelphia, and I am a baby boomer old enough to remember when abortion was illegal, and there were really pretty frequent headlines in the Evening Bulletin, along the lines of "Woman dies after back alley abortion", "Unidentified Woman Found Bleeding to Death," etc. These victims were almost always low income, and very frequently African American.

If you were rich enough then (late 1960s) you of course could get an abortion, but it was disguised or included as a "European vacation"-- with parents sometime saying about their daughter:
"She'll be gone for a week or back in a month." This was before the acceptance of single motherhood, and the stigma was incredible, it's hard for people today to realize how real that was.

My point is that abortions have always been available, if you were rich enough. That's what Roe v Wade made possible, it equaled the playing field so that if you could not avoid the "European vacation", you still had options. The Democratic party has allowed the GOP to turn what is a equality and class issue into a moral issue, without a peep. I'm certainly not saying that abortion should become our preferred method of birth control, they way it is in some countries, but don't cede the entire debate to being a moral one, there is an equality and class issue as well.

Regards.

by VACommonsense on Mon Nov 09, 2009 at 02:24:19 PM PST

[ Reply to This ]

* [new] VACommensense hit the nail on the head... (4+ / 0-)
Recommended by:

Odysseus, big annie, JC from IA, OhHai

I was out of college by 1960 and had two close friends who were in medical school in the late 50's and early 60's, before abortion was legal in any state. Their tales of working Saturday night shifts at Bellevue Hospital in NYC and Boston City in Boston were searing. The women brought in with botched abortions, both quantity and condition, were horrifying, evidence of medieval medicine practiced on the helpless in 20th century America. Whether Stupak knows it or not, it is medieval medicine his amendment will bring to the least among us, unless it's removed.

I'm a Pennsylvania resident so I've already written Casey and Specter about the issue. Casey, of course, has already been reported by the NY Times as considering offering a Stupak amendment for the Senate version. My family's votes, all of four, don't mean much, but I promised we'd either vote against him or sit on our hands in his next run for office, the choice depending on who his opposition is. And I promised to work for any challenger in the Democratic primary before his reelection campaign in 2012. I voted for him and contributed money in 2006. We had to get rid of Santorum, but on this bill Santorum would have been no worse.

by Kelvin Kean on Mon Nov 09, 2009 at 02:42:36 PM PST