Abortion thoughts.

So every couple of days I read news from some bullshit red state that they have introduced some draconian anti-abortion bill while at the same time cutting programs that might help low income families or provide child care assistance, pretty much the usual. Now these policies are stupid and regressive, so don't misunderstand me and think I support even a little bit of them, my personal view on abortion is if you want to use it as your primary form of birth control then go wild. But I did have some thoughts.

The first is that blanket bans on abortion are much more ideologically consistent than ones that include exceptions for the health of the mother or rape/incest. I mean if the idea is that a fetus is a person, and every fetus is more valuable than the life of the woman carrying it, than it shouldn't matter what problems it has, or what caused the pregnancy, it should be carried to term, if you make exceptions, then you undermine your whole morality based reason to prevent abortions and have to accept that you are basically just punishing a woman for having sex.

The second thought I had was that I am much happier to see these really draconian bills being attempted rather than a more modest proposal. It is really easy to oppose a blanket ban, or something that is a blatant punishment for the woman. Those rarely actually get passed, and usually(I know not all the time) get overturned anyway by the courts. What are more insidious are the ones that do provide exceptions, and make an effort to seem like they are more, I guess caring, for lack of a better word, about things. They provide a toehold for debate, and are harder to just shut down by calling them anti-women(they still are though) because supporters can just accuse their opponents of being extremists rather than actually talking evidence.

And yes, many of those get overturned by the courts eventually too, but it takes longer and hurts more people in the long run I think.

So I am encouraged when the extremists try to push an extreme plan, they are too stupid and blinkered to realize they would get farther by chipping away at rights rather than attempting to cut them off in one fell swoop. The far right is very self defeating in that regard and it is the only thing that might keep this country from descending into madness in the coming years, on many different issues.