All Nixon's Fault

Juliet Lapidos on the one-time mainline Republicans who became odd ducks when their party and conservative evangelical Christianity converged sometime during the post-Watergate wilderness. For instance:

Kellie Ferguson, the executive director of Republican Majority for Choice, would like to see the GOP shift from banning abortion to finding common ground in order to reduce the number of abortions. She’s been dismayed by recent GOP attacks on family planning (the attempts to defund Planned Parenthood, for instance), which she finds irrational. “If you make it more difficult for women to access planning services, you end up with more unintended pregnancies and more abortions, which ends up costing taxpayers money. So, among other problems, it’s not fiscally conservative.” (The Guttmacher Institute estimates that every dollar spent on family planning saves taxpayers $4.)

Weirdsmith

In an act of sheer mercy, Amanda Marcotte advises Republicans to stop answering questions about abortion.

He's Mitt Me

Romney's broad agreement with the man behind Todd Akins' theories about rape and abortion.

The Real Ryan

Bush and McCain adviser Mark McKinnon on the Todd Akin crisis:

Hear that sound, GOP? That’s women running for the exits—and the big tent collapsing.

Mitt Romney, who owed the right absolutely nothing (as Richard Nixon would've told him two months ago in a ten-page memo), nonetheless pulled the big tent down around him when he let the tea party dictate a divisive VP pick. Rep. Paul Ryan's likeability temporarily kept casual observers and some pundits from appreciating that he's one of the most conservative figures in national politics. The dislikeability of his abortion and "forcible rape" policy partner is helping reveal the real Ryan, proving yet again that the gods of politics have a heart for justice and a sense of humor.

While I don't agree with Akin on much of anything, his authenticity is refreshing compared to a presidential candidate who abandoned the humane pragmatism of his gubernatorial years and a deficit-hawk running mate whose Bush-era votes helped add hundreds of billions to the national debt. If they lose in November, Republicans may one day identify Todd Akin as the unlikely prophet who helped them grasp what they had become.

What Rush Didn't Say Was No Fluke

On Rush Limbaugh's radio program this morning, a caller accused Rep. Todd Akin of having been paid off for torpedoing the GOP's chances to win back the U.S. Senate and perhaps even the presidency. Referring to Akin's theories about rape and abortion, the caller said, "Nobody believes that." Limbaugh replied, "I'm not sure nobody believes it" -- and then stopped. He said he had to go to a top-of-the-hour break and mumbled that it was probably better that he was being interrupted.

According to news reports, Limbaugh calls Akin's comments stupid and says that he hopes the congressman will do the right thing and quit his Senate race against the Democratic incumbent, Claire McCaskill (D-MO). I didn't listen to any more of his show today -- while driving I sometimes flip around among talk shows on KFI, KRLA, and KPCC -- so I don't know if he finished his thought about the prevalence of Akin's views.

One can't help wondering what he might have said. Mitt Romney, for instance, has accepted the support of an anti-abortion activist who believes, just as Akin does, that women's bodies have the power to terminate pregnancies that result from what Rep. Paul Ryan, Romney's running mate, and others call "forcible rape" (Akin's term was "legitimate rape"). Akin, Ryan, the GOP platform committee, and 20% of the American people want to make all abortion illegal without exceptions for rape or incest. They fear that in the pre-1920 conditions they envision for American women, those wanting or needing an abortion would lie and claim to have been raped.

So Limbaugh's right: Some people do believe as Akin does, and they're pretty powerful. Expressing the rest of whatever had bubbled to his lips might well have contributed to what Akin's critics seem to fear most: Voters realizing he's not an outlier. As an opponent of women's reproductive rights, Akin actually stands neck-deep in the mainstream of his party's thinking.

It's not a debate the GOP wants to have before the election, since when it comes to women's rights, its mainstream doesn't conjoin with the national mainstream. They're not even in the same time zone. Many conservatives still have trouble understanding that women (and a considerable number of men) won't let government dictate to them about abortion. The hard work of reducing the number of abortions instead requires the broad availability of sex education and birth control, gently encouraging women (think tax breaks and free college tuition) to carry unwanted babies to term and give them up for adoption, and better teaching and preaching about sex's sanctity and awe-inspiring generative power. But as long as Republicans insist that the way to battle abortion is to put women back in chains (thanks for that image, Joe Biden), Todd Akin is the poster boy they deserve.

You Say Legitimate. We Say Forcible.

Let's call the whole thing off, Republicans beg Rep. Todd Akin, who's running for Senate. They protest way too much. Hendrik Hertzberg details the similarities between his and Rep. Paul Ryan's views and policies:

Last year, Todd Akin and Paul Ryan were co-sponsors of a bill that would have specified a pregnancy resulting from “forcible rape” as the only kind that Medicaid or a health savings account could pay to end. A middle-school girl impregnated by her uncle or a sophomore coed subjected to the carnal aggressions of fraternity boys after a night of binge drinking would have to settle for the comfort of being told that her rape, like the baby the GOP would oblige her to have, was illegitimate.

The Honest Man

Rep. Todd Akin, GOP candidate for the U.S. Senate in Missouri, is in hot water with Republicans everywhere for saying that women's bodies have a secret plan for ending pregnancies that result from "legitimate" rapes (which he evidently distinguishes from falsely alleged or statutory rapes).

On the purely substantive level, it's hard to understand why they're so upset. He probably didn't come up with his weird theories by himself. It appears that he cribbed them from anti-abortion zealot Jack C. Willke, whose political support Mitt Romney has welcomed. From a practical policy perspective, Akin's position is indistinguishable from that of his party's platform writers and Romney's putative running mate, Paul Ryan. Along with 20% of the American people, Akin and Ryan and the Republican platform committee want to criminalize all abortion, including in the case of rape.

It's not the issue those now controlling the GOP want to talk about during elections. It's merely the policy they want to adopt while in office. They're mad at Akin for outing them. He should stay in the race and keep them honest.

Skipping Stone

Roger Stone, the ultimate Nixonite, explains why he's supporting former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, the libertarian candidate in 2012:

[A] candidate for president who opposes the war in Afghanistan, favors a woman's right to choose, supports gay marriage equality, and backs the legalization of marijuana at the same time he supports deep cuts in spending, radical tax reduction, smaller government, gun owner's rights and an adherence to constitutional principles has a unique opportunity to impact the 2012 presidential race....

The American people have never been offered a candidate who is a fiscal conservative and social liberal. If you voted for the Republican because you favored spending and tax cuts you also had to swallow a ban on abortion and opposition to gay marriage. If you voted for the Democrat because you were pro-choice, you also had to support fiscal policies that would bankrupt us.

Birth Control And The Dufus Vote

After weeks of conflict over the peripheral question of whether employees of Roman Catholic institutions should be offered free birth control, the New York Times finally gets to the nub of the the matter -- the Obama administration's requirement that all employers offer contraception to insured employees:

Over all, 63 percent of Americans said they supported the new federal requirement that private health insurance plans cover the cost of birth control, according to the survey of 1,519 Americans, conducted from Feb. 13 to Feb. 19 for the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. The poll has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.

While 8 in 10 Democrats said they supported requiring birth control coverage, only 4 in 10 Republicans did. Six in 10 people calling themselves independents voiced approval. Many Americans, in the survey and in independent interviews, expressed impatience with the focus on women’s reproductive issues in an era of economic distress.

As I've argued to conservative friends, the religious freedom issue is relatively trivial compared to the federal government deciding in its great wisdom that of all the procedures and medications that could be free of charge, including hay fever pills, Lipitor, and prostate cancer screening, the nod now goes to birth control and other women's health services.

What are the feds up to, anyway? One motive is equity. If women seem to be unduly advantaged under the Obama health care reform, perhaps it's because in the past they've been charged higher premiums than men and had to endure pregnancy being defined as a preexisting condition. Providing free birth control is in the insurance companies' interests as well, since contraception is cheaper than prenatal and obstetrics care during an unplanned pregnancy.

Far more important, the policy will reduce the number of abortions. The more birth control, the fewer abortions. Nothing could be more obvious, except to two powerful constituencies. The first is the Roman Catholic church, which in its absolutism equates never-pregnant with getting an abortion. In doing so, it facilitates more abortions, especially in the developing world. (The Protestant view of contraception runs the gamut.) A theologically sound way out of the thicket of Humanae Vitae, the 1968 papal encyclical on reproduction, is to compare the emotional condition of the parents when an abortion occurs vs. the moment of contraception. God can tell the difference between a fetus and a sperm and egg that are never formally introduced, and so can almost everyone else. Catholic women in the U.S. have figured it out for themselves, thereby writing smarter theology than the pope.

But understanding women's perspectives is not the Vatican's specialty, nor indeed Rush Limbaugh's, who viciously attacked a Georgetown law student, Sandra Fluke, who testified before Congress about a friend who lost an ovary because she couldn't get birth control. I'd like to think he'll get spanked for his 13-year-old's potty mouth -- at least a few lost advertisers. Critics are demanding that Republicans denounce him, but they probably won't*. He's powerful, because some people like what he says. On this issue, he's channeling the creepy vein of misogyny that lingers in our culture and crops up during debates over women's reproductive rights. Remember that women didn't even get the vote in the U.S. until 1920. Even today, some smile inwardly when Rush calls Sandra Fluke a whore.

So the second powerful constituency preventing a rational discussion of contraception is composed of ignoramuses and dufuses. That's why on this issue, which is all about reducing the number of unplanned pregnancies and abortions, I'm sorry to say that Big Brother knows best.

*After posting this, I learned that this morning Speaker of the House John Boehner released a statement saying that Limbaugh's comments about Sandra Fluke were "inappropriate." Carly Fiorina, last year's GOP candidate for the Senate in California, said they were "incendiary" and "distracting."

Two Weeks In The Sausage Factory

Last week, Susan G. Komen for the Cure tried to suspend breast screening grants to Planned Parenthood on account of its performing abortions. This week, the Obama administration tried to require Roman Catholic hospitals, universities, and charities to provide free contraception to women.

Last week, progressives rose up, defending PP's work and women's right to privacy. PP will get its money for the time being, permitting it to continue to offer breast screenings to patients who otherwise couldn't afford them. This week, conservatives rose up, defending the independence of religious institutions. Under a compromise announced today by the president, employees at Catholic institutions would still have access to free birth control, but on the insurance companies' nickel instead of the pope's lira, a distinction perhaps designed to satisfy discerning students of the complicated teaching embodied in Mark 12:17.

And that's how it's done in a free and diverse society. It's been a bloody, noisy, anxious mess, but there's a certain beauty to the symmetry of it (with women's only recently won right to self-determination at the heart of both narratives) as well as to the way violently differing viewpoints and the balance of personal vs. constitutional and secular vs. religious were all worked out. In both matters only the most inflexible absolutists have nothing to show for themselves, while those who feel most comfortable in the middle of the road are probably happiest of all.

Pro-Life And Pro-Choice: How Anglican

Episcopalians are often asked what our church teaches about abortion. We're a pretty democratic denomination, and it can appear that we've as many opinions as communicants. But my clergy bud the Rev. Susan Russell, in a post about the Komen controversy, provides a summary of holy writ insofar as General Convention is concerned:

In 1988 the Episcopal Church went on record with a powerful statement affirming its commitment to both the sanctity of life and a woman's right to reproductive freedom. From the resolution:

All human life is sacred from its inception until death. The Church takes seriously its obligation to help form the consciences of its members concerning this sacredness. Human life, therefore, should be initiated only advisedly and in full accord with this understanding of the power to conceive and to give birth which is bestowed by God.

We regard all abortion as having a tragic dimension, calling for the concern and compassion of all the Christian community. While we acknowledge that in this country it is the legal right of every woman to have a medically safe abortion, as Christians we believe strongly that if this right is exercised, it should be used only in extreme situations. We emphatically oppose abortion as a means of birth control, family planning, sex selection, or any reason of mere convenience.

And then, in 1994, as the anti-abortion movement mobilized to restrict reproductive freedom of American women, we added this "further resolve":

The Episcopal Church express its unequivocal opposition to any legislative, executive or judicial action on the part of local, state or national governments that abridges the right of a woman to reach an informed decision about the termination of pregnancy or that would limit the access of a woman to safe means of acting on her decision.

Mr. Obama Follows The Gingrich Precedent

Newt Gingrich, criticizing the Obama administration's policy change on Roman Catholic institutions and birth control, says that Mitt Romney had a weak record when it comes to respecting the church's prerogatives.

What a joke. Compared to Gingrich, Romney's holier than Benedict. In 2010, Gingrich compared Muslims to Nazis and argued that Muslim U.S. citizens shouldn't be permitted to worship as they chose within a certain distance of the World Trade Center. Gingrich, who ironically enough claims that Obama doesn't respect the Constitution, was proposing a blatant violation of Muslims' God-given, constitutionally-protected freedom while inviting reciprocal moves by anyone who resents the privileges religious institutions enjoy in our country. As I wrote at the time:

The case of the inconvenient mosque would be a useful precedent for harassing others with unpopular or controversial views such as Roman Catholics, orthodox Jews, Mormons, and even Rick Warren and his fellow Southern Baptists. Should that moment come, religion's enemies would smile as they remembered the day when Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin became their useful idiots.

Even imams have objected to the Obama ruling. Imagine that: Muslims speaking up for the letter and spirit of the Constitution, while Gingrich, the history professor, betrayed them all.

Just A Little Nuance, Please, Gov. Romney

Did Mitt Romney even consider staking out a thoughtful position on this issue, decrying abortion, as he now does, but acknowledging PP's work in providing care to women who wouldn't get it otherwise? Here's just one example from this morning's Orange County Register, about an unemployed woman with no health insurance who learned that she could get a free breast screening at PP:

[Monique's] Benoit's mammogram led to an ultrasound and then more tests that found a benign cyst in her breast. That was followed by an operation to remove the mass. Her total bill for the entire process? A $30 lab fee. The rest was covered by Planned Parenthood with funds from the Orange County Komen affiliate.

Just a little nuance, Gov. Romney. A grownup's acknowledgment of the complexity of issues in a vast, diverse country. Or is that just too risky in this era of lock-step absolutism masquerading as conservatism?

The Romneys' past support for PP is detailed here.

If You Must, Hate Abortion, Not Abortion Rights

It's now obvious that Komen's self-inflicted wound was caused by a politician-turned-staffer who devised a change in grant criteria as a way to cut off funds for Planned Parenthood. Her colleagues reportedly hope she'll resign. But what about the board? One member, at least, understands where the responsibility lies. Laura Bassett reports:

[T]he criteria did gain the support of Komen's top executives and board. And in an interview with HuffPost, board member John D. Rafaelli, a Democratic lobbyist and a supporter of Planned Parenthood's mission, took responsibility for the changes. As the only lobbyist on the board, he told HuffPost, he should have anticipated the political fallout.

"Honestly, I didn't think it through well enough," Rafaelli said. "We don't want to be pro-choice or pro-life; we want to be pro-cure. We screwed up, I'm saying it. We failed to keep abortion out of this, and we owe the people in the middle who only care about breast cancer and who have raised money for us an apology."

Most opponents of abortion don't deserve to be portrayed as the right-wing villains who have loomed in much of the coverage of the Komen-PP set-to. Many cringe over the lost potentialities, every lost brother and sister. I do, too, when I think about it, which I probably don't as often as I should.

But better to hate abortion, if one must, than reproductive rights. In a society that practiced gender apartheid until 1920 and a world in which women's rights still teeter on a knife's edge, legal abortion is an indispensable bulwark against misogyny, paternalism, and oppression.

Instead of guerrilla moves against Planned Parenthood, abortion foes ought to devote themselves to reducing the number of abortions by reclaiming the sacramental character of reproductive activity, promoting birth control education and availability (a PP specialty, it's vital to note), and encouraging women to carry unplanned babies to term and give them up for adoption. PR crisis notwithstanding, I hope both Komen and PP continue to thrive. But I'll be sending a check to Holy Family Services, which provides adoption and foster care services in partnership with the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles.

Chickens On The Board, Egg On The Ribbon

The Susan G. Komen for the Cure board is responsible for ensuring that the organization's non-profit purposes are being fulfilled. When the Komen staff decided to go after Planned Parenthood, I wonder what board members said and when they said it.

According to the New York Times, Komen had been dealing for years with opposition to its PP grants, though it doesn't appear that it had been more than a minor irritant. But then, the reporters continue, Komen went and hired itself a politician:

The discussion within Komen about addressing the objections of anti-abortion advocates intensified last year after Karen Handel was hired as senior vice president for public policy, several former Komen employees said. Ms. Handel, a Republican, had been secretary of state in Georgia and had run unsuccessfully for governor in 2010. During that campaign, she had spoken about ending financing for Planned Parenthood and said, “Since I am pro-life, I do not support the mission of Planned Parenthood.”

Komen decided to suspend PP funding on the flimsy pretext that it was compromised by a House investigation spearheaded by an anti-abortion member. When the move became public this week, PP's advocates pressured Komen to restore the funding. One Komen board member, lobbyist John D. Raffaelli, waxed philosophical:

Is it possible for a woman’s health organization to stay out of the abortion issue and help all women? I don’t know the answer to that yet. What we were doing before was angering the right-to-life crowd. Then, with our decision in December, we upset the pro-choice crowd. And now we’re going to make the right-to-life crowd mad all over again. How do we stop doing that?

Raffaelli is lamenting that Komen had a chicken and egg dilemma, well-known to Episcopalians and students of the Middle East. Jews and Muslims, Israelis and Palestinians have been serving chicken and eggs to one another all the way back to Abram and the Canaanites. Did church progressives leave conservatives by supporting full sacramental membership for gays and lesbians despite some conservatives' scriptural and intestinal objections, or did conservatives leave progressives by trying to take their congregations and dioceses out of The Episcopal Church in response to the progressives' moves? And did Komen inject itself into the abortion debate by funding an organization that performed abortions as well as breast screenings or by changing course and trying to end the funding?

Your answer may depend on whether you're a chicken or an egg. On this issue as on most, I'm a Denny's meat-lovers scramble. You can theoretically say that Komen took a stand on abortion (about which Americans remain profoundly divided) by funding PP breast cancer programs. But that would be political Donatism -- saying that all PP's good work for women is moot because a small percentage of its funds is used for abortions. Thanks to Komen, its work includes potentially life-saving clinical breast exams and mammogram referrals in poor neighbors where PP is the only organization available to provide the services.

If anti-abortion folks at Komen had had the courage of their convictions, only women's health organizations passing the pro-life litmus test would've been eligible for grants. But how many such organizations are there, do you imagine? Instead, they came up with the under-investigation dodge, a clever politician's maneuver that was their undoing.

I'd like to know what Raffealli and his fellow board members said to staffers who broached the policy change that would plunge Komen into chaos. It would have been one thing if anti-abortion protests were seriously interfering with Komen's events and fundraising, but there's no sign that they were. Even in that case, Komen would have had the opportunity to reassert its core mission -- saving women from breast cancer -- and promise protestors and the public that it would not be intimidated by anyone trying to pick a fight over abortion. But Komen wasn't facing a crisis. It wasn't drawn into the abortion debate. It drove in. On Friday, Komen founder and CEO Nancy Brinker said:

We do not want our mission marred or affected by politics – anyone’s politics.

Politics is what you get when you hire politicians. At least according to the Times report, Handel played a key role in developing the anti-PP policy. The board got chicken. And now Komen has egg on its ribbon.

Seeing Pink Over Abortion

Todd Kelly says that as a 501(c)(3) with a mission of breast cancer awareness, prevention, and treatment, Susan G. Komen for the Cure went way off message:

I don’t have their financial records, but I’m betting that – to use a round number – no one donated money to them to help out either the Pro-Life or the Pro-Choice cause. I’m pretty sure they donated to fund breast cancer research. Large donors may file suit against Komen for the return of some or all of their historical donations, and Komen might actually lose such a suit.

By putting themselves in the position they have, the Board of Komen has ensured that their name is no longer synonymous with breast cancer research. Instead, it’s deeply entangled with the vitriolic debate on abortion. And...that’s going to be a pretty deep pit of quicksand from which to pull themselves out. Personally, I don’t know that they ever fully can. They are certainly going to take it in the shorts over time, even if they do survive. And the reason for that won’t be because they were the champion of the life of a fetus, and it won’t be because they were the champion of a women’s right to choose.

It’s because by trying to be either one, you can’t be the champion of fighting breast cancer.

Fair enough. I know lots of breast cancer contributors and activists. Their views on abortion probably run the gamut. But Kelly doesn't say how Komen could have avoided becoming entangled in the issue as soon as it decided to fund anything at Planned Parenthood, which has a broader portfolio, unless his argument is that it's a matter of mindset and how one communicates the single-minded passion of purpose. "Listen," Komen might say. "Our goal is to save women from breast cancer. If Planned Parenthood helps with that, we are going fund them. If BP wants to open cancer screening centers instead of car washes at your neighborhood AM/PM, we'll fund that. Others can worry about abortion, pro-lifers, and the Gulf of Mexico."

Andrew Sullivan addresses some of the ambiguities of the issue, including generational ones, here.

Photo by Reuters

Congress And Abortion

Nicholas Kristof, reflecting on Democratic and Republican cowardice and incompetence (his words) leading up to last week's near-shutdown of the federal government:

Conservatives have sought to bar federal funds from going directly to Planned Parenthood and the United Nations Population Fund. The money would not go for abortions, for federal law already blocks that, and the Population Fund doesn’t provide abortions. What the money would pay for is family planning.

In the United States, publicly financed family planning prevented 1.94 million unwanted pregnancies in 2006, according to the Guttmacher Institute, which studies reproductive health. The result of those averted pregnancies was 810,000 fewer abortions, the institute said.

Publicly financed contraception pays for itself, by reducing money spent through Medicaid on childbirth and child care. Guttmacher found that every $1 invested in family planning saved taxpayers $3.74.

As for international family planning, the Guttmacher Institute calculates that a 15 percent decline in spending there would mean 1.9 million more unwanted pregnancies, 800,000 more abortions and 5,000 more maternal deaths.

So when some lawmakers preen their anti-abortion feathers but take steps that would result in more abortions and more women dying in childbirth, that’s not governance, that’s hypocrisy.

Hat tip to Maarja Krusten

Justinifying

Huffington Post celebrates a 16-year-old singer's enlightened views on Canada's health care system and laboriously explains his views on abortion.

God's Blessing Of Impossible Choices

Last week, Arizona's Roman Catholic bishop fired St. Joseph's Hospital in Phoenix and said that a nun and other Catholics on the hospital's ethics committee had excommunicated themselves by permitting an abortion to save the life of a mother. Speaking up for the church (but neglecting to mention that the mother's life was at stake), Lisa Fabrizio writes:

Most folks, and indeed many Catholics who have not been properly catechized, simply do not understand the Faith. They don't understand, for example, that excommunication is far from being a tool to punish and permanently separate Catholics from the Church, but an act of charity aimed at getting the person to recognize their error and return to a faithful reception of the sacraments; most often accomplished simply by making a sincere sacramental confession and receiving absolution.

If that's the case, then Sister Margaret (not Mary, as Fabrizio writes) could, through confession, acknowledge the profound moral difficulty of the dilemma she faced and receive absolution. I understand there are those who would have no hesitation acting as she did. God blesses them in their certitude the same as God blesses those who agonize. It takes all kinds.

Is Saving A Life Dogma Or Love?

In Phoenix, the Roman Catholic Church fired one of its hospitals after it performed an abortion to save a woman's life. Nicholas Kristof writes:

To me, this battle illuminates two rival religious approaches, within the Catholic church and any spiritual tradition. One approach focuses upon dogma, sanctity, rules and the punishment of sinners. The other exalts compassion for the needy and mercy for sinners — and, perhaps, above all, inclusiveness.

The thought that keeps nagging at me is this: If you look at Bishop Olmsted and Sister Margaret [a member of of the hospital's ethics panel who was excommunicated for authorizing the abortion] as the protagonists in this battle, one of them truly seems to me to have emulated the life of Jesus. And it’s not the bishop, who has spent much of his adult life as a Vatican bureaucrat climbing the career ladder. It’s Sister Margaret, who like so many nuns has toiled for decades on behalf of the neediest and sickest among us.

I wish it were that simple. It's easy to say that the hospital should've been more flexible in this case. I would've voted with Sister Margaret. But Jesus preached about personal righteousness as well as peace and justice. The gospel and therefore the church are both about authority and love. The right balance was easy for Jesus to strike, less so for his imperfect followers. For instance, the Vatican's against capital punishment as well as abortion. Kristof is discomfited by its enforcement of dogma because it excommunicated Sister Margaret. But how would his column have read if the church had excommunicated a prison guard who participated in an execution?