aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South
Monday, December 26, 2005
The illusion of legal abortion
If Roe v Wade is the law of the land, how does this happen?
Mississippi’s only abortion clinic is waiting to hear whether it will be granted a new state certification to continue performing its full range of procedures.
The requirement to meet higher standards came after an aggressive push by anti-abortion advocates, who are trying to shut down the clinic.
“We believe that if they comply and the clinic is safer for women ... at the very least, Mississippi has made the back-alley abortion clinic - or the front-alley abortion clinic as we call them - safer for women but not for unborn children,” said Pro-Life Mississippi President Terri Herring.
The Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which treats more than 3,000 women a year statewide, said a setback would not mean defeat and may only put the issue back in front of a judge. The clinic, which is still operating, risks having to scale back the kinds of abortion it can perform.
As I said last summer, I’m pro-abortion rights. Safe legal and rare is good by me; so long as it is available everywhere.
Nathan Newman is right: we have to win in the legislature. We have to get out there, start this fight over again, make our positive arguments and win on the merits.
RELATED: South Dakota has no doctors but one clinic. The doctors fly in from MN.
UPDATE: Much more here.
Social engineering today
The Carpetbagger Report looks at Sen. Rick Santorum’s (R-Pa.) “healthy marriages” proposal, which was awarded $100 million for federally-funded programs that will allegedly help families stay together, and sees a shift in Republican rhetoric:
I vaguely remember the time - I believe it was called the “1980s and ‘90s” - when Republicans railed against the idea of social engineering. In 1993, Henry Hyde wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post (which is no longer online) in which he lambasted the Clinton White House for its alleged belief that government could use its power to interfere with family structures. Hyde called the very idea “exotic social engineering.”
Republicans don’t seem to believe that anymore. The right may not want to admit it, but the GOP over the last five years has embraced social engineering as much, if not more, than anyone since the Great Society. The marriage initiative, faith-based initiative, fatherhood initiative, abstinence-only programs … social engineering is predicated on the idea that the power of the state can alter how people can and will behave. It used to be anathema for anyone who valued “limited” government. The Bush presidency didn’t herald the end of the government’s drive towards social engineering; it marked the end of worrying about it.
Google Zeitgeist
The most popular searches this year on Google:
Google.com - Top Gainers of 2005
1. Myspace
2. Ares
3. Baidu
4. wikipedia
5. orkut
6. iTunes
7. Sky News
8. World of Warcraft
9. Green Day
10. Leonardo da Vinci
Google News - Top Searches in 20051. Janet Jackson
2. Hurricane Katrina
3. tsunami
4. xbox 360
5. Brad Pitt
6. Michael Jackson
7. American Idol
8. Britney Spears
9. Angelina Jolie
10. Harry Potter
Janet Jackson? Really?
