MAJORITY SUPPORTS ABORTION "UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES"
ENORMOUS MAJORITY SUPPORTS ABORTION "UNDER CERTAIN CIRCUMSTANCES"

From Pandagon courtesy of Eschaton:

I’m not a particular fan of the “legal under any circumstances” versus “legal only under certain circumstances” distinction, if only because I think most people can think up at least one circumstance where someone shouldn’t be allowed to get an abortion that would immediately push them into the more restrictive second group - most of them revolving around non-medical late-term abortions. But regardless, what we see above is that 82% of America supports abortion rights of some sort. Seventeen percent don’t.

More here.

Okay, that's good to hear. I've spent such a long time in areas where pro-lifers are very vocal, where young single pregnant girls are highly visible, that is, Baytown Texas for six years followed by four years in highly Catholic and Baptist South Louisiana, that I was kind of starting to forget that America really does support abortion rights.

Without going into much detail, which would obviously take up much more time than I'm willing to spend tonight, the bottom line for me on abortion is that outlawing it, or heavily restricting it, means that the government can control your innards, and that's bullshit. Beyond that, and more specifically concerning abortion itself, because of physical differences between males and females, women stand to be the most oppressed by illegalizing pregnancy termination: a woman cannot fully and equally participate in society unless she is able to choose the circumstances under which she does or does not give birth.

If you don't follow that line of reasoning, you're a retard, or a willful moron, and it would be pointless to attempt to explain it to you. However, if you do follow it and reject it anyway because you believe abortion is murder, that's something else, a principled and moral stance. It doesn't make you right, just not a retard or moron.

If you think abortion is murder for religious reasons, well okay, but I wonder why the hell anybody has to follow the principles of your religion. That is, nobody has to follow the principles of your religion. Unless they want to. But then, that's what the term "pro-choice" means: you don't have to have an abortion simply because it is legal to do so. If you think abortion is murder for more secular and philosophical reasons, like equating the cells known as embryos to a fully formed post-birth human being, which has a "right to life" outweighing an American's sovereign dominion over his or her own innards, well okay, but cells are quite clearly not human beings, so you've pretty much got the burden of proof in this argument. And I'm still waiting for some proof. And pictures of bloody fetuses or sonograms or recordings of fetal heartbeats don't make cells into people.

Anyway, as far as I can tell, the vast majority of abortion opposition is religious anyway, and it's not even really about abortion: it's about sex, stopping sex, stopping women from having sex. That is, I think, the main reason religious people are so freaked out over abortion is because it removes one of nature's great disincentives for sex--you might have to have an unwanted child if you have sex. It is no accident that virtually all religious abortion opponents are also opposed to birth control while supporting ineffective "abstinence based" sex education. I mean, if they were serious about reducing all these "murders," they'd try to make it easier, not harder, to avoid pregnancy. But no, these people want women to get pregnant if they have sex. As God's punishment, or something along those lines, which is just psychotic when you think about it for two seconds.

Yeah, "pro-life" is ultimately about keeping 'em barefoot and pregnant. And in the kitchen where they fucking belong. Opposing abortion is about opposing women.

Fortunately, most Americans, seemingly genetically endowed with a love of liberty, get that. In spite of decades of crazed rhetoric and straight-up distortions of reality. In spite of everything, there is still good reason to have hope for this nation. Americans, when you get right down to it, really are good people. We just seem to allow freaks and perverts to hold public office all too often.

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