Radio, Radio... Getting Me Riled

I was out running some errands in the car today, and I ended up listening to NPR rather than putting in a CD. In a promo for an upcoming show the local WHYY announcer noted, "One of this country's richest men, Warren Buffett, has a birthday coming up, and it has people wondering..." Was I wrong to assume that she was going to say "what to get him"? Isn't that the thing you usually wonder when someone has a birthday coming up? Instead, she continued, "when he'll retire and who'll replace him." Aw. :(

After some interesting commentary about the day's happenings at the Republican National Convention (which I intend to watch this week, much as it may gall me, so I can understand what we're up against), I was treated to a discussion on abortion on Fresh Air.

First to speak was Senator Rick Santorum, who just drives me round the freaking bend. Every time Terry Gross asked him a question, he objected to her use of the words "fetus", "embryo", and "fertilized egg"—he preferred that they be substituted with "little girl" or "little boy"—which meant that she had to bring him around to the point over and over again in an attempt to get an answer. She wanted to talk about the provision in the Republican Platform to give equal constitutional rights to a fetus and how those might conflict with the host organism—namely, the woman carrying the fetus; he wanted to point out that "over 99% of abortions in this country have nothing to do with the health or life of the mother; they have to do with the convenience or the desire at that point in time in the woman's life not to have a child." Um, how exactly does this have nothing to do with the life of the woman? In the sense that it wouldn't kill her to have a child? Santorum actually uses the phrase "life consequences to the mother" as well, again meaning, I would assume, that it wouldn't kill her to have a child. Does he really think there are no "life consequences" to bearing a child? Regardless of whether the woman chooses to raise the child herself or not, as a pregnant woman, I am here to tell you, Senator Santorum, that there CERTAINLY ARE "life consequences" to carrying a child—ranging from heartburn, hemorrhoids, weight gain, varicose veins, stretch marks, insomnia, and round ligament pain to anxiety, depression, nausea, and extreme fatigue. And for Christ's sake, we haven't even gotten to labor and delivery yet, much less the next 18-30 years of emotional, physical, educational, and financial responsibility. I would argue strenuously that being able to choose whether and when to have children is fundamental to women's rights. (But, of course, giving a fetus "equal" rights isn't really about equal rights at all—it's about valuing the rights of the fetus *above* those of the woman carrying it. OF COURSE THOSE RIGHTS ARE GOING TO COME INTO CONFLICT.)

While I could understand (despite being appalled by) the idea of an exception to a ban on abortion when the pregnant woman's life is in danger being somehow equivalent to committing murder in self-defense, I don't think Santorum ever fully answered Gross' question about exceptions in the case where a pregnancy could compromise the health of the woman. His response was, "Again, the law is very clear on this point... if your life is threatened, then you can respond in kind. If something less than that, then you can respond in less than that." Huh? Is it possible that he's advocating partial-birth abortions? (Sorry, bad joke.) No, judging by his further comments, I suspect he meant that your only possible response is medical intervention (short of terminating the pregnancy) to try to mitigate any negative health effects.

Senator Santorum next pissed me off by asserting the Republican Party line that Democratic judges are somehow "activist" judges who create new law, while Republican judges are "traditionalists" who merely interpret it. Bullshit. Gross was right to call him on that point, to suggest that perhaps the judges the Republicans wanted to appoint had just as much of an agenda—namely, to overturn Roe v. Wade.

It's hard for me to articulate what so frustrated me about Santorum's final story, a highly personal one about his and his wife's choice to perform a risky, in vitro operation on their unborn child in an attempt to improve its chances of living rather than to abort the pregnancy or let the baby die once delivered. I felt great sympathy for them and the hard choice they had to make; incidentally, it's what most women (I'd even go so far as to say "over 99%") go through when deciding whether to terminate a pregnancy. The operation ended up causing an infection, which in turn caused premature delivery of the child at 21 weeks. And here's the part that's hard to articulate, because I can't point to anything Santorum *said* that particularly annoyed me. It was more the sense of awe, the profound effect that witnessing the 2-hour life of his son had on him... and the implication that only someone who truly appreciates life could have had the same reaction. Santorum gave the impression earlier in the interview that women who choose abortion are being anti-life, when most are hardly so cavalier. Most people (yes, women included!) have a profound respect for life, and despite Santorum's assertion that continuing a pregnancy has no "life consequences," I can't think of anything more profoundly consequential. Deciding whether to have children can be agonizing, and whether you choose to go ahead with a pregnancy or not, you are choosing life.

The second half of Fresh Air was devoted to an interview with the President of Planned Parenthood, Gloria Feldt. Even though I support her position, I was a bit disappointed that she was often as given to rhetoric as Santorum. She did, however, make two points that I thought were pretty interesting. One was that Planned Parenthood (along with other anti-violence groups) opposes the so-called "Laci Petersen Law," which makes it a separate crime to harm the unborn fetus of a pregnant woman, because it does not increase penalties for harming pregnant women, who are 20% more likely than non-pregnant women to be assaulted and killed. It does nothing, in other words, to protect pregnant women from abuse. It does, however, establish a fertilized egg as having legal standing as a person. Can anyone say "legal precedent"?

The other interesting point she made had to do with the partial birth abortion ban. Rather than try to rephrase, I'll quote her directly here, because I think she describes the situation pretty well:

The abortion ban, which was passed by Congress and signed by President Bush last November...outlaws abortions even as early as the beginning of the second trimester for any reason. It outlaws a vague and undefined range of techniques that doctors use in order to be able to provide the best care for their patient[s]—and by that I mean doctors are always trying to protect the woman's health and her future fertility, her future ability to bear children. So this law is unconstitutional under Roe; an almost precisely identical law has already been overturned by the United States Supreme Court. And again, Congress knows this, John Ashcroft knows this, George Bush knows this—but the Ashcroft Justice Department is aggressively defending this law in spite of the fact that it is unconstitutional because he [Ashcroft, presumably] hopes that by the time it works its way up to the Supreme Court, there will be a different Supreme Court.

Now there's a chilling thought.

Posted by Lori in politics at 9:09 PM on August 30, 2004

Comments (2)

goalie Jason:

Thanks to Dan Savage and his Savage Love column, I can't think of anything else when I see the name Santorum:

http://www.fact-index.com/s/sa/savage_love.html#Santorum

Lori:

oh my.

as embarrassed as you may be to call Arnold Schwartzenegger your governor, I am doubly so to know that Rick Santorum "represents" me in the Senate. in fact, I am utterly horrified.

Comments

Thanks to Dan Savage and his Savage Love column, I can't think of anything else when I see the name Santorum:

http://www.fact-index.com/s/sa/savage_love.html#Santorum

Posted by: goalie Jason at August 31, 2004 10:35 AM

oh my.

as embarrassed as you may be to call Arnold Schwartzenegger your governor, I am doubly so to know that Rick Santorum "represents" me in the Senate. in fact, I am utterly horrified.

Posted by: Lori at August 31, 2004 2:09 PM

Comments are now closed.