| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"Rudy Canoza" |
| Date: |
17 Sep 2007 11:28:22 AM |
| Object: |
Five Pro-Abortion Dodges - Part III |
By Todd M. Aglialoro
Crisis
http://www.crisismagazine.com/april2004/aglialoro.htm
3. 'Safe, Legal, and Rare': Bill Clinton
Among politicians only Bill Clinton could devise a line
like this, during his 1996 campaign, brilliantly
triangulating liberal abortion-on-demand orthodoxy with
Middle America's broad-based distaste for the practice.
Ultimately nonsensical yet somehow familiar and
reassuring, like a couplet from Dr. Seuss, this buzz
phrase became an instant and enduring success, for two
reasons.
First, it validated the internal conflict that the
majority of Americans were (and still are) experiencing
over the abortion question. They were conscious of a
natural sense of revulsion toward abortion itself, yet
unwilling for whatever reason to sign on whole-hog with
the pro-lifers. Clinton let them know that he felt
their pain and that his administration's policy would
include a subtle nod toward the general feeling that
abortion is a Bad Thing (which ought to be "rare") but
would not place restrictions on its availability
("legal") that might send women to back alleys
("safe"). Thus he accomplished an unprecedented
political feat: co-opting the vaguely antiabortion
sentiments of the masses and mollifying the blood lust
of the radical pro-abort left with one simple statement.
"Safe, legal, and rare" also subtly but definitely
realigned the terms of the abortion debate. No longer
would the question center on whether the aborted fetus
was a blob or a baby; no longer would it be necessary
to make tortured distinctions between public and
private morality. In the first place, safety and
legality are conservative concepts, not radical ones.
Now the pro-choicer could consider himself a guardian
of the status quo—an American tradition, even. In the
second place, with the word "rare," the focus shifted
away from abortion itself (which we now presumed to be
beyond debate) and toward abortion's presumptive root
causes. The abortion issue was now really a health-care
or poverty or education issue—right in the liberal
Democrats' wheelhouse.
To be truly pro-life, they could argue, meant to "get
over this love affair with the fetus" (as former
Surgeon General Jocelyn Elders put it, with typical
elegance) and instead pay attention to alleviating the
conditions that led women to get abortions in the first
place. Implied here, of course, is a kind of false
dichotomy: The qualities of justice and mercy are not
strained, nor must the interests of the mother and
unborn child be necessarily set at odds. But the
argument worked by playing into multiple stereotypes:
pro-lifers as single-issue fanatics, misogynists,
icy-hearted grinches. And it allowed politicians to
spin abortion questions into Great Society sermonettes.
Pro-abortionists' next major tack would ratchet to a
new level the lip-biting empathy invoked by "safe,
legal, and rare" and that slogan's tacit admission of
abortion's unpleasantness. But at the same time, it
would rebuke the Clintonian strategy of ignoring or
spinning away from the question of abortion itself.
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| User: "Ray Fischer" |
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| Title: Re: Five Pro-Lear Smears - Part III |
18 Sep 2007 01:14:26 AM |
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Rudy Canoza <s.e.maizlich@hertzburgh.eduu, leif@norvege.no> wrote:
By Todd M. Aglialoro
Crisis
http://www.crisismagazine.com/april2004/aglialoro.htm
3. 'Safe, Legal, and Rare': Bill Clinton
Among politicians only Bill Clinton could devise a line
like this, during his 1996 campaign, brilliantly
triangulating liberal abortion-on-demand orthodoxy with
More of the usual dishonest smears. Again Aglialoro showes that he is
invcapable of addressing actual arguments.
--
Ray Fischer
rfischer@sonic.net
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