I cover a lot of topics for the Lexicon, but there are some that I shy away from most of the time. One of these topics is abortion. My reasons are simple: 1) it’s such an emotional issue that it’s impossible to discuss without someone getting pissed off, and 2) much like a Hannah Gadsby comedy special, there’s not much funny there. Even some of the periphery topics can get people mad.
Well, this is your warning that some of you reading beyond this point are gonna get pissed because we’re going into abortion.
In their post-Roe Handmaids Tale pseudo reality, Leftists are pushing an idea that women now will be required to take babies to term. In a double doozy of dumbassery, former Secretary of Labor and current member of the Lollipop Guild Robert Reich tweeted the following:
Forced birth in a country that refuses to protect its people from being shot down in a mass shooting.
That’s right, kids. Forced birth is apparently a thing, at least according to Leftists, which means it’s a subject that’s right in the Lexicon wheelhouse.
Damn you, Leftists.
forced birth
What the Left thinks it means – a condition created by Republicans where women are legally required to give birth under any and all circumstances
What it really means – a scary-sounding phrase without any connection to reality
For almost as long as I’ve been alive, Roe v Wade was the law of the land, making abortion a legal activity, as well as a coin of the Leftist realm. When the US Supreme Court handed down its decision in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization last year, Leftists not only lost their shit, but started to make up new shit to replace it. Enter “forced birth.” All the usual culprits weighed in on the subject (using the same terminology and scare tactics, I might add). Planned Parenthood, the Washington Post, The Guardian, and even the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee weighed in, offering the most tepid of hot takes. Let me give you the short version.
Abortion good. Limits to abortion bad. Oh, and limits to abortion equals forced birth.
As with most terms used in the abortion debate, forced birth is a charged term, and it’s designed to be. Leftists love to combine words that don’t necessary go together, like climate justice or House Intelligence Committee member Adam Schiff. This is done to evoke emotions in line with what Leftists want us to feel or think (or feel instead of think).
In this case, they start with a word that is intended to make us feel bad, “forced.” This shocks us because people like freedom. If we’re forced to do something, our natural instinct is to resist.
Then, we come across “birth.” (Or at least the father did at conception.) Regardless of where you stand on the abortion issue, life is a pretty important subject. We understand it on a fundamental level and revere it to one extent or another. Even the most strident pro-choicer gets the importance of life; they just don’t feel bad at killing a baby in the womb because…reasons.
So, did the Dobbs decision force women to give birth? Nope! It affirmed there is no Constitutional right to an abortion, and it left the decision to either the states or Congress. While the decision didn’t outright ban abortion, Leftists made it sound like it did, if only to continue its Handmaids Tale cosplay.
Although I’m not a lawyer since I have morals and a soul, the Dobbs decision made a lot of sense to me because it was based on simple logic and attention to details. Even though the word “abortion” doesn’t appear in the Constitution, the Left argued it was an extension of the 14th Amendment, as Justice Samuel Alito referenced in his majority opinion:
The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision, including the one on which the defenders of Roe and Casey now chiefly rely—the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. That provision has been held to guarantee some rights that are not mentioned in the Constitution, but any such right must be “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition” and “implicit in the concept of ordered liberty.”
The right to abortion does not fall within this category…. Roe’s defenders characterize the abortion right as similar to the rights recognized in past decisions involving matters such as intimate sexual relations, contraception, and marriage, but abortion is fundamentally different, as both Roe and Casey acknowledged, because it destroys what those decisions called “fetal life” and what the law now before us describes as an “unborn human being.”
The TL:DL (Too Long: Didn’t Litigate) version: abortion isn’t a right at all, and the two major decisions related to it (Roe v Wade and Planned Parenthood v Casey for those of you playing along at home) weren’t consistent with the Constitution as written. Hence, states can set whatever limits they want on abortion thanks to a little thing the hip kids like to call the Tenth Amendment.
But that takes away the Left’s best weapon in favor of abortion: judicial fiat. Since that’s not on the table anymore, Leftists resort to their fallback plan, that being openly lying to people to get them outraged at the Supreme Court and Republicans deciding a baby’s life is worth as much as the mother’s. Those bastards!
But out of chaos came some ingenuity, which is shocking for Leftists considering they’re usually dimmer than a burnt out light bulb in a goth kid’s bedroom. Leftists started volunteering to take women to states where abortions are legal if they live in a state where it isn’t. Oh, and to donate money towards that end because, let’s face it, schlepping caramel macchiatos at Starbucks doesn’t pay well enough to fund it themselves.
Now imagine if these same Leftists understood economics in the same way they understand interstate travel to kill a baby. But that’s a blog post for another time…
Meanwhile back at the main point, the truth is no one is forced to give birth in this country. Some states make it more difficult to get one, but that’s not the same thing as making women give birth. What it does do is create an incentive to plan a pregnancy and take steps to prevent it before doing the horizontal mambo under the sheets if you’re not ready to be a parent. Of course, this is beyond the pale for Leftists, who treat abortion like it’s Pez. After all, showing any amount of foresight, planning, and dare I say it responsibility might…make you become a Republican!
Regardless of your position on abortion, it’s clear that Robert Reich and anyone else who is pushing the forced birth bullshit aren’t helping the matter any. If we’re going to come to a functional, albeit tenuous, agreement on the topic, we need to be honest with each other. Both sides have legitimate concerns that can only be addressed with dialogue instead of diatribes. Granted, that seems less likely than Michael Bay making a good movie, but I can hope.
And to Mr. Reich, I’m sorry your attempt to push the forced birth lie came up a little short.
I’ll see myself out…