Defending Roe v. Wade

The GOP may have claimed a majority in the House of Representatives by campaigning on the principles of a smaller government, but now in power, the party is doing everything it can to ensure that it has the final say on what a woman can do to her uterus.

It is a dark time when a leading political party can be so blatantly hypocritical about the rights it trusts its people to exercise.

To the GOP, there is no recourse when it comes to an act that requires Americans to purchase health insurance, but they wince at the thought of a woman exercising her own moral judgment in the temple of her own body.

Saturday marked the 38th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, making this week a rallying call for those interested in ending the era of reproductive rights in this country.
Even given the timing, the anniversary has invited bloody rhetoric from the right on the topic of abortion, as though the lessons from Tucson, Ariz., have been all but
forgotten.

And if not forgotten, certainly misconstrued. Arizona Sen. Linda Gray placed the blame of the Tucson massacre squarely on the shoulders of Roe v. Wade — claiming that our society’s complacent approach to abortion has lead to a disrespect for all life, an attitude attributed to Jared Loughner’s killing spree.

Her logic is anything but sound, as there doesn’t appear to be any apparent correlation between the termination of a pregnancy and the violent outburst of a mentally unsound youth.

But that’s conservative America for you.

At the March for Life Rally this weekend in Washington D.C., the rhetoric continued to build animosity. Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., referred to Roe v. Wade as a “holocaust in the United States of America,” an ugly comparison that drew cheers from his supporters.

He has already planned to reintroduce the “Life at Conception Act,” which would dictate that human life begins at conception — a vindication based on belief, not science.

The GOP should consider its hypocrisy when it comes to dialogue on Roe v. Wade. It is not possible to align the party’s fiery rhetoric on abortion with the pledge to tone down the discourse in the wake of the Tucson massacre. Nor is it sound policy to demand that government get its hands out of health care if it’s just to jab fingers at a woman’s health decisions.


E-mail: danifleis@indiana.edu