It's For The Babies

Because she does not care one way or the other, Megan McArdle writes yet another post on the Susan G. Komen decision to defund Planned Parenthood.

Komen Changes Its Mind on Planned Parenthood, but Will Donors Come Back?
By Megan McArdle

So apparently Susan G. Komen has reversed its decision to fund Planned Parenthood. Just as it wasn't surprising that they might want to gently disconnect themselves from the abortion rights movement, it's also not shocking that once this issue became political, pro-choicers mobilized faster and harder than pro-lifers did. For one thing, as I noted yesterday, the issue of breast cancer has long been broadly within the "women's groups" umbrella that includes abortion rights, and for another, people react more strongly to losses than to possible gains. If Komen had never funded Planned Parenthood, it wouldn't have been a big deal . . . but once they did, withdrawing the money was a political statement.

Funding Planned Parenthood was partly a political decision as well. They knew that PP provided abortions from the start, of course. They obviously felt that associating with PP would draw in donations from political-minded women who support PP's abortion services. McArdle, of all people, should realize that some people will do anything for money.

And just as I wasn't outraged yesterday by the decision to withdraw money, I also think they're well within their rights to reinstate it if they think that doing so will best further their mission.

McArdle the Moderate strikes again! Despite the fact that she wants women who get abortions to suffer for their choice, she is agnostic regarding the support of PP or abortions in general and thinks people should be able to follow their conscience. But she has also written posts supporting the Catholic Church's stance on birth control, stating that it is wrong for the government to force the church to follow federal laws when receiving federal money if they disagree with those laws. It is very difficult to follow exactly what McArdle is trying to support.

Supporting organizations that provide abortions is okay.
Supporting organizations that refuse to support abortion is okay.
Refusing to pay for birth control for one's employees is okay.

So far, the only thing that McArdle has come out against is forcing organizations which receive federal funds to follow federal laws. She wants them to get the money with no strings attached, so they can force non-Catholic employees to follow Catholic dogma. The only people she actually supports are religious organizations which want to force individuals of other or no religions to follow their laws. This is utterly extraordinary, especially when you remember that McArdle is supposedly a libertarian.

And let's not even get into the fact that 98% of all women have used birth control, as we all now know. Authoritarians will say that they are pro-choice in polls but what they actually do is another matter. Authoritarians believe that they have to publicly conform to their authority's views but in private may do as they like. Public polls on abortion and contraception mean nothing. Actions do. The US passed laws making abortion and contraception legal and that is what counts.

By the way, we also know that conservative women have abortions.

In the United States a number of studies have examined the abortion rate of fetuses with Down syndrome. Three studies estimated the termination rates at 95%, 98%, and 87% respectively.

Down syndrome is not a liberal-only phenomenon, obviously. Genes do not make political decisions. Some conservative women abort their babies because they do not want to have the child. Then some lie and say that nobody should be able to have an abortion because only God can take a life, which is understandable since conservative women like McArdle want to make them miserable for making this very personal decision. Megan McArdle enjoys making others miserable for being different from Megan McArdle.

Universal health care might make raising a Down syndrome child more affordable and therefore eliminate some abortions but that reasoning is far too complex for conservative minds.

Conservative women take birth control. Conservative women have abortions. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever that we should accept the right's demands regarding private reproductive choices. We should refuse to accept their moral scolding, threats, or attempts to deprive us of our basic rights. The right knows that if they push us too far they will unleash a furious backlash, which is why abortion is still legal despite numerous Republican administrations. Like Megan McArdle, they want abortion to be available but they want to make us miserable for disagreeing with their public stance. This is not a matter of religious belief or respect for life for most conservatives. It is a political battle. The right supports the mostly male power structure, which derives power in part by using religion to control the masses. Religion is merely a tool in their arsenal.

I doubt that this is over -- pro-lifers are now going to have their own round of outraged protest. And to be fair, I do think that they should offer give back any money they raised over the last two days, since that was mostly coming from pro-lifers who were voicing support for the organization's decision not to fund Planned Parenthood.

Heh. She thinks Komen will send back money if they change their minds regarding PP yet again? Good luck with that.

But other than that, I think it's their right to decide what advances their mission--and of course, every potential donor's right to decide if that's what they want to support.

Too bad Komen isn't run by Catholic clergy. Then McArdle would think that Komen's leaders could do whatever they want with the money they take in, donors' opinions be damned.

The really interesting question is this: will the pro-choice donors come back? Or has Komen damaged its brand to no purpose?

McArdle's fake moderate stance forces her to turn everything into a question since she does not dare make a decision. Making decisions means accepting responsibility for those decisions, and McArdle thinks she has reached a happy medium, in which she supports everything and nothing. She does not stand with the courage of her convictions because her convictions are whatever she is being paid to convict. So to speak.

So the answer to the oh-so-difficult question of whether or not Komen's donors will return is a big, fat "no." The left has dropped them like a stone, especially now that it has been tainted with Ari Fleischer's presence. And the right hates wishy-washy people, since they believe that the only people who can be trusted are those who think exactly like them, or rather who talk exactly like them in public. And Komen has given the women on the left something they are yearning for--a cause to pick up, a reachable enemy to fight.