Saturday, March 04, 2006

Mississippi Goddamn

Don't tell me, I'll tell you.

Ole Miss nearly trips over the heels of South Dakota in its rush to keep women barefoot and pregnant.

As has been noted, at this point, such a law probably won't make much substantial practical difference in Mississippi (or South Dakota for that matter); "the state already has some of the strictest abortion laws in the nation." MS had seven abortion clinics; as of a year ago, only one was left, in Jackson, and it was struggling to keep its doors open. Guess why.


The UK Telegraph writes about us as though we were one of those repressive, regressive third-world countries instead of the Leader of the Free World. Oh, wait.

Anyway, as you know, the point now is to not so much about Mississippi or South Dakota but to seize the day and push for a court case that will lead to a wholesale overturn of Roe v. Wade; enough of this hole-and-corner chipping away.

So, yeah. I guess this would be that heightening of the contradictions that I seem to recall...certain people arguing as a good reason to have the Republicans in for yet another millenium instead of the useless Democrats. We'll see, won't we. It is true that this burst of optimism doesn't seem to be shared by all anti-abortion folks; they fear, probably with good reason, that it's too soon to count on the SCOTUS going their way (they'd need one more judge solidly in their court to really seal the deal).

Call me a cynic, though, but somehow I'm not exactly falling all over myself with joy here. Oh, look! A defining moment! A window of opportunity for the left to get its shit together and revive itself in the face of a crisis! To rise like a phoenix from the ashes! Thank God for that. Because it's not like we've had any other such opportunities over the last two-four-ten-twenty-five years. I'm sure we'll get right on that.

2 comments:

Hahni said...

This post really got me thinking. Nice how folks can co-opt women's pain for how useful it is as a political movement. Hope you'll check out my response to it over on superbabymama.blogspot.com

Howard said...

Here is some potential good news about the SD abortion law from law experts printed in the Chicago Sun-Times.