Leave it to the indispensable Rachel Maddow to explain, with skill and style, the Republican Party’s obsession with reversing reproductive rights at all costs:
Maddow isn’t alone in recognizing Republican radicalism when it comes to controlling choice. Even conservative Doug Mataconis thinks something’s kinda off:
…[T]here is a rather obvious contradiction between the limited government principles that Republicans claim to stand for, along with their insistence that they stand opposed to the expansive views of Federal power under the Commerce Clause that they are now relying on, and their support for a bill such as this. If nothing else, it makes clear that their support for limited government and all that flowery rhetoric that we hear from Republicans on a regular basis about the Constitution is by and large nonsense. Three years ago, Republicans were telling us that the Commerce Clause did not give Congress the power to require everyone to have medical insurance. Now, they are telling us that it does give them the power to ban a medical procedure nationwide. The hypocrisy is really quite apparent and, if nothing else, it shows that when it comes down to a choice between abiding by their principles and pandering to their base, Republicans have made their choice.
With regard to the GOP’s fixation on fetuses, these truths are self-evident:
1) Republican-led efforts to eliminate reproductive rights constitute a war specifically waged against poor and middle-class women. Wealthy women will always be able to find a safe, clean clinic to attend to their needs if Roe v. Wade is overturned. However, the less well-off will be profiled, harassed and beaten by the sex police.
2) Like a living corpse, a violent pacifist or a virgin prostitute, a pro-choice Republican is a contradiction in terms.
3) It’s fairly obvious that there are now only two types of anti-abortion activists: those who actually shoot up the clinics and those who silently approve of doing so. There are no “moderate” anti-abortionists; that’s another contradiction in terms. Opposing a constitutional right is by definition a radical position intolerable to civil society.
4) It is your right to choose–and your duty as a citizen to make sure that right is protected.
UPDATE: More from PBS Newshour, the San Francisco Chronicle, Doug Mataconis, Think Progress and Media Matters.
