Like many people, I’ve long since given up on reading most of the editorials in the New York Times. Unlike those in the Washington Post, they don’t seem designed to persuade anyone. They posture and preen and pronounce. But they don;t seem intended to engage. Last Sunday’s, however, stood out for its shrillness. I’m not the only one to notice this, but it’s been bugging me in an inchoate way all week. Entitled “The War Against Women,” the editorial is a hysterical attempt to assert that the Bush administration harbors contempt for women as a group of people, and wants to eviscerate their rights and standing before the law. Does anyone not on the far left think the administration’s motives are as simple and malevolent as that? Almost the entire thrust of the screed, however, is directed to the subject of abortion and the Bush administration’s modest moves to tighten government support for abortion and limit some of the more extreme examples of it. With the exception of the attempt to ban partial birth abortion, a barbaric practice that appears to be on the rise, I’m actually quite sympathetic to the Times’ substantive position. It’s dismaying to see the White House sign onto the far right’s propaganda campaign against condoms, and to favor ineffective abstinence programs at the expense of sensible sex education. But after a perusal of the Times’ rhetoric, it’s hard not to leap to the administration’s defense.
“ANTI-CHOICE”: On abortion itself, any objective view would find that women themselves are conflicted about the subject, as any human being should be. To frame this debate, then, as something as violent as a “war” against all women is simply boilerplate. Worse, it seems cribbed almost verbatim from Planned Parenthood’s activist hype. The notion that Roe vs Wade is on the brink of extinction is also, by any reasonable measure, hyperbole. It’s about as settled a part of constitutional law as you can imagine. Then there’s the constant use of the term “anti-choice.” Politics is strewn on all sides by this kind of sloganeering and you can see the rhetorical pleasure it must provide. But as a tool of persuasion, it couldn’t be weaker. I’m very reluctantly in favor of legal first trimester abortion, but I still find abortion horrifying, immoral, and wrong, and would seek to limit it in other circumstances. Does that make me “anti-choice”? Or engaged in a war against women? If the pro-choice movement wants to make friends rather than enemies, it should see how its rhetoric is seriously wounding its cause rather than helping it. And the Times should start treating its readers as engaged adults rather than as feckless and brainless children.
The Dish 