Tuesday, September 02, 2008

So seriously, how would it work?

John McCain has declared (to Rick Warren during his interview at Saddleback church) that "life begins at the moment of conception." John McCain followed that up by letting James Dobson and the theocratic wing of the Republican party pick his Vice Presidential nominee. It stands to reason then that, if elected, McCain would also let Dobson pick his Supreme Court nominees as well.

So let's play it out... There are already 5 votes on the Supreme Court (with the addition of Roberts and Alito) to overturn Roe (and Roe is based on Griswold which holds a fundamental right to the privacy of your own body). If McCain/Palin were to be elected, James Dobson gets to nominate 2 to 3 additional justices to the Supreme Court -- creating a theocratic super-majority.

If you believe, as McCain and Palin do -- that a fertilized egg is a human being and that abortion should be illegal in all cases including rape and incest -- then presumably you would want to use the coercive power of the state to force those 1.2 million women each year in the U.S., who would otherwise obtain an abortion, to instead give birth against their will. So how exactly does that work? First off, you can forget about responsible birth control (as you know, taking several birth control pills at once can serve as an abortifacient). But the ramifications go far beyond that. The abortion pill itself is really easy to hide and transport. Does the McCain/Palin government hire a network of secret police to monitor doctors? How do you know which women are pregnant? Does that mean that all women need to be under police/military surveillance as long as they are capable of reproduction? How do you know pregnant women are not harming the unborn child? Are pregnant women (read: "poor pregnant women") rounded up and detained in state run "birthing camps" so that the state can be sure that the baby is carried to term? What about travel? Republican-controlled states already have made it illegal for minors to cross state lines for an abortion. Will U.S. Customs Officers inspect women who want to travel to another country to make sure they aren't pregnant and leaving for the purposes of an abortion?

Is it really so unreasonable to think that McCain/Palin might want to institutionalize and operationalize their often-stated values?

How soon after McCain/Palin are sworn in, does the United States begin to look like a sci fi horror movie -- the patriarchal dystopia that many feared but never really believed could actually happen here? How soon after McCain/Palin are given the oath of office are hundreds of thousands of women (and their partners) applying for political asylum in Australia and Europe in order to not be subjected to state-sponsored control of their own bodies?

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