In West Virginia, Parkersburg City Councilman, Eric Barber, celebrated the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court by posting a ‘celebratory’ message to Facebook:
“Better get you’re [sic] coathangers ready liberals.”
Barber had made a big show of leaving the Democratic party a year ago because it was “anti-Christian” so it is no surprise that he is ardently anti-choice. What he obviously isn’t is pro-life. He has revealed conservative evangelicalism’s dirty little secret. They don’t give damn about ‘life’.
I’m not saying that among the rank and file there aren’t believers who regard abortion as a sin. But among Church leadership, abortion is merely a means to end — the accumulation of power. Think not? Until Roe vs. Wade conservative churches had a far less doctrinaire position on abortion. And more importantly, they kept religion and politics separate.
But let’s give them the benefit of the doubt and say they are sincere in the desire to reduce Abortions, then the best that can be said is that they are doing nothing effective. Legal or not, women get abortions. Before Roe vs. Wade hundreds of thousands of abortions were performed illegally in the US. Even in the 1950s around 500,000 women had abortions annually. (And some estimates put the number at over 1 million.
The only thing that reduces abortions is a reduction in unwanted pregnancies. But the most vocal anti-choice advocates are also the most determined to cut off access to contraception and adopt the thoroughly discredited ‘abstinence-only’ sex ed.
So where does that leave us? Evangelicals want to criminalize abortion knowing full well that does little to reduce the abortion rate. And they pursue a strategy that guarantees the rate of unwanted pregnancies stays high. It is sadism.
Eric Barber was clear when he said that women should get their coathangers ready. He knows that abortions would continue, but he doesn’t care. It is naked misogyny expressed with a clarity the evangelical right rarely adopts.
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