With Roe v. Wade at risk, Missouri Rep. Cori Bush wonders if there should be “sperm regulation legislation” and “mandated vasectomies” for men.
She apparently believes such laws would be fair retaliation for restrictions on aborting babies.
The far-left representative from the state’s 1st Congressional District in St. Louis made the remarks Wednesday on MSNBC’s Joy Reid show – adding that the Roe controversy isn’t really about the life of the baby.
“Opposition to abortion care has never been about a baby. It’s never been about children, because if it was, we’d have better resources for when the child is actually born. So, it was never about that. It’s just about control,” she said. “It’s about who our government sees as fully human in this country.”
“Who our government sees as fully human”? Um, isn’t that argument sort of bad form when discussing a procedure in which someone is, indeed, seen as something less than human? Did she just inadvertently make the pro-life case?
The abortion argument is, Bush says, about men controlling women’s bodies. So, her logic goes, why not try to control men’s bodies too?
“There’s a reason why we don’t see sperm regulation legislation,” Bush said. “There’s a reason why we don’t see mandated vasectomies.”
Her argument, while completely disingenuous, is convenient, comforting and common to those who don’t want to enter a baby’s life into the discussion. But it’s kind of a central issue, you know?
As for the tired old saw that the pro-life community doesn’t care about women, or babies after they’re born, that’s just as disreputable as the “desire to control women’s bodies” sham argument.
I put that sleight-of-hand canard to rest in a column for another publication last year – noting just the tip of the tip of the tip of the iceberg of care, love and concern that pro-lifers show both women and their young. Here’s part of what I wrote after an interview with Kathy Edwards, CEO of abortion alternative clinic Resource Health Services:
I’ve seen it firsthand, in my support for Christian-based care pregnancy centers, which provide comprehensive prenatal, labor-and-delivery and parenting programs. Edwards’ Resource Health Services, with four locations in Kansas City, provides intensive education programs for both women and men, ultrasounds, referrals to all kinds of social services, and more.
“If she’s hungry, we get food. If she’s homeless, we get her a place to live, so she can just get all the care that she needs,” Edwards says. Technically, support follows their clients for a year, but Edwards says in truth she and her team are there for women indefinitely.
How’s that level of concern and care stack up against, oh, I don’t know, Planned Parenthood’s?
But let’s turn the tables, shall we? How can people like Bush so nonchalantly pooh-pooh the life of a baby, or relegate it to such casual indifference in the debate over abortion? What might my own life, or yours, mean to such people?
The profound moral quandary of abortion isn’t as simple as a bizarre tit-for-tat “let’s regulate men too” perversion of the issue. It’s about our obligation to innocent life. Maybe it’s time we really deal with it – with the baby’s life at least being part of the discussion.
We can and should discuss what, if any, good reasons there may be to abort a baby. But let’s drop the kind of drivel Cori Bush is packaging for sale.
Pro-abortion arguments don’t come much worse, and certainly don’t help the cause of women and children.