A Recipe for Disaster

Relax and enjoy it, ladies. Here comes the Progressive Democratic Party with another plan for you to take care of its needs.

I don’t actually care all that much about the women who will have to pay for their own abortions after Representative Stupak and the others added their amendment. There are only a few hundred thousand insured women needing abortions, compared with the millions of really poor women trying to buy their constitutional rights after the (Democratic) Congress took abortion out of Medicaid in 1976 with the Hyde Amendment. Hey, women rich or lucky enough to have private insurance, welcome to the crowd of the people who can’t protect their interests (“women”). Your fate was sealed when the Democrats sold out poor women 30 years ago. And women let them do it.

We game theorists call people who let them do it “chickens.” Remember “Chicken?” Two people get in cars and drive head on at each other. The first one to swerve is the chicken. He or she survives that time, sure, but after that? They’re stew. Nobody swerves when playing Chicken with someone they know is a chicken. So in every successive race, the chicken has to keep on swerving. Every time he swerves, he sinks a little lower.

The guys learned how to play Chicken watching old James Dean movies, if not driving their hot rods at one another in high school. Here’s how the legendary misogynist Philip Roth played Chicken with his wife, actress Claire Bloom: Early in their relationship, Roth insisted that Bloom's daughter Anna Steiger move out of her London home. "It wasn't about hatred for my daughter,” Bloom reminisced years later in the November 1996 Vanity Fair.

He knew I would make any compromise to support our relationship. If I was willing to jettison my daughter in this manner, what could I ever deny him? I know I was diminishing my own character with each successive act of capitulation. These confrontations left me debilitated and unsure, and were to shape many of my future decisions.

In 1980, four years after the heavily Democratic Congress passed the Hyde Amendment, women rewarded the Democrats by voting more heavily Democratic than men did for the first time. If I was willing to jettison my daughter in this manner, what could I ever deny him? No one has been willing to stay the course against the anti-choice forces since. The federal government, under Democrats and Republicans alike, went on to cut off abortion funding from international aid (the Helms Amendment), costing millions of women around the world their health and often their lives. Slowly, they are driving at the remains of reproductive rights—parental consent, late-term abortion, now insurance for the bourgeoisie. Too often, the anti-choice vehicle is carrying Democratic men and the women who love them. This latest development is only the most visible example. That’s what it’s like when everyone knows you are chicken.

Maybe the women and their pro-choice allies in Congress will reach the gag level at last and withhold their votes from the Dems’ precious health care reform. Even Claire Bloom eventually moved out. Leaving Roth to live out his waning days alone.

Tags: abortion, health care

Linda Hirshman writes "The Princess" column for Double X and is the author of Get to Work: A Manifesto for Women of the World. Before she retired, she taught Philosophy and Women’s Studies at Brandeis University.

Comments

Funny I feel the same way about the Repbublicans.

By: patron002 | Wed, 11/11/2009 - 23:07

They gave up the right to bitch about healthcare honestly when they celebrated the abortion peice passing. Abortion limits the medical options of women. Which republicans claim to be against. I'm probably not an ally to most feminist I do not agree with the "right" to abortion, I don't think it should be completely banned either. Further I think any republican who celebrates the abortion bill is a hypocrite. Its a restriction of medical procedures which they argue the bill in the senate now would limit. ( I agree it will,I agree its a shitty bill that will harm our medical care.) However, I think the abortion peice is absurd. Just goes to show neither party has any principle the dems are willing to sell out abortion and the republicans are willing to sell out on choices... so in a way both are showing their anti- choice personality this week.

normative or positive statement about constitutional rights?

By: you know it is | Wed, 11/11/2009 - 21:04

I am puzzled by the implicit claim that there is a constitutional right to government-funded abortions. Obviously, in a legal sense this is false. Furthermore, I strongly suspect Ms. Hirshman is aware of that, which raises the question of what she meant.

My best guess is that she is referring to her conception of how constitutional rights ought to be interpreted, in her opinion i.e. if the interpretation and application of the Constitution was up to her, this would be the result.

all people seem to be able to think

By: lorikay4 | Wed, 11/11/2009 - 20:58

The only thought Americans seem to be able to entertain when questions like this are discussed is 'you can do what you want as long as you can pay for it.' This is why we are such morons about not treating health care as a human right.

People who have money in their pockets are not inherently more worthy of self-determination than those who are not. To believe this, one has to be OVER the grand delusion that America is a perfect meritocracy and that poverty is an indicator that you deserve what you get.

Seriously?

By: Vegemighty | Wed, 11/11/2009 - 20:26

Are you seriously suggesting that a woman has a right to an abortion whether she can pay for it or not? Somehow I had thought that privacy rights meant that the abortion was a private matter between a woman and her doctor. In a free society, an abortion should be legal. So should be religion and the press. No one should be able to prevent you from exercising these rights. If you can't afford to pay for an abortion, a church, or a printing press...well, tough. Your rights are not violated if the government doesn't buy these things for you.

wow

By: lorikay4 | Wed, 11/11/2009 - 16:12

I am in awe of your willingness to be so bitterly sarcastic, ma'am. Awe.

I completely agree with your diagnosis, Ms. Hirshman, but does this mean you are suggesting that progressive women put on a sort of general political strike for the next election? I mean, you can't be suggesting that we vote Republican, so a strike is all that's left, yes?

It would only work if we still organized and raised money and then pointedly didn't give a damn penny of it to the Dems. Oooh, I like it.