Media Bias

 

A pre-emptive pro-abortion column to explain away the ineffectiveness of the ‘war on women”

By Dave Andrusko
I meant to get to Amanda Marcotte’s post in yesterday’s USA Today, but time got away from me.
You might ask why bother writing about someone who merely parrots the most extreme viewpoint of the most extreme pro-abortionists?

In this case, because Marcotte was writing a preemptive piece, “explaining” why the imaginary “War on Women” was not going to play as well in 2014 as before. Implicitly we were forewarned that when pro-abortion candidates dropped like flies, it would not be because the voters repudiated their extremism.
Naw, it would be because “The Right” was even more devilishly clever than usual.
The gist of her column is that The Right “demonized” single women, which “allows married women to feel superior.” This “helps pit married women against single women, which replaces the ‘war on women’ narrative with a more subtle ‘war between women’ one,” Marcotte pronounced.
What to say about something so unrelievedly condescending/condemning of women? Just two things.
First, the “war on women” always was—and always will be—a war on the intelligence of women, married or single. It is so incredibly patronizing [matronizing?].
It insists that if a woman does not accept the designated role of victim, she has been co-opted by the patriarchy. This caught-in-a-time warp mentality is, by the way, why so many younger feminists roll their eyes. This is 2014, not 1014.

Second, I did not see the programs that Marcotte uses to “prove” her point. So let me say this.
It is not sexist or patriarchial or pitting married women against single women to acknowledge that, just as married men act (and vote) differently than single men, so, too, do married women act (and vote) differently than single women.

Facts are such stubborn things and they drive ideologues like Marcotte crazy when the world does not conform to the pictures they have dancing in their heads.
And it can only get worse for them. Why? Simply because the gap between them and ordinary Americans with no fixed view on abortion grows ever wider.
Marcotte and her associates really believe—really believe—that the way to win over the “mushy middle” is not just to insist on abortion on demand for any reason or no reason throughout pregnancy, paid for with tax dollars. That’s the old playbook. They’ve added new pages.
Which are? Shouting/videotaping/You Tubing their abortions and their abortion “experiences.” Rub the massacres of hapless unborn babies in the faces of the public and—voila—the scales will fall from their eyes. Like magic, they will embrace unlimited abortion today, unlimited abortion tomorrow, unlimited abortion (everywhere) forever.

We posted earlier today about outgoing Texas state Senator Wendy Davis’ overwhelming defeat at the hands of Attorney General Greg Abbott in her bid for governor. After I posted that story, I read a column by Bud Kennedy.

Writing for the Star-Telegram, Kennedy’s piece was not wholly unsympathetic to pro-lifers. In fact there were important nuggets which help us understand Marcotte even better.
His overarching point was that evangelicals (“religious, conservative women”) flocked to Abbott, including many who had never before voted for a Republican. But the larger point surely is that for decades, women (and men) whose families had voted for Democrats for seemingly forever, have left the party. Why?
Because “There just isn’t any diversity of views in that party anymore,” according to a state Representative.

But what makes Kennedy’s column so powerfully illustrative is a revealing anecdote he tells about one family.

Mia Garza McCord grew up as the granddaughter of Democratic county officials in South Texas but now campaigns for Republicans’ Red State Women.

“My whole family in Hebbronville is voting Republican for the very first time,” McCord, 30, of Cedar Park said by phone Tuesday.

McCord and her husband, John, welcomed a baby boy to their family last year at the peak of the Texas Legislature’s abortion debate.

At birth, John Mark McCord weighed 1 pound, 4.8 ounces. It was her 26th week of pregnancy.

McCord’s family never voted for Republicans. But the Democrats she remembers never led filibusters for abortion rights, as Democrat Wendy Davis did in the moment that wrote both her fame and her fate. …

“Younger women embrace technology and see scientific advancements,” McCord said.

“Modern medicine and the power of prayer goes far. Look at our tiny 1-pound baby, healthy and running around.”

“But the Democrats she remembers never led filibusters for abortion.” Yes, indeed.
To the Marcottes of this world, families like the McCords are just throwbacks, even though it is the power of modern neonatal intensive care units to save ever-more premature babies and to reveal (via ultrasound) the common humanity of unborn children that has helped alter the moral calculus.
Pro-abortion feminists have updated an old extremism, making it even more unpalatable, at the same time they dismiss those who differ as out of step with modern times. The irony is enough to practically knock you over.

Source: NRLC News