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Daily Show takes on fetus lawyers

Archbishop Cupich

Completely ineffectual strike called

“Christian sharia”

President Obama pushes for family and sick leave

Fox News confusing work benefits with “giveaways” again

Tony Perkins is desperate

Transcript

On this episode of Reality Cast, Jeff Teague of Planned Parenthood will explain the fallout from Tennessee’s new abortion law. Roe’s anniversary brings out goofy anti-choicers again, and Obama exposes conservative hypocrisy on the family values question.

If you haven’t seen this awesome Daily Show segment where Jessica Williams interviews an Alabama lawyer who represents fetuses in court, well, drop what you’re doing and watch it. And yes, we mean represents fetuses. In Alabama, it’s legal for judges to basically put teenagers who want abortion on trial and they often assign lawyers to represent the fetus in what amounts to a bunch of adults performing character assassination on teenagers in order to punish them for sex.

• fetus *

Jessica Williams should have a weeklong show where she plays with all the implications of the anti-choice tendency to talk as if fetuses are conscious, choice-making beings who deserve more respect than actual living, breathing women.

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Last week was the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, which means, of course, a frenzy of activity for the anti-choice movement, including the annual March for Life” in D.C. It’s all very interesting, because anti-choice activists spend much of the year concocting B.S. secular arguments in favor of restricting abortion, claiming that it’s because of “life” or to protect women or whatever nonsense they’re peddling this week. But this time of year, when they are out there motivating the troops, serves as a necessary reminder that the anti-choice movement is actually a religious cult devoted to pushing prudery and rigid gender roles and using the law to punish anyone who defies them. Which isn’t to say that they give up the feigned concern for women, of course, because it’s the only weapon they have to fight back against accusations of misogyny. But I never stop being fascinated by how much this supposed concern for women rests heavily on sexist tropes about how women are stupid or childish and can’t be trusted to make our own decisions. Chicago Archbishop Blase Cupich spoke at a Chicago “March for Life event and what is interesting about his speech is he literally assumes an embryo—which doesn’t even have a brain, mind you—has more autonomy than a woman.

• march 1 *

See what I mean? He imagines an embryo having a mind and agency. It wants things. It struggles. It’s somehow a conscious being making conscious choices. But women get no such assumption. He assumes that a woman who chooses abortion is not making a conscious choice. She is being compelled, because he categorically refuses to believe that women are capable of knowing their own minds or making their own choices. Not just about abortion, either, but his last statement made it clear that anyone who uses contraception to avoid giving birth or even just to space births must be doing it not because they want to and they know their own mind. No, they are broken people who cannot be trusted to make their own choices. Only the embryo is assumed to have agency here. Only an embryo, and certainly not a grown woman, has desires that deserve respect.

Father Stephen Imbarrato of Project Defending Life, the group that tried and failed to ban abortion in Albuquerque, New Mexico, has a video out suggesting that it’s not enough to annoy people with creepy fetus pictures and God-bothering. Now he is calling for a strike to end what he calls, repeatedly, “pre-born child killing”, probably because the word “abortion” reminds you that women are involved and they prefer you to think of us as mindless baby ovens.

• march 2 *

I imagine that this strike will be about as effective as their efforts to pass a municipal ban on abortion were, which is to say not at all. In fact, I’d be astonished if anyone noticed. I’ll be even more astonished if someone actually goes on strike, as opposed to just, you know, taking the day off from work to go wave fetus signs at people. Of course, the anti-choice movement already draws heavily on high school students and retired people because they need people who are bored, have lots of time on their hands, and are quick to judge, and naïve teenagers and older people who watch too much Fox News are their best bet. So that makes it even harder to imagine this so-called strike will be noticed by anyone.

Sadly, despite the fact that all these dramatics are silly, sexist, and theocratic in nature, Republicans on the Hill are crawling all over each other to pander to the anti-choice crew. Huffington Post Live discussed how Congress has introduced five new anti-abortion bills.

• march 3 *

Exactly. The March for Life is an annual reminder that what we’re dealing with is a bunch of priests, church ladies, and God botherers who want to impose their ridiculous religious standards on your sex life and your medical care, and are willing to tell lies and engage in absolutely over-the-top theatrics to do it.

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Interview

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Because of Roe’s anniversary, you’re hearing a bunch of malarkey from conservatives about how they want to support pregnant women in having babies. Malarkey not just because they assume, as I showed in the last segment, that the only reason women abort is because they’re afraid, when in fact a lot of women plain do not want to have a baby now. But also malarkey because when it comes to the brass tacks of what it would actually take to make it easier for women to choose to give birth, they meet conservative resistance every step of the way. That much was made clear this month, when President Obama rolled out a plan to push for better parental and sick leave so that people and women in particular can choose to have children if they want to without fearing for losing pay they need to get by.

• family 1 *

Right now, American workers are entitled to up to 12 weeks a year of unpaid family or medical leave, but for most workers who live paycheck to paycheck, that right might not exist at all because they can’t really take it. You’d think that the same people who are always on about how women should be having more babies and how they want to support women to have babies would be rushing to join Obama to push through legislation guaranteeing this. After all, one of the number one reasons women give for getting an abortion is that they can’t afford it. It’s not just about affording medical bills, either. It’s often about time, being able to take it off to give birth or to tend to sick children. If you don’t have that kind of time, deciding against having a baby is something you’re more likely to do. But the people who are passing all these abortion bills and who claim to be doing so for women , what do they do when given the opportunity to actually make it easier on mothers? Well, let’s check into Fox News and see how they responded to this opportunity to put their money where their anti-choice mouths are.

• family 2 *

Nope, the second the discussion gets away from justifying forcing women to give birth, suddenly all that concern for mother’s needs goes right out the window. Pregnant women are now painted as gold-diggers and welfare queens who think they should be paid for their work. How dare they! First they want benefits for working and next you’ll be telling me they want a paycheck. Where’s all that flowery conservative language about how moms in need should get support so they don’t choose abortion? It’s like it’s just opportunistic pandering that they never had the slightest intention of actually acting upon.

Anyway, congressional Republicans are expected, after they pass a bunch of bills trying to force you to give birth against your will, to reject Obama’s plan to make it easier to care for all those babies they will force you to have. And the pundits at Fox are mad because wah, Obama is making Republicans look bad for this bit of hypocrisy.

• family 3 *

Gotta love the indignation there. You get the impression that Stuart Varney thinks Obama is obliged to make the Republicans look good to the voters, even if that means going out of his way to conceal their hypocritical views on so-called family values. That’s not how politics work, dude. Getting mad at a politician for being political is like getting mad at a cat for being furry. But here’s the thing. Obama isn’t making the Republicans look bad. Republicans make themselves look bad. They go on and on about motherhood and babies in order to justify abortion restrictions, but the second they actually have an opportunity to help mothers raise all those babies, they flip out and start accusing women of being money-grubbing brats. Because they want to be paid for their jobs, mind you. We’re not even talking about welfare here, though someone who is actually “pro-life” should support that, too. We’re talking about people who want to be paid a fair wage and benefits for working. But apparently you not only should be forced to have kids against your will, you should be willing to work without getting paid for it too. And then they get fussy when their opponents suggest there’s some misogyny in play here.

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And now for the Wisdom of Wingnuts, desperate flailing edition. Same-sex marriage is gaining in poll approval by the minute. So homobigot Tony Perkins is throwing a Hail Mary in trying to scare people into opposing it.

• Perkins *

Needless to say, this is a strawman. If same-sex marriage proponents were actually trying to get rid of the government’s right to define marriage, they would petition for the end of marriage licenses for everyone. They simply want to expand the definition of who can get married, just as civil rights leaders did when they pushed to legalize interracial marriage. The definition of marriage changes all the time, now allowing for women to be equal partners instead of treated like property or allowing people to get divorced. That’s why many people are cautiously optimistic that the Supreme Court will do the right thing and strike down bans on gay marriage.