Ruthless feminism
The dissent of Ruth Bader Ginsburg in the Supreme Court's Gonzales v. Carhart decision on Wednesday rests upon the sheer ruthlessness of modern feminism. Not a word of concern is spoken in her dissent of the barbaric dismembering of the unborn child that partial-birth abortion entails. The child's "health" is simply not to be mentioned.Cut through all the pretentious padding and legal mumbo-jumbo and Ginsburg's dissent amounts to this: abortion is the sacred foundation of feminism, and Americans must never touch it; if this means permitting the skulls of unborn children to be crushed, oh well.
"Women it is now acknowledged have the talent, capacity and right 'to participate equally in the economic and social life of the nation,'" she writes, invoking the earlier Casey decision. "Their ability to realize this full potential, the Court recognized, is ultimately connected to 'their ability to control their reproductive lives.'"
In other words, abortion is essential to obliterating differences between the sexes by emancipating women from nature so that they are the same as men ("equality," under liberalism, means making men and women the same not in dignity, but the same in all respects, no matter how irrational the results this understanding of equality produces). And access to abortion is essential to eliminating children as hindrances to careers -- or as Ginsburg says, "equal citzenship stature."
posted by Crystal Paine at 8:14 AM
6 Comments:
Crystal, I agree- Ginsburg's dissent was outrageous. I listened to the transcript on NPR last week, and fumed. So many of Ginsburg's dissents follow suit, unfortunately.
As a very simplistic response, I kept thinking of that bumper sticker retort to statements like hers- "abortion abuses and oppresses baby women." ...how ironic that femminists, who wish to protect the rights and voices of the weaker members of society, are so often fine with KILLING our society's weakest members. A culture that does not protect its infants cannot be a culture that truly promotes its women.
I read through the article and found this statement, "What's good for feminism is constitutional; what's bad for feminism is unconstitutional." Not exactly what the founding fathers had in mind, but a pretty accurate summary of Ruth Bader Ginberg's philosophy.
For some reason what flashed through my mind when I read this is that whole loophole in Catch 22--that an insane person has no idea how insane she is (or in this case, how insane she sounds.)
... Elizabeth, I get your drift, but ultimately I think it is correct (and in line with the Founding Fathers' thinking) that "what's good for feminism is constitutional"- in as much as our Constitution guarantees equal liberties for all, Constitutional principles are indeed "good" for feminism. We appeal to the same Constitutional rights and liberties in seeking to protect the unborn.
Equal citizenship status? For whom? Certainly not so for the millions of babies who have died as a result of abortion.
Several thoughts:
If one assumes indiscriminate sexual practices as a given (I would hazard a guess that Ginsburg does), the "right" to kill your baby is necessary to remaining constantly employed. Never mind the fact that many women around the world work until their babies are born and return to work the next day. Never mind that this case is not about whether abortion is legal, but what types of abortion are legal. Never mind that looking into what partial birth abortion is probably is the best argument against abortion.
Actually, it kind of sounds like she didn't address the issue, doesn't it? Kind of like talking about a government-mandated diet in response to an anti-smoking bill...
But if she is right, that's an argument against feminism in my book.
I will agree with Ginsburg on one thing: I don't like the term "abortion doctors." Anyone who performs an abortion is doing the opposite of healing and explicitly violating the Hippocratic oath.
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