Abortion – Hank Racette

Slamming the “Overton Window”

Posted on February 16, 2019 | by hr | 2 Comments

The Overton window, as most people probably know, is a term used to describe the range of ideas that are considered serious and worthy of, or acceptable for, public discussion and debate. As the window moves, ideas that would previously have been entertained become unacceptable, and ideas that previously would have seemed too outrageous for consideration enter the realm of legitimate discourse.

Slamming describes an illegitimate business practice that was popular after deregulation of the telecommunication industry in the 1980s. When competition was allowed in telephone service and new telephone companies began competing with AT&T, some customers would have their service switched from AT&T to a competitor without their knowledge or consent. This technique of stealing customers, known as slamming, was relatively easy to do given the procedures imposed by the government during the breakup.

The Overton window is being slammed. It is being pushed, by a hyper-activist progressive movement and an ideologically homogeneous press, far beyond anything the American people consider sensible or acceptable. The purpose of pushing the Overton window is to shift the public’s perception of which views are and aren’t legitimate and debatable. This strategy works, but it has its limits, and the new wave of recklessly progressive Democrats have gone beyond those limits, attempting to shift the public’s perceptions too far and too quickly.

We saw a bit of this excess during the Obama administration, when the President made demands about who could and couldn’t use the ladies’ room. That overreach garnered ridicule and outrage, and quite possibly contributed to a Republican presidential victory in 2016.

I think we are seeing the same kind of ideological overreach now on abortion, economic policy, environmental policy, and sexual identity. Moving the Overton window so far to the left that abortion-until-birth, socialism, the economic takeover of the United States required by the so-called Green New Deal, and the abolition of the concepts of man and woman are things that normal people are suddenly talking about strikes me as profoundly unwise, from a political standpoint. It’s too much, too fast, and too outrageous.

It’s also the consequence of a left that has given up any pretense of rigor or analysis in its thinking. When you are fueled by rage and obsessed with a fundamentally negative political ideology — one of identity/victimization, environmental apocalypse, economic envy, and an inexplicable but unquenchable passion for terminating pregnancies — it’s easy to believe that the nation will catch fire along with you — that revolution is afoot and nothing is too outrageous.

But the progressive bubble isn’t as big as the new hard-left thinks it is. They are introducing extremist ideas too fast, ideas that are not going to play well with a majority of Americans and that the left is going to somehow have to run from as we approach the 2020 elections. It will be interesting to watch the Democratic candidates try to distance themselves from an increasingly demanding and unhinged base.

Desperation: Slavery and Abortion

Posted on February 8, 2019 | by hr | Leave a Comment

As I understand it, a major concern in the slave-owning South in the years leading up to the Civil War was that newly admitted territories would enter the union as slave-free states, thus diminishing the percentage of the nation that supported, and that was supported by, slavery. The Republican party, which was formed at least in part to advocate for slave-free territories and new states, and the election of its first President precipitated a desperate move on the part of the South to separate itself from what promised to be a nation dominated by free states and increasingly critical of the remaining slave states.

I wonder if the current excesses of the pro-abortion left, the swing-for-the-fences mindset that seems to have gripped the Democratic Party and its most progressive members, is an expression of a similar desperation. The left routinely portrays America as a reactionary country on the verge of theocracy, this despite the left’s impressive record over the past half-century of achieving dramatic social transformation. While I think this portrayal is absurd, I also suspect it’s sincere, and that many on the left believe we are one Ginsburg away from rolling America back to the dark ages of, say, 1958.

I’ve marveled in recent days at the sheer chutzpah of radically pro-abortion progressives calling for abortion-until-birth, and even managing to get it passed in my state and looming in others. I wondered what inspired their confidence. Now I think that perhaps it isn’t confidence at all, but a fear that the future is unlikely to be kind to abortion — that, even as abortion law remains outrageously liberal, the public view on abortion, particularly among the young, is growing more conservative: that abortion’s appeal has peaked, and may soon be on the wane.

If that’s their thinking, I do think that the current strategy will backfire, and will actually accelerate public opprobrium of abortion.

Abortion: Who Speaks for You?

Posted on January 30, 2019 | by hr | 2 Comments

Most Americans, and by a wide margin, are in favor of legal abortion, though both opinions and laws vary as to where and when the lines should be drawn. A small percentage of Americans are opposed to the legality of abortion in all circumstances. A small percentage of Americans are in favor of the legality of abortion in all circumstances. Most Americans, perhaps unsurprisingly, would limit abortion to either the first or second trimester, with consideration given for the health of the mother and unborn child.

Those in favor of a complete prohibition of abortion from the moment of conception are in a small minority, and have no prospect of getting their beliefs implemented in law — with or without Roe v. Wade. They are simply too marginal a group: essentially every significant demographic, male and female, religious and non-religious, old and young, black and white, educated and uneducated, disagrees with them.

Similarly, those who believe that abortion should be legal up to the moment of birth are in a small minority. However, unlike the strict anti-abortion prohibitionists, this group does have significant influence. Prominent Democratic politicians are promoting and enacting legislation that effectively allows elective abortion until the moment of birth, despite the fact that very few people actually support such a practice except in the most dire circumstances of medical emergency.

Proponents of legal-until-birth legislation understand that their position is unpopular, so they use legislative legerdemain to hide the reality of their bills. The recently passed New York Reproductive Health Act is an example of this practice. The Act changes the limitations on late-term abortion, stating that an abortion may be performed

“at any time when necessary to protect a patient’s life or health.”

What exactly constitutes the “patient’s health” is not defined in the statute. However, the Supreme Court gave us some idea what the term means in 1973, in the less well-known landmark abortion case, Doe v. Bolton, when it concluded that “health” was whatever a physician deemed it to be after taking into account such factors as “physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman’s age.” (emphasis mine)

If that isn’t broad enough and vague enough — emotional, psychological, familial health? — the New York statute both remove violations of abortion restrictions from the criminal code, and states that abortions can be provided by health care workers who are not actual physicians.

This is now the law in New York state. The state of Virginia is considering similar legislation, with the enthusiastic support of its Governor. Proponents acknowledge that the proposed legislation would allow the elective termination of a healthy, viable child right up to the day of birth.

I understand that some people are fearful that abortion might be made illegal, or so difficult to acquire that it is effectively out of the reach of many or most women. I don’t think that’s a realistic concern, given the broad public support for legal abortion, but I understand how some might think it is.

I confess that I find it harder to understand the enthusiastic defense of abortion up to the moment of a child’s birth. I don’t understand why a woman would not choose to deliver the child, say by Cesarean section, and give it up for adoption, thus undergoing a procedure comparable to a late-term abortion but less likely to leave her emotionally scarred. I don’t understand why anyone thinks it’s a good, necessary, or appropriate thing to make the elective termination of a child at full gestation easier.

Safe, legal, and rare. That was what many who supported abortion rights wanted. Today we’re told that late-term abortions make up one to one-and-a-half percent of the abortions performed every year in America. That’s one per hour, every hour of every day.

Finally, I wonder how many people who, like me, are in favor of abortion being legal but not unbounded, are aware that the pro-choice movement is moving so far to the extreme, and doing so enthusiastically, and with the support of high-profile and influential Democratic politicians.

This seems like a mistake — both political and moral.