The XX Factor: Slate women blog about politics, etc...

Thanks for the Poetry

This abortion ruling strikes me as a lot like the religious culture-war debates, where we spend a lot of time fighting about symbolics and very little about things that matter (a creche vs. faith based funding, abortion language vs. actual access)  The language suggested by the South Dakota law seems wholly beside the point. For one thing, sonograms make it obsolete. By now, women requesting an abortion usually have to undergo a sonogram to make sure there is a heartbeat, etc. If that doesn't shove in your face the reality of what you're doing, I'm not sure what will. For another, this is yet another case of a liberal straw (wo)man that hasn't existed for at least 10 years, if it ever did. Things have changed a lot since the "My Body, My Choice" protest days. In the literature, in the movies, on TV, there hasn't been a portrayal of a woman casually undergoing an abortion since, since ... Murphy Brown? No wait, she was an unwed mother. Even she didn't get an abortion. ... In fact, I don't know if there ever was one. And it's been a few years since even Naomi Wolf occupied middle ground. What woman desperate for an abortion will bother reading the fine print? And if she does, what will she feel more than the pang that was already there?