Anti-Choicers Resign Themselves to Something Vaguely Resembling Compassion

Heavens to Mergatroyd!—it's come to this:

Frustrated by the failure to overturn Roe v. Wade, a growing number of antiabortion pastors, conservative academics and activists are setting aside efforts to outlaw abortion and instead are focusing on building social programs and developing other assistance for pregnant women to reduce the number of abortions.

Some of the activists are actually working with abortion rights advocates to push for legislation in Congress that would provide pregnant women with health care, child care and money for education -- services that could encourage them to continue their pregnancies.

Holy Maude High on Cloud Cooter! Why, it's almost like they've been reading actual facts, like 73% of American abortion-seekers citing "can't afford a baby now" as the reason for the termination, and about one-fourth citing their own health or possible health problems with the fetus as reasons for the termination, owing to concerns including "a lack of prenatal care."

Naturally, this new reality-based and compassionate approach, with its dangerous veer toward the appearance of actually regarding women as real people with agency and needs, is causing a schism within the anti-abortion movement.

Their actions have not come without consequences. [Nicholas Cafardi, former dean of the Duquesne University School of Law and a Catholic canon lawyer] resigned from the board of Franciscan University of Steubenville in Ohio after writing a column supporting Obama and declaring the abortion battle lost. [Douglas W. Kmiec, a Pepperdine University law professor and anti-abortion Catholic who served in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, but endorsed Obama] has received hate e-mail, and a priest denied him Communion in April. And Denver Archbishop Charles J. Chaput has criticized Kmiec and several of the groups involved, saying they have "undermined the progress pro-lifers have made and provided an excuse for some Catholics to abandon the abortion issue."

Funny how quickly one can go from being a "good Christian" to being demonized like all the rest of us radical feminazis, eh? All it takes is seeing a little bit of gray in the world.

Welcome to the dark side, brothers.

Question: How long do you think it will take before history is rewritten so that the legislation which would "provide pregnant women with health care, child care and money for education -- services that could encourage them to continue their pregnancies" becomes the sole province of the Very Serious Centrist Men (possibly including our new president-elect) who found the "middle ground" on abortion that extremists on both sides couldn't find, despite the reality that feminists have been advocating for exactly these social services for longer than I've been alive?

Don't answer that. It's rhetorical.

I find it fascinating (where fascinating = completely bloody infuriating) that these ideas will probably only now get a hearing at long last because the frame has switched from "things women need, irrespective of their circumstances" to "things that will ensure women make more babies."

Post-feminist, bitchez.