Anti-Choicers, in a Nutshell

[Content Note: Anti-choice fuckery.]

Sarah Palin is an asshole of epic proportions, which is not news, but, even based on the garbage expectations she's set with her previous nonsense, this is pretty amazing:

Former Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin hopes that Hillary Clinton will rethink her position on abortion as her first grandchild arrives.

Palin said in an interview with "Extra" airing Wednesday that having a grandchild could "broaden [Clinton's] worldview" with respect to the national debt, which would affect her grandchild down the road, but also in terms of the "sanctity of life."

"It's a real baby! It's not some disposable something – and I know that's gonna be controversial – but those who, perhaps they're in this position now as a parent or grandparent, they realize that sanctity of life, how innocent, how precious it is," Palin told "Extra" host Mario Lopez. "Of all places it should be in the womb that these babies are protected. So maybe even on a social issue like that she'll open her eyes."

So, here we have another example of an anti-choicer espousing the ferociously absurd idea that pro-choice people have never thought about their positions and what it means to advocate for legal abortion, much like they assert that abortion-seeking people have never thought about their choice before they show up to a clinic.

I'm reasonably certain that Hillary Clinton has spent more time thinking about her position on abortion than Sarah Palin has spent thinking about any subject of value to modern politics.

We also have another example of an anti-choicer making the claim that pro-choice policy can only be sustained in a hermetically sealed vault of abstraction. Once Clinton sees her grandchild...! (Because having a grandchild is so much more "real" than having given birth herself?) It is a perfect mimicry of the argument mounted in defense of mandated ultrasound legislation, based on the faulty premise that if only abortion-seeking women et. al. see the fetus growing inside of them, they will change their minds.

I'm reasonably certain that Hillary Clinton understands the biology and reality of reproduction.

And finally, we have another example of anti-choicers' profound hostility to agency. Not only are they hostile to women's agency when it comes to allowing women to make the best reproductive choices for ourselves, but they are hostile to the very idea of our having agency at all, even in our own thoughts.

What's "controversial" about what Palin is saying is not what she thinks it is. What's controversial about her statements is that she is asserting to know Hillary Clinton's mind more than Hillary Clinton does.

That assertion of ownership over women's minds and bodies is the defining feature of the anti-choice movement. And Palin may be an asshole, but she's a terrific politician. She's definitely giving her base exactly what they want to hear.