The American Civil Liberties Union has a reputation on the left as one of the nation’s most serious, distinguished protectors of civil rights. So why is their latest stunt anything but?
Michigan Republicans are pushing legislation that would “put in place new insurance and licensing requirements for clinics; ban abortions that take place more than 20 weeks after conception except when the procedure would save a woman’s life; make it illegal to coerce a woman to have an abortion; set guidelines for disposing of the remains of a fetus; and regulate the prescription of the RU-486 drug.”
Protesting such an effort to “take away a woman’s ability to make personal, private medical decisions for herself,” the ACLU has responded by creating a Tweet generator through which disgruntled lefties can more easily pester the lawmakers in question:
Since several Michigan politicians so clearly “wanna be your doc,” let’s give them the chance. Once they receive enough questions, perhaps they’ll realize that that they are NOT medical professionals, should stop far-reaching anti-abortion measures, including HB 5711, from passing and allow real doctors to provide the best care for their patients.
Naturally, Erin Gloria Ryan at the oh-so-mature Jezebel thinks it’s just hilarious that a bunch of “angry old white guys” are going to get spammed with questions like “My period is very heavy for 2 days followed by 2 days of no bleeding followed by 3 light days. Wut’s goin on?” and “My cramps are worse than usual. Can you fit me in this afternoon?”
It’s true that, generally speaking, government shouldn’t micromanage health care, and politicians shouldn’t tell doctors how to do their jobs. But one can’t help but doubt how sincere their opposition to medical meddling really is, considering that both Jezebel and the ACLU also support ObamaCare, which does exactly that. Indeed, the birth control mandate pro-aborts so intensely support is based on the premise that providers can’t be trusted to decide for themselves what services to cover!
The simple truth is that for the legislation’s critics, medical autonomy is an afterthought; they just want abortions to be as easily obtainable as possible. They don’t critique what aspects of the insurance, licensing requirements, or drug regulations are problematic; they don’t explain why 20-week-old babies aren’t worth protecting, they don’t say what they would rather do to protect women from coercion, and they don’t explain their beef with the regulations on remains disposal.
All policy decisions pertaining to abortion are simply lumped into the category of “medicine,” as if that makes them off-limits from consideration, and it’s just presumed as a given that regulating abortion at all is a very bad thing. The folks at the ACLU skip the tricky “argument” step in favor of amusing themselves with childish insults and straw men about politicians wanting to be doctors.
For an organization that purports to place free speech at the forefront of the values it protects, the ACLU seems to have remarkably little interest in resolving Americans’ differences with a mature exchange of serious ideas.
