If you write for the health section of a prominent website, shouldn’t you have a working knowledge of basic human biology? Apparently not if that website is ThinkProgress, where Rebecca Leber claims to have caught pro-life Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann in an inconsistency about women’s health.
Discussing health care on MSNBC, Bachmann said:
What we want is women to be able to make their own choices […] We want women to make their own choices in healthcare. You see that’s the lie that happens under Obamacare. The President of the United States effectively becomes a health care dictator. Women don’t need anyone to tell them what to do on health care. We want women to have their own choices, their own money, that way they can make their own choices for the future of their own bodies. [Emphasis in original.]
Leber questions the “irony” of Bachmann’s answer, given the “GOP war on women targeting Planned Parenthood, abortion services, and contraception coverage”:
Bachmann doesn’t believe a women’s right to choose applies in all cases, though, promising on the presidential campaign trail that in addition to supporting an abortion ban, she wouldn’t allow exceptions for rape or for the woman’s health.
It seems pro-aborts have been misusing terminology so long that they can no longer recognize its proper use. When pro-aborts talk about women controlling “their own bodies,” they really mean giving women free rein to control someone else’s body (and by “control,” they mean “destroy”). When everyone else talks about women controlling “their own bodies,” they actually mean what it sounds like: women controlling their own bodies.
Bachmann’s not being hypocritical; she’s just being honest and sensible. For her, freedom isn’t just an empty word to rationalize selfish atrocities like abortion, but a concrete principle with clear implications and boundaries. Bachmann’s freedom is the right to lead one’s own life without external constraint or coercion, so long as one’s choices don’t infringe on the rights of others. Letting women “have heir own choices, their own money” over health care is freedom; letting them abort their babies isn’t. America rejected the idea that personal freedom covered controlling another human being as property way back in the Civil War.
If Ms. Leber’s failed “gotcha” attempt has shown anything, it’s that the fallout of rhetorical subterfuge isn’t limited to the issue it’s meant to obscure. By abusing the meaning of basic concepts like “freedom,” “choice,” and even “body,” pro-abortion hacks conjure inconsistencies where none exist and erase necessary guidelines for logical reasoning, endangering the public’s ability to make rational, informed decisions about policy matters such as health care.
Fortunately, Michele Bachmann remains undaunted. Her political enemies may have spared no expense trying to paint her as stupid and crazy, but the truth is that Bachmann is better-informed and more clear-thinking than her fiercest detractors. What ThinkProgress deems a blunder is actually a much-needed blow against the abortion crowd’s hijacking of the dictionary.
