Ruth Marcus: Palin's Personal Choice

[question everything]

washingtonpost.com

Palin's Personal Choice

By Ruth Marcus
Monday, April 20, 2009

I'd like to thank Sarah Palin for her bravery in explaining the importance of a woman's right to choose. Even braver, the Alaska governor made her eloquent case for choice at a right-to-life fundraising dinner. That was not, of course, Palin's intention in revealing that she momentarily considered having an abortion. Twice, actually -- once when she discovered she would be a mother at 44, again several weeks later when she discovered that her baby would have Down syndrome.


(snip)

"Then when my amniocentesis results came back, showing what they called abnormalities. Oh, dear God, I knew, I had instantly an understanding for that fleeting moment why someone would believe it could seem possible to change those circumstances. Just make it all go away and get some normalcy back in life. Just take care of it. Because at the time only my doctor knew the results, Todd didn't even know. No one would know. But I would know. First, I thought how in the world could we manage a change of this magnitude. I was a very busy governor with four busy kids and a husband with a job hundreds of miles away up on the North Slope oil fields. And, oh, the criticism that I knew was coming. Plus, I was old . . .

"So we went through some things a year ago that now lets me understand a woman's, a girl's temptation to maybe try to make it all go away if she has been influenced by society to believe that she's not strong enough or smart enough or equipped enough or convenienced enough to make the choice to let the child live. I do understand what these women, what these girls go through in that thought process."

Except that, of course, if it were up to Palin, women would have no thought process to go through. The "good decision to choose life," as she put it, would be no decision at all, because abortion would not be an option. This is not a particularly complex point, but it is one toward which Palin seems deliberately obtuse. It came up at the Republican convention last summer, when the Palins issued a statement about their daughter's pregnancy: "We're proud of Bristol's decision to have her baby." Again, in the world according to Palin, there would be no decision at all. Abortion would be illegal except to save the life of the mother.

(snip)

As for those us less certain that we know, or are equipped to instruct others, when life begins and when it is permissible to terminate a pregnancy, Palin's speech offered a different lesson: Abortion is a personal issue and a personal choice. The government has no business taking that difficult decision away from those who must live with the consequences.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/19/AR2009041901997.html

[Tangerine LaBamba]

1. Read what Palin said very carefully -

you'll see that her primary and most compelling concerns were what other people would think. She even offered up that she realized she was in a far-away place, where "no one would know me," if she chose to exercise her options.

AFTER she dealt with her concern about her image and what people would think, then she addressed the very high moral ground she now imagines herself to occupy. Personally, I find her self-involvement repugnant. "What would people think of me?" is about as shallow and indefensible a stance as any can be. I'm not surprised that she's that vapid.

The Paris Hilton of politics.

Dumb little twit gives herself away, in her own, unvarnished, unintentionally honest words.

She was only concerned with her image.

Fucking hypocrite. Fucking shallow hypocrite.......................

[jaysunb]

2. Ok...so tell me what you REALLY think !

:rofl:

:hi:

[Tangerine LaBamba]

3. I KNEW IT!!!!!!!!!!

When I go all subtle and understated like that, the message is ALWAYS lost, dammit.

:toast:

[jaysunb]

4. ROFL !

n/t