A Slippery Slope

The Palin-Couric interview on abortion.

"Look here, it's a slippery slope, Katie...if you allow teenage rape or incest victims to go an' get unholy abortions, and let's face it, some of those girls are totally askin' for it, ya know, well, you're just gonna encourage more young girls to head down the dangerous path of incest, so ya gotta take a stand."

(Originally posted to Facebook)

Comments:

Susan (10/7, 2:49 PM): "So sad, and yet, so true! You couldn't make this stuff up if you wanted to."

Rebecca (10/7, 5:21 PM): "except that it WAS made up. Adam, please, she didn't say anything of the sort. Listen, I'm not voting the McCain-Palin ticket, but this kind of crap makes me want to. Her position was simply that she would "counsel" them to keep the child and under no circumstances would she throw them in jail. She also called the morning after pill "conception," as those of us who have actually been fighting this fight for decades, know that is a huge step forward. Honestly, you aren't helping the cause here."

David (10/7, 6:46 PM): "Maybe she finally learned that the Vice President's role is that of a family planing counselor. To be fair, I didn't know that either. I always thought it had something to do with the government."

Me (10/7, 8:11 PM): "I thought the satire was obvious. Overall, she answered well, and shrewdly distanced her own views with those of the ticket. But you forgive too much to hear her equating the morning after pill with "conception" [sic -- "contraception"?]; she did NOT say so directly. She said she's all for safe and legal contraception, and then that she believes life begins at the moment of conception. While I'm not qualified to dispute either view, it definitely leaves her cover to claim the pill works AFTER conception, effectively aborting the newly fertilized egg."

Me (10/7, 8:43 PM): "Generally, this is not my territory, and I try to tread lightly.

But another part of the answer that troubled me was "women who find themselves in circumstances that are absolutely less than ideal." I cringe at such an egregious understatement.

Finally, while acknowledging she wouldn't want to see people jailed for aborting incest-conceived children, she also tellingly omitted her likely governmental response, which would be to rally congressional support for and cast a tie-breaking vote in support of any federal legislation seeking to bar government funding for such cases."

My original response was going to include the above. Then I thought it would be a little too dry to just dissect what she said. Or didn't say. I thought I actually deleted the snark line because I didn't want to seem to glib about a serious issue. But I don't think she said as much as you want to have heard. Not in that interview alone, anyway.

Rebecca (10/7, 9:08PM): "Actually, I watched it again and right now I'm convinced that she is pro-choice. The thing to remember is that Roe v. Wade overturned a law that _criminalized_ abortion. She made it very clear that she opposes "criminalizing" abortion. In fact, she never even said that she supported laws that made abortion illegal. It's a remarkable little ... Read Moresnippet. I'm still incredulated but the fact that she called RU-486 "contraception." That is huge.

Again, I'm not voting the McCain ticket. But all of McCain's top VP choices, whom he was forced to turn down (Leiberman, Hutchinson, Whitman) are pro-choice, and I think Palin may be a ringer. Just a thought."

Me (10/7, 10:50 PM): "If by pro-choice you mean that in saying she would "counsel" a rape victim toward adoption, or less specifically, toward a culture of life, she acknowledges an implicit choice, it's hard to disagree.

but if you're arguing that her interview masked what conventional wisdom would consider to be a "pro-choice" stance, I think you've got a long way to go.

I think your optimism will be in desperate demand should that ticket succeed."