Panic and Prejudice

The way that the American Left has been dealing with issues lately has got me thinking about their apparent tactics and goals for each of us. Twice in the past month or so, they have taken a legitimate debate that is actually on their side, and turned it into a screaming mess. Now the Left has never seemed terribly averse to turning issues into screaming messes, but usually they do so because the majority is not on their side. Lately, however, they seem intent on turning discussion into fits of anger, even when the discussion would advance their side.

A few days ago, Todd Akin, a candidate for the U.S. Senate, was asked about his opinion on abortion in the case of rape. He said:

Well you know, people always want to try to make that as one of those things, well how do you, how do you slice this particularly tough sort of ethical question. First of all, from what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work or something. I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist and not attacking the child.

Almost immediately, the Left sprang into action, and within hours there were angry blog posts and opinion articles claiming that Akin doesn't believe a woman can get pregnant unless she enjoyed the sex. Of course, you can look at the answer yourself and see that he said pregnancy from rape was rare, not nonexistent, and that the female body limits fertility under stress. Both of these statements are utterly true, by the way. The statistical incidence of pregnancy from a single act of rape (assuming no contraception and healthy people) vary from 1-5% depending on the study, while the statistical incidence of pregnancy from a single consensual act (assuming no contraception and healthy people) is roughly 10%. (5% for the three non-ovulating weeks, 25% for the one ovulating week.) Most women can tell you of the time when they had a scary college exam, or a nasty 24-hr stomach bug, or a big scare, and it delayed ovulation. It isn't about a woman consciously telling her body to shut down because of rape... it's a simple adrenaline/cortisol reaction that is not controlled by her conscious mind. But let's put that aside for a moment, and look at what Akin actually said.

"I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist and not attacking the child."

There, right there... he basically claimed that there should not be a rape exemption to an abortion ban. That's the gold mine. That's the money quote. The majority of pro-lifers support a rape exemption. Even those who would rather not see an abortion in that situation would not want to enforce it by Federal law. The Left could have divided the pro-life movement by focusing on Akin's actual answer. Instead, they chose to jump all over his side comment on how stress impacts fertility and treat him like he's a total imbecile for even suggesting such a thing.

This reminds me of the previous big controversy, touched off when Chick-Fil-A founder Dan Cathy was asked about his company's support of a marriage program.

“We are very much supportive of the family — the biblical definition of the family unit. We are a family-owned business, a family-led business, and we are married to our first wives. We give God thanks for that,”

Now this one turned into a big "He's against gays" controversy, when the context had nothing to do with homosexuality at all. It had to do with divorce. Now the majority of people in this country support no-fault divorce, and here Dan Cathy appears to be dissing it. "But what if you 'grow apart'? What if you love someone else? What if you want to go find 'your true potential'?" Even among those who do not want to have a no-fault divorce, few would seek to destroy it. Even those who agree that there is a problem with the current divorce rate are not eager to ban no-fault divorce. Of course, Cathy didn't claim that he wanted to ban it either, but my point is that divorce (especially no-fault) is clearly the issue here, and most people would see the removal of no-fault divorce as a step backwards for this country.

However, instead, it became all about the homosexuals. The Silent Majority awoke, and stretched lines around the parking lot and into the street in support of the chain's right to not wholeheartedly support the total redefinition of marriage to include gay sex. Traffic cops got called out in many areas due to the sheer volume of visitors. Meanwhile, a couple of gay activist groups decided to demonstrate to us why we should keep the government out of our bedrooms by engaging in passionate lip-locking in front of a family restaurant. What a mess! What a disaster for the Left! But if they had just stuck to the actual issue, they would have gained support instead of losing it.

We could have spent the last month or so in honest discussion about the merits and detriments of no-fault divorce, or situations in which abortion may or may not be a valid decision. Instead, the Left has us talking about "legitimate rape" and "hate chicken". I am not sure that I want to be as pessimistic as Rush Limbaugh, my husband, and several other people to whom I have mentioned this, but they do have an interesting point to make... if the Left encourages us to start thinking and discussing these issues rationally, we might start thinking and discussing other issues rationally.

Issues like Obamacare, oil costs, housing prices, the economy in general, contraception mandates, a major political party endorsing gay marriage, and the turmoil in the Middle East where the Arab Spring is giving way to a Fundamentalist Muslim Winter.