Answered prayers, as they say, can be very mixed blessings, as the feminists certainly know. They wanted outspoken women to come forth in politics, and they wanted women to exercise “choice.” Who knew that so many would be pro-life, low-tax, pro-defense women — South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, Keep America Safe co-founder Liz Cheney, among a great many others — and that the choices made by so many women would be to abort their own girls?
When it emerged, the concept of “choice” seemed a triumph of marketing, the way to appeal to the libertarian streak in the people, to neutralize the unpleasant fact of the issue with something that could be sold as a good.
“Choice” was what you exercised when you voted, when you picked a career, or your human associates. “Choice” was essential to freedom and self-definition. “Choice” was a value, more so than abortion: Abortion wasn’t the issue; “choice” was the issue, and abortion was one of a large set of issues over which choices were made.
The language deployed reflected the terms of the framing: Abortion opponents were “anti-choice,” not pro-life, or anti-abortion. Many people were happy and proud to be labeled anti-abortion. Anti-choice, though, was a whole other story. No one would want to be that.
But the embrace of “choice” presented a quandary, which was not all that clear at the time. “Choice” as a value meant that all choices were equal in terms of morality: not only the choice to give life or take it, but all the reasons for which the choice of abortion were made.
Reasons of hardship or health or convenience were accepted as equal, and all were defended. All women’s choices were regarded as wise, since women had made them. Objecting to this was out of the question, as it gave an opening to all of those evil and retrograde social conservatives. It was also, of course, “insulting to women” — than which no more damaging charge can be made.
Then came the news that women were using this wisdom in order to end female lives. Scientists believe that, world-over, around 160 million women are “missing,” dispatched (that is, aborted) by their parents, who prefer male children and don’t want superfluous females to clutter their lives.
In the course of events, every second abortion produces a dead female fetus (which the sisters accept as collateral damage) but this new statistic means something different: the culling of females, because they are female, for no other discernible cause.
Liberals belong to the party of “hate crime” and think people count less than the groups they belong to. Murder is one thing, but an attack on a group is beyond human decency. Is this a crime against which they will rally? Well, no.
Why not? It’s a “choice” — and choices, of course, must never be questioned, no matter to what ends they lead. Late-term abortion? Terrific. Infant dismemberment? Hardly a problem. Sequential abortion? No problem there.
Abortion as a tool to dispose of unwanted girl children? Now, this is a problem, but liberals have surrendered the right and the standing to make moral judgments. They have found now a choice they despise, and they can’t rail against it. Who would listen to them holding forth on this issue? What in the world would they say?
Ready to fight over a word, wink or whistle, they have no words at all for all those dead females. They are strangled and silenced by “choice.”
Examiner Columnist Noemie Emery is contributing editor to The Weekly Standard and author of “Great Expectations: The Troubled Lives of Political Families.”
