"THE FOX," AN ANCIENT observed, "knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing." This gulf has divided life — tribal, moral, intellectual, political — since humans learned to walk upright. There are those who relate everything to a central vision or organizing principle. And then there are those who pursue many ends, often unrelated and sometimes even contradictory.
To reduce this notion to simple terms, consider Franklin Roosevelt (a fox) and Ronald Reagan (a hedgehog). Both were popular and dynamic leaders whose terms in office were infused with a charisma that was, in equal parts, elusive and compelling. And now consider President George W. Bush, an extremely elusive and not very compelling figure who, through the machinations of a gang of red necks with Ivy League degrees, occupies the White House.
Bush is a third-rate Reagan. He is less interesting, for sure, but potentially more dangerous. The danger comes in the accretion of detail. Twelve years of Reagan and George Herbert Walker Bush, followed by the right-wing hijacking of Congress during the Clinton administration, has established a political climate that has not only systematically increased the threat to a woman’s right to choose whether to bear a child, but also threatens to pervert and distort discussion of a basket of interrelated issues. These issues range from the specific and important question of how the nation should deliver prenatal care to the poor to how the nation should move forward in exploring and harnessing the vast area of the life sciences, including cloning and stem-cell research.
In these matters Bush acts with one big thing in mind: the right wing, many of whom still argue against Darwinism, must be appeased. That appeasement flies in the face of scientific reality. And as science advances — especially research into the gestational phases of life — Bush’s policies represent a wholesale retreat into superstition.
Writing in the New Republic almost exactly two years ago, Gregg Easterbrook synthesized the complexities of these new scientific advances into terms a layperson can understand. "As far as science can tell," Easterbrook wrote, "what happens in the womb looks increasingly like cold-hearted chemistry, with the natural termination of potential life far more common than previously assumed." Science, in effect, is catching up with Roe v. Wade. The groundbreaking 1973 Supreme Court decision ensured a woman’s right to an abortion during the first two trimesters of pregnancy. And science is on track to establish that it is not until after that point that life begins.
Don’t bother Bush with the details. Hedgehog that he is, he knows his own mind. To be clear, his pro-life leanings appear rooted in a simple, fundamental religiosity. But his determination to foist those beliefs on the nation by bowing to the right carries the taint of political expediency. If reports are accurate, Bush’s wife and mother don’t share his right-to-life zeal, and one wonders what his daughters think. It appears that the politics of choice is a subject worthy of debate in the privacy of the Bush family, but not for the nation. Patriarchy lives.
This is a national election year. All 435 seats in the House and 34 Senate seats are up for grabs. And for the anti-choice movement, the November elections will be about consolidating the gains it’s made thus far under Bush. Speaking last month on the 29th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, Bush reiterated his long-held position that "unborn children should be welcomed in life and protected in law."
On February 1, the Bush administration suggested that states classify a developing fetus as an unborn child. This, under the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, would give low-income women access to prenatal care. It would also define a fetus as a person.
This is political and medical hocus-pocus.
Women’s-rights advocates were understandably outraged. "If they’re interested in covering pregnant woman, why don’t they talk about pregnant women?" asked Laurie Runbiner, of the National Partnership for Women and Families. "I just have to believe their hidden agenda is to extend personhood to a fetus."
We agree. But the Bush agenda isn’t hidden, it’s transparent. Bush wants to criminalize abortion. This back-door attempt to grant fetuses legal standing is a step in that direction. When the US Department of Health and Human Services hinted at this policy change last summer, the National Governors Association cautioned the federal government that while some states would embrace such a new option, others would immediately reject it, and other states would face divisive battles over whether to go along. These days when it comes to foreign affairs and the threat of international terrorism, Bush wisely strives for consensus. But when it comes to domestic policy, he cynically promotes confrontation.
As the scientific and medical evidence mounts that a fetus doesn’t become a "person" until well into the last three months of pregnancy, it boggles the mind that the expensively schooled Bush promotes this sort of claptrap. But, as with many fundamentalists, Bush’s world is a simple world.
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