It’s a very strange, strange world to be raised in, and requires massive mental compartmentalization to make it work – OTOH, I did understand and know where Bush got “Dred Scott Decision” from, as code for “I’m against Roe vs. Wade!” and lots of interesting, sometimes useful connections behind the scenes.

One thing which the people inside the conservative Catholic movement can’t keep straight, btw, is whether or not they WANT to be “The Few, The Proud, The Real Truest of the Real True Christians” so they can feel the underdog, (cue the theme from “Braveheart”) but which makes the whole Reconquista thing a lot harder (Mouse that Roared style) or if they want to fancy themselves the vanguard of a rising popular tide demanding Latin and authoritarian/doctrinaire bishops and pastors, which they frequently claim is actually happening.

Living out in the wild for years though, including teaching CCD to stereotypical blue-collar “cradle Catholic” white middle-Americans, made me realize that we were largely talking to ourselves, in the movement, which was kind of shocking – we weren’t even on most churchgoers’ mental radar, let alone our passionate issues and all. Every married woman in choir was happily taking the pill, and talked frankly about it in church, unless they were past menopause – Humanae Vitae? What’s that? Of course by then I had my doubts about lots of things – being told by an ex-seminarian I was dating that the Church handed out the pill to nuns in war zones lest they be raped – something I’ve since confirmed – didn’t help me with the whole authority thing any either…

That “New Catholic Manliness” article is awesome, by the way. Little known fact: Jesus’ main problem with the moneychangers in the temple was their squishy handshakes.

And beards! God LOVES beards! Look for Leon Podles in those magazines, you can count on him to get something in about beards and Real True Godliness and the Church in every time. Even Harvey Mansfield doesn’t go on as much about the hirsuteness of the Real Male…

That “New Catholic Manliness” article is awesome, by the way. Little known fact: Jesus’ main problem with the moneychangers in the temple was their squishy handshakes.

this is a brilliant article, and one that takes on the idea of “pro-life” as anti-abortion directly. i really do suggest that everyone give it to as many “pro-lifers” as you can get to take from you, especially younger people.

i went to college in Denton, Texas, at a time when the anti-choice groups were successfully running the only abortion provider out of town with their harassment and blockades (she still provides abortions in Dallas, 40 miles away). i ran into so many young people who were working with anti-choice groups to “save the babies.” it was clear that many of these people had no interest in controlling women’s bodies, but in their naivete they thought the pro-life movement really wanted to stop abortions.
the vast majority of my contacts with these people were completely useless, BUT i found that the only thing i ever said that made them be quiet, or stunned them into temporary silence, was when i said that THEY were causing abortions, or the groups that they supported were, by stopping women from getting birth control info and sex ed.
seriously, this arguement really did work with some younger people. they still think they abortion is wrong, but honestly are too inexperienced to know that the “pro-life” movement fights against birth control and sex ed. and when they make this connection, some of them leave the anti-choice movement.

i have talked to many pro-life zealots, and i know many of them are totally unreachable. but for some of the younger ones, the idea that would be causing abortions by helping groups that fight birth control & sex ed is something they have never thought about. and when they think about it, many of them are horrified.

(and even with the zealots who will never agree with you, it seemed to usually shut them up. they just couldn’t stand being told THEY were causing abortions, so they often left us, and the women we were escorting, alone.)

so thank you so much for this article. i really think this is an argument that needs more emphasis.

Of course, this is all based on catholic teaching. I’m not familiar with baptists or whatever other religions are involved in the pro-life movement. My impression – possibly wrong – is that catholics are not a huge part of the active pro-life movement, but I’m hispanic and I think most of us do catholicism a little differently.

I would have to say you’re right about cultural stuff making a difference – although I would also say that the active prolife movement is itself a very tiny but very noisy slice of the population here – I don’t know what proportion of it is Catholic by the numbers, however the only people I knew in it – from the Knights of Columbus and Catholics United For Life to the Wanderer Forum to the Steubenville/Ave Maria University crowd – were all Roman Catholic, yes, but also a particular stripe of, or rather, two particular stripes of, RC.

There were the Old Guard conservative Catholics, like William F. Buckley, Pat Buchanan, and their hangers-on, who were actually cradle Catholics of 19th-c European immigrant extraction who had achieved bourgeois stability or better and who bitterly resented all the loss of the “smells ‘n’ bells” aesthetic of the pre-Vatican II era, and equally bitterly resented the loss of relative almost-WASP privilege as social justice became an issue in the ’60s, and became the biggest defenders of the Church-as-they-dreamed-it-should-be, which is not just reactionary but also entirely imagined fantasy of Victoriana-medievalism, without the self-awareness of the SCA.

Then there are their newer adherents, like my parents, who were almost all WASP protestants by heritage and agnostic-seekers by tempermant, trying to find the “real,” “authentic” spirituality and historic culture that would make them feel at home. Rod Dreher, the Crunchy Con, abandoning RC for Orthodox is *extremely* typical (although most of the ones I know just went Maronite/Melkite rite to get their incense-and-foreign-lingo fix.)

They tend to fetishize Latin American Catholicism, too, as well as Medieval Spain (The Good Parts Version) – but without actually knowing any real Latinos or caring about how you really feel about the Church, which is how they can romanticize and valorize Hispanic Catholicism of the OL of Guadalupe sort, and simultaneously demonize Liberation Theology…

There used to be an assumption among the more kulturny of the conservative Catholic set that Mexican immigration would be good for the prolife/Marianist/Neo-Traditionalist goal of Catholic Reconquista (yes, they really do use that word!) because all the Mexican immigrants would of course be traditional (macho or submissive) Catholics devoted to the Vatican and the Virgin Mary and authority figures and would help turn the tide against the godless secular humanist liberal feminist pagans in California – this view got a nasty upset in the last presidential elections, and brought out the Catholic Freepers’ inner No-Nothingism by the boatload.

One place to get a lot of inside views of this rhetoric and culture – including the struggles over going ecumenical to work with Evangelicals against contraception – is at Touchstone, and another is Crisis, both of which are run by people pretty deep in with the PTB (Neuhaus was at the infamous “I call you my base” dinner; Deal Hudson who published Crisis was one of the Bush administrations’ advisors until revelations about his past sexual harrassment of a student came to light – which didn’t cause him or his magazine to develop any humility in re stone-casting, of course) altho’ I warn you that the amount of historical ignorance believed to be erudition, and anxious masculinity on display is nauseating (I *think* I distantly know the guy who wrote that article I linked to in Crisis, and if so he’s a jerk to his wife and if she ever shakes off her religious indoctrination he’s going to be a lonely MRA so fast he won’t know what hit him).

Also nauseating is the reverence for Queen Isabella, and the outright disdain for democracy, frequently on display – often disguised in amazing puffery, but there are some articles in the Touchstone archives by Judge Bork that give their authoritarian game away completely…

It obviously would be political suicide for a candidate in a national or probably even state-wide election to come out in favor of a ban on IVF, and so they don’t. Instead they get around the issue by promoting the embryo adoption you mentioned. I think the same probably is true for pharmacists. The outcry against a pharmacist refusing a woman her hormone medication for an IVF cycle would be much greater than it is against one refusing birth control pills. If these bills included IVF medication I suspect they wouldn’t pass as easily. (My understanding is these bills usually are specific about contraception/abortion, not just general protections for pharamcists to object to anything they find immoral, but I’ve never read the actual language so I could be wrong.)

That being said, I think there’s another issue here that you touched on at the end of your post, and that is simply that a woman pursuing IVF – assuming she’s married to a man, of course – is pursuing an accepted female role. Who (except god, apparently) would deny her the ultimate female experience? Those of us who just want to whore it up, on the other hand….not so much. At the end of the day, these people only develop a conscience when the issue is women having consequence free sex. Women who desperately want children, well, they can kill all the embryos they want. (Though I suspect certain pharmacists might discover their conscience on IVF if the woman in question is gay or single.)

Of course, this is all based on catholic teaching. I’m not familiar with baptists or whatever other religions are involved in the pro-life movement. My impression – possibly wrong – is that catholics are not a huge part of the active pro-life movement, but I’m hispanic and I think most of us do catholicism a little differently.

Ah the wonders of Google. And Amazon. The book looks interesting, thanks for the rec.

Yeah, it’s been one of my favorite evolutionary adaptations too, lol.

But a) it’s not as obvious who’s doing it, because infertility clinics aren’t an easy target like PP, b) I strongly suspect that there’s less willingness to go after fertility doctors because it’s a higher-class thing, kind of like the old-fashioned Harley Street private physician abortion, because it’s so expensive, c) ergo if they ranted about it too much they’d lose some big donors. But remember the “Snowflake Babies,” after all – it isn’t totally off the radar, it’s just not as big a deal – again, probably at least in part because it’s such a smaller percentage, due to the high cost/health problem factors, whereas the number of women (sluts! slatterns! godless babykillers! or Pathetic Misguided Souls, depending on which meme you run into) on the Pill is much, much higher.