At Alternet, Sarah Seltzer provides a helpful primer for those trying to decipher what's going on with the Susan G. Komen-Planned Parenthood controversy. At Salon, in an article to which I just linked but will link again here for another purpose, Joan Walsh notes that the news that Komen is (to all intents and purposes) severing its ties to Planned Parenthood comes on the heels of the Catholic bishops' (and Catholic centrists') flurry of pro-Republican politicking the past week or so, vis-a-vis the Obama administration's decision about the HHS guidelines.
Joan Walsh doesn't draw a genetic link between the Komen announcement and what the bishops and their centrist Catholic media-spokesperson allies have been doing recently. Even so, it strikes me as interesting that we'd see two highly publicized right-wing media flurries in a row--within days of each other--both appealing, essentially, to the same constituency: to right-leaning evangelicals and Catholics who refuse to see any distinction between contraception and abortion, but who are determined to conflate the two issues.
Who are determined to conflate the two issues because this permits them to transfer the rhetorical gains they've made over the years in the abortion arena (since who isn't for life?) to contraception and groups that provide access to contraception: to tar those providing access to contraception with the brush of abortion. This rhetorical conflation, at which the U.S. Catholic bishops have long been disingenuous masters, also keeps right-trending Catholic and evangelical voters confused about the abortion and contraception issues. Confused and frightened, and, like many folks when they're confused and frightened, susceptible to centripetal tribal urges that assuage our fears by telling us that the leaders of our group can't be anything but good, because our tribe is and always has been good.
So this fear and confusion, with the tribal energies they elicit, keep some of us voting "pro-life," even when those for whom we keep voting have only the most tenuous connection to the values of life for which we profess to stand. These issues--abortion and contraception--are useful tools in the hands of political operatives who know how to herd voters of the religious right to the polls.
They've worked well in the past, that is to say, but they appear to be doing so with diminishing efficiency as more and more voters educate themselves about the issues, and as younger American citizens distance themselves from religious bodies that continue to play draconian political games that damage the nation and the world. And as they do so in the name of a pro-life ethic . . . .
There's already strong evidence that the political stunt the Komen folks just pulled is significantly backfiring. Some top Komen officials have now resigned in protest, and donations to Planned Parenthood (and here) spiked immediately after the news of Komen's pro-Republican politicking over issues of women's health care made the news. This valuable suggestion at Firedoglake for those who want to show solidarity with Planned Parenthood--make a donation to the organization and have them send a thank-you note to Karen Handel, the right-wing Republican at Komen who precipitated the break with Planned Parenthood--is making the rounds online and stirring quite a bit of response.
People are getting tired, it appears, of the bullying and the unconvincing moral posturing of groups like the U.S. Catholic bishops and their allies, when it comes to issues of "life." As Paul Saveland notes, for many of us who would like to see abortions diminish, it seems intuitively obvious that opposing contraception and trying to make contraceptives less available don't serve the ends of a rational pro-life ethic in any meaningful way at all.
There's a lameness, a bewildering outmodedness, a perplexing stolidity about the way in which certain groups of Catholics continue to beat the abortion-contraception drum, as if these issues remain the only show in town--even as the economy bottoms out worldwide and 99% of folks are experiencing massive economic suffering while 1% laugh their way to the bank. For those of us who believe that the Catholic tradition at its best has strong creative and transformative possibilities as this tradition engages the public square, the stupidity of the incessant one-issue analysis and the reflex tribalism it seeks to elicit as its one-note contribution to the moral-political symphony is dismaying.
That we're still here in 2012 and can't get beyond this point as a Catholic community seems simply incomprehensible. A downright sinful misuse of our resources and God-given talents.
I can only assume that the bishops and their Republican handlers want American Catholics still tied in knots over these issues for the following reason: though the demographics are not running in their favor (for the reasons I've outlined above), the bishops and their Republican handlers imagine they can still peel off just enough low-information Catholic voters in the coming election by screaming about how contraception = abortion = culture of death = Obamacare to affect the election. Peel off just enough frightened and confused low-information Catholic voters in swing states, who predictably turn to the tribal leaders when those leaders know how to work up fear and confusion, and you may have a perceptible influence on the election.
Especially when you're simultaneously working to suppress votes in minority communities and among the young.
If these tactics do work and tip the scales in the 2012 elections, it will be interesting to see whether the pro-life U.S. Catholic bishops and their obtuse pro-life supporters in the centrist Catholic intellectual and media communities have the dignity and grace to own up to what they've brought on the world, when we see what the "pro-life" ethic they've promoted really does to the world, after a new set of "pro-life" leaders comes to power.
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