friday cat blogging, say what? edition.

CatCat has just read this article from thursday's LA Times, in which we are informed that the Democrats' inclusion of an initiative called "Reducing the Need for Abortions" in the Labor-HHS appropriations bill indicates that they "have begun to adopt some of the language and policy goals of the antiabortion movement" in order to "appeal to religious voters."

"say what?"

i know, CatCat, i know. it doesn't make any sense. except that it does.

hold on.

the thing is, by name alone, the "Reducing the Need for Abortion" initiative is actually a minor coup for pro-choice advocates, because it used to be the "Reducing the Number of Abortions" initiative. and we're not really down with reducing the number of abortions as an end goal, because well hey, if you outlaw 'em you can reduce that number right down to zero! helping women avoid ever having to get an abortion in the first place - now we're talking. this is progress.

except that the bulk of the language and policy that's actually in this initiative harks back to its "number" days - i.e., it's pretty much all about figuring how to support and encourage women to carry to term once they're pregnant. not that there's anything wrong with that! but if you do that at the expense of also supporting and encouraging the choice of abortion, then there's a problem. and if Dems continue to fall all over themselves to try to find "alternatives" to abortion rather than re-frame the debate into a (ahem, real-life) scenario where abortion is merely one of a variety of viable choices, well, then that's a BIG problem.

so are Dems trying to get into bed with religion and the right to life? i don't think so. but are they dangerously close to completely scuttling their chance to actually change the parameters of the discussion, to start realigning the whole reproductive rights paradigm after 30+ years of conservative framing? absolutely.

CatCat says, it's positively Pavlovian.