Wise up, poor folks, say pro-choicers

Going back to that AlterNet piece about "The Loneliness and Shame of the Abortion Patient," what's really striking is the transparent disgust that writers Carole Joffe and Kate Cosby display towards poor women who are ignorant of the abortion movement's high moral goals.

"[A] clear gap -- of class, income and education -- exists between those who work in this increasingly professionalized reproductive justice movement and those women who now form the majority of abortion patients," Joffe and Cosby write. "... The women we encountered in the waiting rooms of three abortion clinics, located in the South and Midwest, have little experience with the contemporary reproductive justice movement, or indeed of politics in general. But they are highly aware of the shame and stigma surrounding abortion."

It is because of this shame, the writers state elsewhere in the article, "[r]ather than expressing solidarity with others experiencing unwanted pregnancies, nearly all our respondents took pains to distinguish themselves as different from other women getting abortions."

In effect, the writers conclude that shame, as well as children, should be aborted. Throw out the dirty bathwater with the baby,

It seems to me that abortion advocates love the higher moral standards of the poor when they advocate social-welfare programs, or when they oppose military intervention. Witness Sen. Hillary Clinton's vocal gymnastics when speaking in a black church:



It's only when those same poor folks uphold the dignity of human life that they become thick and misinformed, requiring re-education by their more privileged, better-educated and (often) lighter-skinned sisters in the movement.