Heard on the radio

[feuervogel]

Driving home yesterday from writing group, I listened to this segment on NPR. They were discussing the pending legislation about banning sex-selective abortions in NC.

Tami Fitzgerald, head of some anti-choice org, said that "we don't have a problem with that right now, but we need to prevent it from becoming one in the future" and then denied any aspects of anti-immigrant racism when called on it by the head of NARAL NC, Suzanne Buckley.

What you non-NC-residents may not know is that we have a large and growing Indian immigrant community (largely in Cary/RTP, but throughout the state, as well). What I hear in the phrase "we need to prevent sex-selective abortion from becoming a problem in the future" is "people are coming from India and they abort girl fetuses there and there are more and more of them and we have to STOP them from doing that." (See also: the bill introduced in the state house banning sharia law.) I could be wrong, but I'm probably not.

Fitzgerald harped again and again about "we are protecting women's rights while they are still in the womb" while Buckley kept calling her on it, saying "we should work for things that will actually help living women, like equal pay and contraceptive access and education and things like that."

Then they brought an OB-GYN on, who said how unclearly the bill is written, which Fitzgerald told her was silly to think and just fear. The host, Frank Stasio, pressed her on it, asking if patients wouldn't just lie about it anyway. She danced around the topic. (Some stats: there are no sex-selective abortions known to have occurred in NC, and most abortions occur before the sex of the fetus is even known.)

The anti-choice movement grasps at straws and tells disingenuous lies. They won't admit to their racism.

Comments

[alchemist]

Yeah, I was having lunch at the time, and yelling at the radio. It wasn't pretty.

[feuervogel]

I got home before the segment ended, so thankfully I could stop shouting "stop fucking lying, you asshole" at the radio when I got out of my car.

[a-nightengale.livejournal.com]

Oh, fuck pro-life people. They don't care about actual living babies; they just care about grinding women down.

[tikva.livejournal.com]

Not that the anti-choicers give a crap about selective abortion due to disability, except when they can use it to try to manipulate the disabled community (such as it is) into supporting them. It's totally not an issue, after all, because white Americans do it.

[pharna.livejournal.com]

Not my body, none of anyone else's goddamn business.