That the human fetus has a right to life is *not* an intrinsically right-wing proposition. It attributes rights to the weakest and is therefore a piece of *progressive* ideological territory — albeit one that the forces of progress have needlessly surrendered to the forces of privilege. The surrender is the more absurd because the only effective way to prevent abortion is to prevent or reduce the stresses that drive women towards abortion in the first place. That’s also progressive!

The surrender is especially catastrophic because if voters seriously think they can prevent a million murders per year by criminalizing abortion, they will excuse tactics that they would otherwise regard as cheating, such as gerrymandering & voter-suppression, and will forget any scruples that they might otherwise have on… oh, you know: the gun-show loophole, family separations, deportations, xenophobia, racism, pollution, medical costs & medical debt, student debt, homelessness, high rents, low wages, unaffordable childcare, nepotism, cronyism, obstruction of justice, politicization of the courts, subjugation of foreign policy to domestic partisanship, and the sacrifice of democracy to Mammon.

The way out is to argue that progressive anti-abortion policies are more effective than conservative ones, and stay on-message.

— Gavin R. Putland,
https://grputland.tumblr.com/post/145198609652/screening-can-PREVENT-colon-cancer