Jonathan Chait isn't so sure that opposition to abortion rights is rooted in sexism:
I object to the automatic equation of opposition to legalized abortion with sexism. Opposition to abortion rights can reflect a desire to control women, but it can also simply reflect a belief that a fetus is a human being. That's not a belief I share, but it's a values question and I can't say that those on the other side are wrong.
The notion of letting women decide whether or not to have an abortion only comes into play if you think the fetus does not have human rights, or if the question is murky. If you do believe that the fetus is human, then you don't have to harbor any desire to control women's reproductive choices to oppose letting them choose to take that life away.
This might be true of voters with anti-abortion views -- it's hard to divine the intentions of entire groups -- but it certainly doesn't apply to anti-abortion activists, who have dedicated the bulk of their efforts to restricting abortion and access to affordable contraception. The recent Planned Parenthood saga is an excellent example; federal funding to Planned Parenthood is spent on health and preventative services, including contraception. Anti-abortion activists shouldn't have a problem with this; contraceptive sex is a highly reliable method of reducing unplanned pregnancies and as such, the incidence of abortion.
As it turns out, however, anti-abortion activists are resolutely opposed to contraceptive services; Gail Collins did a masterful job of illustrating this in a column last month:
“The fact is that 95 percent of the contraceptives on the market kill the baby in the womb,” said Jim Sedlak of the American Life League.
“Fertility and babies are not diseases,” said Jeanne Monahan of the Family Research Council's Center for Human Dignity, which has been fighting against requiring insurance plans to cover contraceptives under the new health care law.
“Contraception helps reduce one's sexual partner to just a sexual object since it renders sexual intercourse to be without any real commitments,” says Janet Smith, the author of “Contraception: Why Not.”
Chait is right; alone, anti-abortion views aren't prima facie evidence of sexism. Anti-abortion and anti-contraception views, however, are clear evidence of hostility to the sexual autonomy of women. When you're opposed to the very tools of women's liberation, it's hard to read you as anything but a sexist.
