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Michael Gerson, in a column about Hillary Clinton and religion, says that:
She has attacked pro-life people as enemies of "evidence," "science" and "the Constitution." And she has blamed pro-life "ideologues" for the prevalence of abortions because of their "silent war on contraception" -- a remarkable accusation that Roman Catholic opposition to birth control is somehow responsible for abortion in America.As to the first part, well, don't take my or her word for it; let's turn things over to Anthony Kennedy, who has generously placed in the U.S. Reports the "pro-life" claim that although he can "find no reliable data" he just knows that women with different moral values that Michael Gerson just don't know what's good for them. Transparently irrational "Partial birth" abortion statutes do in fact reflect a movement at war with evidence, science, and the Constitution. As to the second part, once you get beyond Gerson's strawman phrasing Clinton's point is not "remarkable" but banal. Some number of abortions inevitably result from unwanted pregnancies. Making contraception less accessible or discouraging people from using it -- which, in the U.S., is hardly an exclusively Catholic phenomenon -- increases unwanted pregnancies. Hence, Clinton is right that the "silent war on contraception" increases abortion rates. And she could even go further and point out that the bundle of "pro-life" policies evident in Latin America -- illegal abortion, reactionary gender and sexual mores, skeletal welfare state -- produces higher abortion rates than the bundle of pro-choice policies manifest in Canada and Western Europe. Which presumably is why Gerson wants to imply that Clinton is engaging in religious bigotry rather than actually making an argument on the merits.--Scott Lemieux
