The New York Times recently ran a profile on Charmaine Yoest, who is the head of the pro-life group Americans United for Life (AUL).
In the pantheon of pro-life groups, AUL is one of the organizations that focuses on lobbying, legislation, and lawsuits, as opposed to, for example, direction action at clinics (40 Days for Life) or electoral politics (Susan B. Anthony List).
Yoest and her organization are a good example of pro-life activists who put on a moderate public face while remaining as conservative as ever. For example, Yoest and AUL frame their legislative policy concerns as not just about the unborn but also about the effect of abortion on women-- including pregnant women who might have an abortion if they were more freely available.
So, for example, the AUL helped design and push the "Abortion Patient's Enhanced Safety Act" and the "Women's Health Defense Act."
That's not to say that pro-life concerns about women are not genuine. Most pro-life advocates do care about women, but their view regarding how women should a) fit into the world vis-a-vis their relationships with boyfriends, husbands, families, the community, and their careers, and b) navigate sexual behavior and its consequences, including unintended pregnancy, is different from the majority of Americans, and certainly from pro-choice advocates.
Therefore, while the AUL frames their legislation and positions to sound not inconsistent with pro-choice beliefs, in reality they are a very traditional pro-life organization:
The article also provides a nice short history of the development of the post-Roe pro-life movement and the sorting out of the Republican and Democratic parties into pro-life and pro-choice camps. It also discusses how direct attacks on the right of abortion have not worked, whereas pro-life successes in the past 40 years have come as the result of small-bore measures (like parental consent), wedge issues (like 'partial birth' abortion) and reframing (like making abortion restrictions seem like enhancements to a woman's informed consent to the procedure).
Links:
Article in The New York Times (November 2, 2012): Charmaine Yoest's Cheerful War on Abortion
Americans United for Life home page
Americans United for Life home page
In the pantheon of pro-life groups, AUL is one of the organizations that focuses on lobbying, legislation, and lawsuits, as opposed to, for example, direction action at clinics (40 Days for Life) or electoral politics (Susan B. Anthony List).
Yoest and her organization are a good example of pro-life activists who put on a moderate public face while remaining as conservative as ever. For example, Yoest and AUL frame their legislative policy concerns as not just about the unborn but also about the effect of abortion on women-- including pregnant women who might have an abortion if they were more freely available.
So, for example, the AUL helped design and push the "Abortion Patient's Enhanced Safety Act" and the "Women's Health Defense Act."
That's not to say that pro-life concerns about women are not genuine. Most pro-life advocates do care about women, but their view regarding how women should a) fit into the world vis-a-vis their relationships with boyfriends, husbands, families, the community, and their careers, and b) navigate sexual behavior and its consequences, including unintended pregnancy, is different from the majority of Americans, and certainly from pro-choice advocates.
Therefore, while the AUL frames their legislation and positions to sound not inconsistent with pro-choice beliefs, in reality they are a very traditional pro-life organization:
For all her emphasis on women’s health, her [Yoest's] end goal isn’t to make abortion safer. She wants to make the procedure illegal. She leaves no room for exceptions in the case of rape or incest or to preserve the health of the mother. She believes that embryos have legal rights and opposes birth control, like the IUD, that she thinks “has life-ending properties.”
Yoest and the AUL also argue that there is a link between abortion and an increased risk of breast cancer, another example of the "abortion harms women" angle.Nor does Yoest advocate for reducing abortion by increasing access to birth control. When I asked what she thought about a study, published in October, which found a 60 to 80 percent drop in the abortion rate, compared with the national average, among women in St. Louis who received free birth control for three years, she said, “I don’t want to frustrate you, but I’m not going to go there.” She referred me to a critique of the study’s methodology in National Review. “It’s really a red herring that the abortion lobby likes to bring up by conflating abortion and birth control,” she said when pressed on PBS last year. “Because that would be, frankly, carrying water for the other side to allow them to redefine the issue in that way.”
The article also provides a nice short history of the development of the post-Roe pro-life movement and the sorting out of the Republican and Democratic parties into pro-life and pro-choice camps. It also discusses how direct attacks on the right of abortion have not worked, whereas pro-life successes in the past 40 years have come as the result of small-bore measures (like parental consent), wedge issues (like 'partial birth' abortion) and reframing (like making abortion restrictions seem like enhancements to a woman's informed consent to the procedure).
Links:
Article in The New York Times (November 2, 2012): Charmaine Yoest's Cheerful War on Abortion
Americans United for Life home page
Americans United for Life home page
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