********************************************************************
With the Chen Guangcheng case, Liberals show that only certain women’s right to privacy is worth defending
********************************************************************
Over the past few weeks, the case of Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng has gripped the worldwide attention of most thinking and concerned people who follow world events, except Liberals.
To re-cap, Mr. Guangcheng is a self-taught lawyer in China who is blind. He has campaigned tirelessly against the forced abortions and sterilizations that are central to China’s one-child policy. And the word “forced” is exactly how it is: women must get abortions and are all too often held down near the moment when they have second thoughts and do not wish to go through with such. By anyone’s standard in America, Conservative or Liberal, this qualifies as an invasion of a basic human right to privacy, as well as many more worse things.
So one would think that this would be a cause célèbre for Liberals who would wave the flag of a woman’s right to privacy. After all, Liberals give birth to organs when the slightest hint of abortion regulation is proposed, like the recent Virginia bill requiring a woman to get an ultrasound before having an abortion.
Not in this case. Apparently, forcing a woman to have an abortion, and holding them down if need be, has barely gotten a mention in most Liberals precincts.
The New York Times editorial page, the vanguard of Liberalism, is a good example.
On May 1, after the drama was unfolding for several days, the Times editorial board finally weighed in. Their missive, though, was a fleeting acknowledgement that Mr. Guangcheng “is a man of extraordinary courage” and then mostly a recitation of the diplomatic wrangling. As the diplomatic (and arguably humanitarian) crisis roiled on and perhaps feeling compelled, the Times editorial board re-visited the issue again on May 5, mentioning China’s “abysmal mistreatment of its own citizens,” without getting specific. It’s not hard to miss when an editorial is forced and perfunctory. Perhaps to make up for (or mask) the lack of enthusiasm in the story, there was also an article by former Tiananmen Square leader Wang Dan, generally discussing how to cope with exile outside of China.
During the course of this saga and through today, Times op-ed lions of woman’s right to privacy (read: abortion) have also been virtually silent on the matter. Gail Collins wrote about many of her usual pet peeves including an article about pineapples and education (don’t ask), but nary an utterance on Mr. Guangcheng. Maureen Dowd warned us about Dominique Strauss-Kahn, as if the world somehow needs to hear that he is not the perfect gentleman. Paul Krugman mumbled over, amongst other matters, why employers won’t hire graduates with skills they don’t need. But again, nothing about this champion of women’s rights, Chen Guangcheng.
And this lack of interest for such an important women’s privacy rights activist is prevalent across the Liberal spectrum. But why?
The answer lies in what Liberals see as the stratification of women’s privacy rights. In other words, not all privacy rights are created, nor deemed, equal in the Liberal’s mind. If a woman chooses to have an abortion, that is the ultimate and most noble exercise of her constitutional privacy rights. And every Liberal will rush to the front lines to defend such. But if a woman exercises her right to have a child, such is a second-class right of sorts. It is looked upon as coming from the same mindset that kept women in their perceived dark ages until modern feminism came along and liberated the feminine mentality from the yoke of childbearing bondage.
This also explains the recent catcall about Ann Romney from Democratic strategist Hilary Rosen who mocked her for having “never worked a day in her life” because she stayed at home and raised her 5 children. There was muted, if not non-existent, reaction from Liberals on such comment. But if Mrs. Romney had chosen to have 5 abortions, one could not imagine the tsunami of accolades that she would get from Liberals for making what they would describe as a brave and principled decision to exercise her woman’s right.
There is also irony to such incident. Ms. Rosen apologized to Mrs. Romney shortly after she revealed such beliefs, and went on to say she aimed to “put the faux ‘war against stay at home moms’ to rest once and for all.”
But the only faux war out there is the one conjured by Liberals, as facilitated by the Obama re-election campaign, that claims the Republicans are at war with women, which is not the case as women are over 50% of the electorate. Why would Republicans declare war on such a large chunk of voters?
Liberals, like those at The New York Times, would be more credible about their concerns for women’s rights if they focused on all women’s rights, including the right to have (and raise) a child, and not just those who choose to exercise their abortion right.
-I.M. Windee
