Guest column by College Republicans | Name calling isn't policy

By College Republicans 10/26/14 9:51pm

D emo cra ts, locally and nationally, assert that Republicans are waging a war on women, often citing Republican candidates who’ve said stupid things and then claiming all Republicans are equally stupid. The second prong of Democrats’ argument is traditional fights over abortion. Finally, Democrats bring up court cases where Republicans have traditionally sided with religious liberty.

Some of these arguments are easy to answer. First, we’re clearly not all Todd Akin . Republicans on campus don’t make the ridiculous anti-science arguments that some on the right have made. The second two arguments require more explanation. For the first, reasonable people can have different thoughts about abortion. Within our organization, we have people who are staunchly pro-choice . We also have members who have deep, heartfelt issues of conscience about abortion. Finally, there are legal questions about the nature of rights and how legal obligations intersect with personal beliefs.

Stepping back, what does having a right to something really mean? There are negative rights and positive rights. Negative rights require inaction. Freedom of speech, for example, is a negative right. Within certain constraints, no one can forbid you from saying what you want to say. Positive rights require action — basic subsistence is a positive right. Rights to contraception, health clinic access and other reproductive services are positive rights. Legally, what generates this positive obligation to provide these things? Even if we grant that such an obligation exists, why is a closely held corporation obligated to provide 20 different types of contraceptives to their employees? Hobby Lobby already provides 16 types of contraceptives to their employees. For religious reasons, they object to four other types, which are abortifacient.

The two competing interests are religious freedom of expression and the right to a very specific type of contraceptive. On the one hand, we have a clear negative right. On the other, we have a dubious positive right, which would require people to violate their own belief systems. Clearly, this isn’t a simple issue of mean-spirited people trying to subjugate women. These are people struggling with trying to do the best for their employees and neighbors, while not violating their conscience.

Quite frankly, sometimes these arguments are purposely deceptive. Planned Parenthood’s 3 percent statistic, for example. Planned Parenthood has unbundled every particular “service” rendered in order to reduce the percentage that abortions make up. A routine visit, for instance, could rack up many “services,” depending on what exams you get or pills you receive. This convenient tallying is designed to distract from the other, more significant statistics — namely, the staggering number of abortions they perform.

Clearly, the 3 percent statistic is working, as the government still generously funds this group. The fact that Planned Parenthood tries to play down the number of abortions they perform is telling. This isn’t to say that people can’t be pro-choice , but this is a hard ethical decision for many people and shouldn’t be trivialized. In a similar vein, the Women’s Right to Know Act has taken a lot of flak from pro-choicers. This is not the pro-choice movement in its best light. Even the most diehard pro-choice activist does not wish to increase the total number of abortions performed or to have women request abortions without knowing what the procedure entails. The attempts to ensure that women who are thinking about abortion make an informed decision. Surely, we can all agree that this is a good thing. Ascribing malice is not the way to move forward, and it’s not the way to make policy.

There’s always a danger in politics when buzzwords become a substitute for analysis. Buzzwords such as “war on women” are rhetorically effective and convenient narratives. And sometimes they’re true. The problem, however, is that as the narratives develop and grow, they can stray far from the truth while the “statistics” cited aren’t always very accurate. The war on women narrative has been repeated so often that it’s become gospel. That’s not fair to people struggling with issues of conscience. While we should all work to make sure people have access to health care and for gender equity in all areas of life, it’s never constructive to name-call and ignore facts to serve a narra tive.

Penn College Republicans strives to promote conservative ideals at Penn and foster a community for conservative students. They can be reached at penncollegerepublicans@gmail.com.

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