Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Dismantle Planned Parenthood
“Let us state this unequivocally: originating in slave patrols, policing is inherently rooted in white supremacy and cannot be reformed,” read the latest iteration of this canard, in a recent letter from a group of black students to the administration of Duke University. “Now, we must imagine a world beyond police and prisons, one that seeks to heal and rebuild our communities from generations of systemic violence.”
They’re wrong, of course. Modern American law enforcement can claim descent from British policing as it was organized, two centuries ago, by Sir Robert Peel. Peel (whose Christian name is the inspiration for “Bobbies”) was an indefatigable advocate for professional, humane, community-oriented policing.
But why nitpick! Let’s just go along with the notion that American police officers are the direct occupational descendants of slave catchers, armed men working within a savagely racist system that came to an end in the 19th century. How many generations of officers, reformers, theoreticians, and scholars of criminal justice have worked to improve and refine American policing? Doesn’t matter. Nothing they’ve done and nothing they could do would neutralize the influence of those malign roots.
So no, it doesn’t matter if any given officer is black. Or if his chief is black, or his commander-in-chief for that matter; once he takes his oath to defend the Constitution, to serve and protect without fear or favor, once the badge has been pinned to his breast… the ancient sin seeps in. So when a Duke campus cop makes his rounds at that Ivy League campus, chit chats with students, checks dorm doors, takes a report on a stolen skateboard, provides an escort for an inebriated and fearful co-ed or just sits around in the station, sipping his DD and waiting for his shift to end…he’s still a slave catcher.
What evidence is there that policing is not just rooted in racism, but remains racist to this day? Here it is: American police officers disproportionately arrest black people. Though only 13.4% of the U.S. population is black, forty percent of prison inmates are. Disparities like this can only be explained, we are told, by systemic racism, inculcated into the institution of policing from the very beginning, and persisting throughout history despite any and all attempts at improvement or reform. Since reform did not succeed in a criminal justice system wherein the racial distribution of arrestees and prison inmates is identical to that of the country as a whole, reform is useless. Burn it down.
2. Compare/Contrast:
So let’s talk about the origins of America’s largest abortion provider: Planned Parenthood.
Margaret Sanger was an enthusiastic member of the American eugenics movement, self-tasked with the supposedly vital effort of culling the unfit from the population through the promotion of birth control and sterilization. Among those whose living presence was considered a drag on the healthy whole were, of course, non-white persons; Sanger was a racist. Not surprisingly, when she spoke before the women’s auxiliary of the Ku Klux Klan, she was a big hit.
The organization Sanger founded, has only very recently admitted that their founder held some…ahem… problematic views. In an age of widespread, woke iconoclasty, they’re thinking that maybe Sanger’s name had better come off the clinics, and the organization’s highest honor should be re-named after someone a little more woke. And yeah, maybe her bust —the one with the cute straw hat—could be discretely withdrawn from public view?
Unlike America’s police, Sanger’s Planned Parenthood is still carrying out its forebear’s original mission. They continue to push birth control particularly, as Ruth Bader Ginsburg put it in a 2009 NYT interview, “in populations that we don’t want to have too many of.” But the notorious RBG was talking about Roe v. Wade in that interview; Margaret Sanger was against abortion, calling the practice “a disgrace to civilization.”
So even if American policing were rooted in slave catching, it would be worth pointing out that Planned Parenthood wasn’t actually rooted in abortion. Abortion represents not a softening reform of its founder’s mission, but a dramatic amplification. So while police officers are no longer occupied in catching slaves and American law enforcement has not, in fact, scaled up from slave catching to wholesale murder (fewer than twenty unarmed black men are killed by the police every year) PP has taken the original, racist and eugenic vision of its founder, and translated it into more than three hundred thousand small, dismembered corpses. Most of these are merely “unwanted,” but some number have been killed for reasons a eugenist would applaud; the kid has Downs Syndrome, cleft palate, or some other disability that renders her life unworthy of life. More to the point, however, as Ross Douthat puts it in a recent NYT op-ed ” …when abortion was legalized in the United States, with Planned Parenthood’s strong support, its initial effect was a sharp decline in minority births.” When an affected group is disproportionately black, the explanation, we are told, is racism, period. Well, the racial disparities in the abortion industry are startling: 38% of abortions eliminate black babies despite, again, blacks being only 13.4% of the overall population.
A New York Times reader (surprise!) indignantly defends Planned Parenthood in the comments section: “If there are more abortions in minority populations, then minority populations present a higher need for the procedure. You can convince me that structural racism, poverty, lack of opportunity, expensive child care, wage inequality, and any number of social ills make abortion more necessary, but the sin lies with our society, not Planned Parenthood.”
This is exactly the argument that those of us who work in law enforcement make about policing—social ills make arresting and imprisoning people more necessary, and if these are disproportionately black, the sin lies with our society, not with the police.
That argument probably wouldn’t fly with the anti-racist woke. It should, though. After all, as Douthat writes: “[Anti-racism]emphasizes, first, the persistent influence of formerly-institutionalized racism even in the absence of conscious racists, and second, the importance of assessing every policy based on its effects on racial equality.”
Planned Parenthood’s actions, like the actions of police officers, whether driven by conscious racism or not (probably not, in both cases) do not produce racially equal effects. And Planned Parenthood’s origins don’t lie with vaguely-described “slave catchers,” but with an actual movement, and a specific woman who left plenty of written evidence of her prejudices and biases. And while American law enforcement long ago repudiated any and all connections with racism, and has worked to improve over many decades, making tremendous strides in reducing the incidence of police brutality and corruption of all kinds, including racial bias, Margaret Sanger was not repudiated by the organization until last week.
So: “Let us state this unequivocally: originating in the racist eugenics movement, Planned Parenthood is inherently rooted in white supremacy and cannot be reformed. Now, we must imagine a world beyond abortion, one that seeks to heal and rebuild our communities from generations of systemic violence to women and their unborn children.”
Published in General
I detect hints of logic and consistency in your post. It is not surprising that such ‘tools’ of white supremacy are being used to attack that organizations providing essential health services to the POC community.
Also known as: You can’t win because reasons.
But Planned Parenthood offers Abortion. If you oppose abortion in any way, you want to turn women into belt-fed rapid fire baby cannons, chained to the cradle and kitchen, slaves of the patriarchy. Inconvenient annoyances like babies, especially disabled babies, have no place in our modern liberated culture.
Abortion is one of the Left’s Holy Sacraments. It is given special treatment that even life-saving cancer surgery or drugs for AIDS do not receive. No one can prevent you from having an abortion for any reason.
The ‘doctors’ who perform abortions don’t even need to have admitting privileges at a hospital. It is only a small step to defining abortion as not a medical procedure at all.
Maybe I should register ‘Back Alley Bargains’ in anticipation of franchise opportunities.
I resemble that remark….
And the problem is?
I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more.
What? She gives you a nickel.
One of the very frustrating things (to me, at least) about the progressive left is that they have no principles, so of course there’s no logic 0r onsistency! When called upon this lack, they will denounce principle —it’s “white” or it’s “male” or it’s “Western Hegemonic” or whatever.
I remember reading Carol Gilligan’s books about the difference between male and female moral reasoning. Men tend to be rule-based, she said. Women tend to see and respond to nuance, and situational variations; they are far more willing to bend or suspend rules. Gilligan thought—though she managed to keep from really trumpeting this—that the “difference” was, really, that women do moral reasoning better.
Since I work in a virtually all-male environment, I really value male, principle-based moral reasoning. It makes it a lot easier to say something like “okay, but is that the honorable thing to do?” and be understood. In better and more accomodating moments, I think: Well, “male and female created He them.” There is something to be said for nuance and situational variation…and since God (or Darwin; take your pick) presupposes the male-female pair-bond, the chances were always pretty good that human societies would get a bit of both. “Rules” being dominant…but “nuance/mercy” being, at least informally, in the mix, so to speak.
Women are more likely to bend. I’m not sure that’s “better” when it comes to moral reasoning.
I’m not either. I like principles. Which just shows to go you that it isn’t rigidly sex-based…but mostly so? Anyway, to the extent that there are times when he who is without sin should throw out the first stone, it is possible that women—either in the flesh, or in the presence we establish in the male mind—-are the ones suggesting that This Moment counts as one of those times. And occasionally, we’re right.
But it’s a dangerous thing. Laboriously, I’ve pointed out to female friends that if , for example, hate speech is outlawed, who gets to decide what is and is not hate speech? Eventually, we arrive at “those with the power to enforce it.” But it takes t-i-i-i-ime.
Chaplain, I hope you realized I was being sarcastic. Our modern world is so crazy that sarcasm can’t keep up, no matter how exaggerated it is.
Start by defunding it.
Oh, I know! I was indicating my appreciation of your splendid simile, and my plan to steal and use it at the first opportunity!
Oh, but Obergefell decided there’s nothing all that special about male-female pair-bonding, so I guess we can forgo either rules or mercy. I’d say we’re giving up on both by the looks of things on the streets of our cities.
Maybe there’s something to this idea of men being enforcers and women being compassionate, but I take a pretty dim view of women and their social inclinations given how cruel they can be to each other psychologically and socially. I think men, being the more competitive sex, are naturally inclined to structured rules around the competition and equitable outcomes, even if someone gets punched in the nose; he probably deserved it and he’d admit it. They shake hands and go grab a beer together. It’s a bit of a caricature, and when guilt isn’t admitted and reconciled, a lot of people can get killed (in war, for example).
But, for interpersonal cruelty, women make men look like weak-kneed pacifists. Which is why I contend women are, broadly speaking with some notable exceptions (Margaret Thatcher), ill-suited to executive leadership. See Fiorina, Carly. And giving women the vote turned this country around a weenie, idiotic progressive corner we may never recover from. There. I said it.
Tell us how you really feel?!
But you’ve got a point, WC. I strongly deny that women are in any sense morally superior to men. Women may refrain from physical violence, but all that means is that we outsource our violence to men. I’ ve probably noted, sometime, how creepy it is to see pretty young female abortionists describing their procedures in the Center for Medical Progress’ undercover Planned Parenthood videos. Those light, soft voices…
Maybe the physical violence, but women are very, very good at the emotional/psychological kind, and plenty of people are walking around with the scars to show for it.
I did not up-vote you. That must have been another Flicker.
As a woman, I can say these things “out loud.” For now, anyway.
Probably your friend Flicker.
Regarding voting, I’ve got to say that my father was politically aware, (though wrong) and my mother was apolitical. And my grandmother voted for Nixon because she though he had such a nice wife.
I tend to think that women should not be allowed to vote. But then I think that 18-year-olds should not be allowed to vote. Or anyone under that age of 26 still living with their moms. Or anyone who doesn’t have a job. Or even anyone not owning land. Or … anyone.
Universal non-suffrage?
How about women who are married to the father of their children? They have skin in the game, quite literally. And I’m sure it’s mere coincidence that they tend to be conservative. Ahem.
One thing I’ve always pounded into my kids is, after thinking on an issue, the course of action you feel compelled to take is really, really not the one you want to execute.
“Well, this is going to suck, but it has to be done.”
In my scenario then married mothers would be the only ones allowed to vote.
But, yes, I think that there should be a political science test to pass before being allowed to vote. One that I write up.
Married property owners who don’t draw their income from any level of government, between the ages of 30 and 60.
Political science unmasked!
Hmmmm. Entitlement recipients lose their voting rights, eh? I think I like that. A lot.
ok, but what about veterans?
I do favor conscription, but short of a major, existence-threatening, Real War, that will only breed resentment. Let me start over. Actual US citizen, aged of thirty and above, no violent felonies, and not on any entitlements. How’s that?