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Don't Heart Huckabee
 Governor Mike Huckabee (R), the former Baptist pastor, who is running a surprisingly strong campaign for president, told Tim Russert on the December 30 episode of “Meet The Press,” that he wants to ban abortion in the U.S. So adamant is he about this issue that he has, during the past three months, equated legal abortion with both the holocaust and the civil war.
"It might be for the last 35 years, we have aborted more than a million people who would have been in our workforce had we not had the holocaust of liberalized abortion under a flawed Supreme Court ruling in 1973,” said Huckabee to a gathering of conservative Christian voters, last October.
To Russert, Huckabee avowed that if abortion were made illegal he would sanction the doctors who performed the procedure and not the women who seek it, because they are, he claims, “victims” of this holocaust. He continued, saying that physicians are not living up to the promise of the Hippocratic oath to “do no harm” if they “take the life and suction out the pieces of an unborn child for no reason than its inconvenience to the mother.”
It is unclear whether he believes that women victims or that they are just too lazy or narcissistic to be bothered with kids. What is clear, is that he does not want women to be able to make decisions about their own reproductive health.
Or, to put it even more starkly, Huckabee says, “I support and have always supported passage of a constitutional amendment to protect the right to life. I believe that Roe v. Wade should be overturned.”
He is also against schools teaching children about sex or contraception, and instead favors abstinence education — a prevention method that has been proven to be ineffective in stopping underage sexual activity or unintended (inconvenient) pregnancies.”
In Huckabee’s world, the many women, whom we’ve all known, who faced unwanted pregnancies, would have necessarily been grossly inconvenienced by their inability to seek a termination in order to finish their education, begin a career or build a stable foundation on which to start a family on their own terms. They would have, in many cases, been burdened with children when they were barely more than kids themselves. Some of them would have married unhappily and under shotgun conditions, as in earlier eras — and that rarely turns out well for anyone.
In Huckabee’s world, boys and girls of school age would not be taught how pregnancy occurs or how to avoid it, except to be admonished to avoid sex before marriage. Since humans are born with a biological imperative to reproduce and that imperative asserts itself most urgently in youth, it madness to think that “just say no” is an effective means of preventing unintended pregnancy.
In Huckabee’s world, all the unborn babies who died since Rove v. Wade might now be part of our “workforce”. Perhaps they could be harvesting produce or working in construction, which would diminish the need for the illegal immigrant laborers who he wants to deport. Or maybe they could join the volunteer army to fight the endless War on Terror. The job openings during this time of shrinking economic and educational opportunities are still numerous, if not lucrative.
But wait, this isn’t Huckabee’s world. The majority of Americans still consistently favor legal abortion in this country, and Huckabee is clearly not able to represent that majority. The majority of Americans are women, and Huckabee is clearly not able to represent that majority. Hopefully, the majority of Republicans will also see that the Arkansas Pastor, with his sly smile and restrictive ideas does not represent the majority of them either.
©Suzanne Rush, January 1, 2008
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