Katha v Yoshie

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Mon Nov 6 12:09:34 PST 2000


X-From_: kpollitt at thenation.com Mon Nov 6 14:47:14 2000 Date: Mon, 06 Nov 2000 14:47:19 +0000 From: Katha Pollitt <kpollitt at thenation.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 To: dhenwood at panix.com Subject: HI doug, Can you post/

Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>


> It is true that a health exception is not a trivial detail, for once
> a health exception is allowed, it can be _very broadly_ interpreted,
> so much so that the "ban" may come to naught.
>
> That said, elections are only a minuscule part of politics, and we
> need to win in the court of public opinions & (more importantly)
> mobilizations; otherwise, _access_ to abortion _will_ continue to
> erode, regardless of whoever will be in the White House. I wish that
> the NARAL, etc. had challenged Nader & the Green Party & extracted a
> promise that they _will_ mobilize manpower on this issue, instead of
> trying to scare potential Nader/Green supporters into voting for Gore.
>
> Yoshie

HI Yoshie --I think you're being a little naive here. Promises like that are worth nothing in politics.Sure the Greens would promise to get involved in fighting to keep abortion legal in a bush Admin, after all they are supposed to be pro-choice! but how much muscle would, or even could they give?. The Greens are very small and weak. Nader brought a lot more to them than vice versa (how much attention do you think they'd have gotten if Winona Laduke was the candidate, instead of someone already hugely famous?). I went to a Green Rally here in Manhattan Saturday -- maybe 100 people tops,mostly elderly hippies. You could "mobilize" them all in a single diner. NARAL plays single-issue politics in the actually existing electoral political world. To risk electing Bush, in return for the promise of Green help on abortion if bush makes it harder to get, is not a good bargain from their point of view (or mine either).

Well, soon it will all be over. Katha



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