Morality Cannot Be Defined By Any One Thing: Planned Parenthood vs. Karen Handel

Can we just talk about Karen Handel for a second? Ok, maybe a couple of seconds. She doesn't merit much more than that, but as a case-study in a particular way of thinking that I cannot for the life of me make heads or tails of, she's interesting.

And then we'll talk about how she's batshit insane.

But first, the earnest and wide-eyed questioning ingenue portion of today's blog.

Handel ran for governor of Georgia some years back, and her campaign website has been archived on the internet, because the internet never forgets anything, and so we can look at her statement about Planned Parenthood while she was running for governor. The salient portion of the statement reads as follows:

First, let me be clear, since I am pro-life, I do not support the mission of Planned Parenthood. During my time as Chairman of Fulton County, there were federal and state pass-through grants that were awarded to Planned Parenthood for breast and cervical cancer screening, as well as a “Healthy Babies Initiative.” The grant was authorized, regulated, administered and distributed through the State of Georgia. Because of the criteria, regulations and parameters of the grant, Planned Parenthood was the only eligible vendor approved to meet the state criteria. Additionally, none of the services in any way involved abortions or abortion-related services. In fact, state and federal law prohibits the use of taxpayer funds for abortions or abortion related services and I strongly support those laws. Since grants like these are from the state I’ll eliminate them as your next Governor.

The sentence that smacked me upside the head and made me want to cry for the state of humanity is the last one: "Since grants like these are from the state I'll eliminate them as your next Governor."

What the what? Not, "Since grants like this are from the state, I'll amend the criteria so Planned Parenthood is not the only eligible vendor as your next Governor." Or even, "Since grants like this are from the state, I'll take the grant money and let the state itself administer cancer screenings and baby check-ups."

No. None of that reasonableness. As the next Governor, she would have eliminated the grants.

She's so pro-life that she's going to eliminate state spending on diagnosing life-threatening disease early! She's so pro-life she's going to make sure that poor babies don't see a doctor!

Look, Planned Parenthood is fun for a lot of people to use as a punching bag because they stubbornly refuse to stop providing comprehensive reproductive care services for women, usually women that have no other, or very limited other, access to healthcare. In plain English, Planned Parenthood refuses to remove abortion from the plethora of services it provides. Because of this, "pro-lifers" are quick to pile on, screeching at the top of their lungs that Planned Parenthood ought to be defunded by everyone and hounded out of business.

So, you don't like abortion. That's fair. I know some very lovely people who are staunchly against the practice, would never have one, would be horrified to know their daughter had one. I also know some not-so-lovely people who are staunchly against the practice.

The thing that, in my mind, separates lovely anti-abortion people from horrifyingly misogynistic control-freaks is something I call the Planned Parenthood barometer. It goes like this: I understand and respect your belief that life begins at conception and that you would never abort a fetus; do you understand and respect my belief (backed up by ACTUAL FACTS) that Planned Parenthood does way, way more than performing abortions, and can you recognize the good that they do and be happy that they do it and that they save lives? If the anti-abortion person I am speaking to can, in fact, recognize the good that Planned Parenthood does every day, then I term them a lovely anti-abortion person. Maybe they still have some discomfort, morally, with that, but you know what? Nothing is black-and-white. No moral decision will ever be simple. Being a good, moral person is to be uncomfortable for most of your life, because choices are hard, whether you're talking about an unintended pregnancy or killing a man that breaks into your house with the intent of harming you. If someone cannot understand that moral choices are fraught with gray and cannot recognize and acknowledge all the good (and I do mean, straight-up good) things that Planned Parenthood does, I mentally write them off as a horrifyingly misogynistic control freak and remind myself to never, ever trust them. With anything.

I'm not exaggerating even a little bit.

If your sense of being "pro-life" is so centered on a fetus that you are blind to the lives saved and made easier and the comfort given by poor people having access to breast cancer screenings, cervical cancer screenings, STD testing, and a general environment of non-judgmental knowledge, you're not very pro-life. You don't have to like abortion. You don't have to have one. But if you'd like to simply cease funding programs that do, in fact, save lives simply because they are being administered by an organization that does perform the perfectly legal abortion procedure, you cannot call yourself pro-life.

PERIOD. FULL STOP. You cannot do it.

Apparently, Karen Handel is one of these people.

What I learned last week, as the Komen debacle unfolded, is that contrary to what I had begun to believe about American humanity, she's the minority. People who are so incapable of recognizing nuance and the gradations that are attendent in any moral decision-making process are a minority.

You may not like abortion. You may think it's a bad thing, and a bad choice to make, and you might choose not to have one should you ever find yourself in an unfortunate position. But you don't get to condemn millions upon millions of poor women to death by breast cancer, or cervical cancer, or to lives of pain and suffering because of constant pregnancy due to lack of contraceptive access or STDs, and call it the moral, good, pro-life choice. And I learned last week that far, far more people than I thought would be able to make that distinction, DO, in fact, make that distinction.

World, you did me proud. I love all of you right now.

Then I read Handel's resignation letter this morning. The woman is batshit insane. She thinks if she says the same untrue things often enough, people will start to believe her. She thinks this even after last week very demonstrably proved that her extreme and frightening ideology and narrow focus is not shared by the majority of the people that Komen tries to help, or is supported by. Isn't the definition of insanity "doing the same thing and expecting different results?"

I thought so. The woman is nuts.