Worst Headline of the Year

William Saletan latest Slate op-ed is titled "Is it wrong to murder an abortionist?" The question does not even need to be asked. In case Saletan is wondering the answer is yes.

Saletan comes up with the solution to end abortions. Unfortunately for Saletan, the pro-choice movement has been preaching birth control for years.

If you don't accept what he did, then maybe it's time to ask yourself what you really believe. Is abortion murder? Or is it something less, a tragedy that would be better avoided? Most of us think it's the latter. We're looking for ways to prevent abortions—not just a few this month, but millions down the line—without killing or prosecuting people. Come and join us.

The Christian fundamentalists that make up the anti-abortion movement only support abstinence-only sex education. The conservative state Texas teaches abstinence-only sex-ed. During Gov. George W. Bush's tenure, Texas was ranked last in teen birth decline for the ages of 15 to 17. The Bush administration literally had no science to back up that abstinence worked. They cooked the numbers and forced scientists to attend abstinince workshops.

One scientist, recently departed from a high-ranking position at the CDC, recounts that, on one occasion, even top staff scientists at the agency were required by the administration to attend a day-long session purportedly devoted to the “science of abstinence.” As this source puts it, “out of the entire session, conducted by a nonscientist, the only thing resembling science was one study reportedly in progress and another not even begun.”8 Despite the absence of supporting data, this source and others contend, CDC scientists were regularly reminded to push the administration’s abstinence-only stance. As he puts it, “The effect was very chilling.”9

The anti-abortion movement and Republicans have no interest in promoting birth control. The Catholic Church has denounced the use of all birth control. Pro-Life America has a web page calling forms of birth control abortion. This is scientifically ignorant. Birth control keeps the sperm from fertilizing egg.

Physicians across America -- and around the world -- are now confirming that the Pill, IUDs, Depo-Provera and Norplant cause early abortions.

Saletan has penned horrible op-eds on reproductive issues. Contemplating whether George Tiller deserved to live and having the fantasy the anti-abortion movement is willing to discuss birth control are new lows for him.

Jill Filipovic:

Fourth: Saletan is right that the reason pro-lifers are able to say that killing abortion providers is wrong is because they don’t actually equate fetuses or fertilized eggs with born human beings. Of course they don’t. But he fails to adress the issue of why these groups oppose abortion and birth control so strongly — he only offers the idea that there’s a “third way” of trying to decrease the abortion rate through prevention (which is actually the long-time pro-choice position and not exactly a new invention, but if it makes Saletan feel good to think he invented the Pill, then ok). In fact, anti-choice groups have a widespread social agenda that is about much more than just ending abortion. They’re against birth control. They’re against single parenthood. They’re against egalitarian parenting. They’re against planning the number and spacing of your children. They’re against women who work outside the home. They’re against any challenge to the nuclear, male-dominated family where Dad is in charge and Mom stays home and has as many babies as God gives. Think maybe that their real agenda in opposing abortion is about controlling women?

Short answer: anti-abortionists are sexist.