Tag Archives: Charmain Yoest

No, not a red herring

Whatever else you might call it, abortion is a form of birth control.  Not however, according to Americans United for Life President Charmain Yoest.  Here she is (via Think Progress):

HOST: Is your organization in favor of helping women have more access to birth control and helping women have their birth control paid for by insurance?

YOEST: That’s actually not an issue that we address. We on life issues, on biotheics, on abortion, on end of life, on rights of conscience, but we do not address that issue because there are differences of opinion on that. […]

HOST: But I’m just curios, why not approach birth control as an issue if the goal is to reduce abortions, to make abortion unnecessary, birth control does that. Wouldn’t that be an interesting addition to your legal pallet?

YOEST: Well, as I said, there is an awful lot of issues that can be addressed and we stay really focused to this question of abortion itself. It’s really a red herring that the abortion lobby likes to bring up, conflating abortion and birth control and that’s why we try to stay very clear on differentiating between the two. Because frankly that would be carrying water on the other side.

It's hard to know how to respond to this, other than to say this person has little interest in reality and ought therefore to be laughed at.  Abortion, for the people who support its availability, is, in the most objectionable cases (for Yoest), a form of birth control.  There are other, less murderous (in her mind) forms of birth control, so it would seem that supporting them, rather than not supporting them, would not be unreasonable.

This would not be unreasonable, unless of course your real interest lies in objecting to all forms of birth control–which seems the only reasonable way to interpret her.  At least that way she' s not inconsistent, or dumb.  It's really after all a question of charity.