today’s reasons why the bush family makes me angry

{23 June 2007}

two quotes:

first, president bush on why he vetoed legislation for embryonic stem cell research:

BUSH: Destroying human life in the hopes of saving human life is not ethical.

excuse me, what? it’s all well and good to moralize about that when we’re talking about frozen embryos, but isn’t that exactly what we’re doing in iraq? our foreign policy, all foreign policy, perhaps, is centered around the notion that american lives somehow have a higher intrinsic value than the lives of other people. that’s why when the white house or the military reports deaths in iraq, it’s always framed as, “12 US soldiers were killed….” and then tacked on to the end of the story, like a footnote, is “oh yeah, and also 243 iraqi civilians died too,” or whatever. the news has made a big deal as we passed each milestone stone of the number of US soldiers who have died in Iraq, 2000, 2500, and so forth. i sure haven’t seen any news blurbs about milestones of total civilian casualties.

so in war, it’s okay to take an iraqi life to save an american life, but it’s not okay to take an embryo that was never going to become a human anyway and use it to find a cure for diseases that people already living are suffering from? how much more arrogant that we create hundreds of human embryos in the pursuit of invitro, and then throw them away when we don’t need them any more. (why doesn’t anyone ever talk about that part?!?) better to use those embryos for essential, life-saving research. bush, you huge, walk-the-party-line hypocrite. under pressure from your conservative base you pull support for embryonic stem cell research (calling it unethical), but you don’t have the political balls to stick with your moral position and oppose all forms of invitro, and for that matter, contraception, because that would alienate the moderates.

the second sound bite that made cartoon steam come out my ears this week was the first lady speaking with michele norris about

LAURA BUSH: In countries where there are “gender issues” and where girls feel like they have to comply with the wishes of men, I think abstinence [and abstinence education] become even more important. We need to get the message to girls everywhere, not just in Africa, that they have a choice, that they can be abstinent and make choices for themselves that keep themselves safe. (quotes mine)

what? did she get lost mid-sentence and miss her point entirely? i’m going to assume that what she delicately referred to as counties with “gender issues” in fact refers to countries with a predominant patriarchy. and in a culture where women are so devalued, they often DON’T have a choice about when they have sex or with whom. there are cultures where women are still sold by their parents as child brides. they are denied access to education and employment. they are raped until they become pregnant and then have no choice but to stay with the husband who literally purchased them. don’t talk to me about how these women need to know they have a choice. in their lives, they have very few choices. what they need is education about the ways that HIV is transmitted, access to testing and condoms and antiretroviral drugs to help prevent the transmission of the disease to their unborn children. i can’t think of anything more condescending than laura bush sitting in her ivory tower talking about how abstinence eduction can empower women to protect themselves from HIV.