The demands of caucus and post-caucus coverage left the Reasonable Reporter unwilling to write anything more complicated than a grocery list on Blogging for Choice Day.
On January 22, which was the 35th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision, NARAL asked bloggers to write about the reasons it’s important to vote pro-choice. The request yielded hundreds of blog posts.
The Reasonable Reporter chooses instead, as she does each time this anniversary commands high-profile coverage, to recommend the film “Citizen Ruth.” It’s a bitterly funny black comedy about the abortion battle in which both sides, and the movie’s title character, a pregnant addict whom both factions seek to exploit for political purposes, are all enormously unlikable.
These days, the Roe v. Wade anniversary brings with it sad public disclosures by women who’ve had abortions and wish they hadn’t. Their anguish is understandably immense, but, the Reasonable Reporter believes, better left in the shrink’s office or the confessional.
The generation that made successful political and literary careers from this issue used to say that “the personal is political.” Now, the political has become entirely too personal. One hopes the new political mantra of “change” will extend to this arena. One guesses it probably won’t.
