Pro-Abortion Movie Stars Push New “Bill of Reproductive Rights”

National   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Oct 9, 2012   |   6:34PM   |   Washington, DC

A who’s who of Hollywood is behind a new campaign sponsored by the pro-abortion Center for Reproductive Rights supporting an online campaign for a Bill of Reproductive Rights. The campaign complains about Republicans and pro-lifers who oppose the Obama HHS abortion mandate that forces religious groups to pay for abortion-causing drugs.

Meryl Streep, Kevin Bacon, Kyra Sedgwick, Amy Poehler and other top actors and actresses are behind the new push. Lisa Kudrow, Tea Leoni, Sarah Silverman, Martha Plimpton, Audra McDonald and other stars join them.

“Every day, the opponents of our fundamental reproductive rights are passing laws designed to take those rights away,” Streep says in a video for the campaign. “They’re shutting down doctors and clinics across the nation. They’re making it nearly impossible for millions of women to get the essential healthcare they need.”

In another video, pro-abortion actor Kevin Bacon lambastes a Republican state lawmaker who said he developed an appreciation for the gift of life after dealing with miscarriages of the animals on his farm. Seizing on the comments, abortion backers erroneously claimed the legislator compared women to farm animals.

“Kyra, have you seen this? This lawmaker in Georgia is calling women farm animals,” Bacon says. “[And] there’s this other guy who says this whole contraception thing wouldn’t be a problem if women would just stop having sex.”

The Bill of Reproductive Rights petitions call for “a full range of safe, affordable and readily accessible reproductive healthcare,” including abortion and say Americans have the right to “make our own decisions about our reproductive health and future, free from intrusion or coercion.”

The full petition reads:

“We the people of the United States hereby assert the following as fundamental human rights that no government may deny, and that our governments at every level must guarantee and safeguard for all.

1. The right to make our own decisions about our reproductive health and future, free from intrusion or coercion by any government, group, or individual.

2. The right to a full range of safe, affordable, and readily accessible reproductive health care including pregnancy care, preventive services, contraception, abortion, and fertility treatment—and accurate information about all of the above.

3. The right to be free from discrimination in access to reproductive health care or on the basis of our reproductive decisions.

Pro-life apologist Calvin Freiburger responded to the pro-abortion Bill of Rights campaign this way:

Calling this list of demands a “bill of rights” is clearly meant to give it an air of seriousness and moral authority that stamping your feet and cursing in caps just can’t provide. But claiming something isn’t the same as earning it.

Once upon a time, the word “rights” had a meaning in this country. It denoted qualities people already possessed by virtue of their status as human beings, or, perhaps more accurately, it denoted the absence of anyone else’s authority to control you through force. Rights were not arbitrary, but founded on earnest efforts to glean them from nature, reason, and justice. Nor were they unlimited—rights concerned the individual’s authority over his or her own body, property, and personal affairs, but didn’t extend to control over those of anyone else.

But today, too many people—mostly on the Left—see “rights” as nothing more than shorthand for “the stuff I want.” Their only defining principles for defining these new rights are whim and desire. No bothering with any of the archaic considerations real rights come with, like whether what you’re trying to do takes somebody else’s money, controls someone else’s personal affairs, or kills your own child. Factoring our neighbors’ rights into the equation is way too complicated, and doesn’t always give us the results we want.

I’ve long believed abortion apologists vitriol and indignation were calculated efforts to draw attention away from the utter horror of the practice they so cherish, because of the obvious strategic value in framing the issue around the alleged harm they want to prevent rather than the actual harm they cause.