Bold words and empty gestures after Dobbs
Contrasts don’t get any more stark than that between a Chris Rock riff and a JB Pritzker tweet on abortion. Both the comedian and the Illinois governor have recently made headlines on the topic, as have the attorneys general of twenty GOPled states, the Walgreens drugstore chain and a possible candidate eying the 2024 primaries.
Of those five notable participants in America’s ongoing abortion turmoil, Mr. Rock’s words stand wholly separate from the world of politics — which is likely why they were honest and blunt.
While Gov. Pritzker tweeted his staunch support for abortion as “lifesaving care,” Mr. Rock drew both ire and approval for asserting repeatedly, in his much-anticipated Netflix special, that abortion is “killing a baby.”
Most of the post-show coverage focused on his takedown of Will Smith, the fellow Black star who had slapped Mr. Rock on stage during the 2022 Oscars ceremony.
But his comments on abortion garnered attention, too, and from diverse commentators, because unlike governors Pritzker and Gavin Newsom, of California, and unlike the AGs of various red states, Mr. Rock wasn’t currying anyone’s favor.
He sucker-punched his audience a bit, actually, calling himself prochoice, asserting a woman’s right to control her own body and claiming, to great laughter, “I’ve paid for moreabortions than any woman in this room.”
Then he said: “But let’s not get it twisted: It is killing a baby. Whenever I pay for an abortion, I request a dead baby. … Sometimes I call up a doctor like a hitman: ‘Is it done?’”
His listeners’ less enthusiastic laughter seemed astonished, maybe even begrudging. The abortion sequence took some air out of the room, but there could be no doubt that Mr. Rock was speaking with startling candor.
Gov. Pritzker may also believe he was being honest with his audience — Illinois voters — when he tweeted his consternation with the Walgreens pharmacy chain and his support for abortion as “lifesaving care.”
The March 2 tweet came right after Walgreens, based in suburban Chicago, announced it would not sell mifepristone — abortion pills — in twenty states where attorneys general had threatened litigation.
Not to be outdone, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced last Monday that California’s vast government would no longer do business with Walgreens — though the company’s decision doesn’t affect that state (or Illinois, for that matter).
Walgreens is a publicly-traded company with an obligation to shareholders to avoid costly litigation that reduces its profits. Also in pursuit of profits, it seeks to become, a spokesman said, “a certified pharmacy to distribute mifepristone wherever legally possible to do so” — an intention it made clear from the outset.
The governors’ words, then, were all sound and fury, signifying the likelihood of future campaigns. But what about the Republican AGs? They are politicians, too, playing to the voters most likely to show up in primary season.
If they believe, like Chris Rock, that abortion takes a baby’s life, are they working as wisely as they could to address that wrong? Just as the aggressive over-reach of Roe v. Wade galvanized the anti-abortion movement in 1973, over-reach on the other side today also risks backlash.
When Dobbs v. Jackson overturned Roe, it appropriately returned abortion law to the states, another step in the necessarily incremental process of re-sensitizing a nation’s conscience. It was greeted, however, by end-of-the -world rhetoric on the political left.
The Biden Administration has responded by loosening FDA policies, and its Office of Legal Counsel has recently decided that an old law, the Comstock Act, does not prohibit sending any items used for abortion via the U.S. mail. Twenty Republican AGs are claiming the opposite and forcing a legal showdown.
In 1992 Bill Clinton envisioned a nation where abortion was “safe, legal and rare.” Instead we got thirty more years of battle.
A more powerful goal, I think, is a society in which taking a human life is rarely an acceptable way to solve a problem.
To that end I much prefer Chris Rock’s provocative honesty. Though there’s a vast difference between confessing one’s failures and reveling in them, his words — sharp blows rather than political puffery — bring home the reality of this endless heartache.