Sweet Jesus Elisabeth Hasselbeck Is a Moron

Posted by Jill Filipovic at 5:40 AM on October 9, 2007.

This post, written by Jill Filipovic, originally appeared on Feministe

The run-down if you don't want to watch the stupidity first-hand: The women of The View are discussing Hillary Clinton's proposal to give every child born in the United States a $5,000 bond. Elisabeth dislikes this idea, but she sees one upside: "This would maybe cause less abortions in the world."

The rest of The View cast realizes that this is kind of inane, since $5,000 doesn't off-set the cost of pregnancy, childbirth, and raising a kid for (at least) 18 years, plus bribing someone into childbirth just seems like a bad idea. Whoopi Goldberg responds by asking Elisabeth if she's ever been in the position where she had to consider having an abortion; Elisabeth says no. Whoopi then launches into an explanation of why abortion rights are crucial, and emphasizes that most women really struggle with the decision and don't take it lightly. Then Babs chimes in, pointing out that there was a myth that women would have babies to collect more welfare dollars, and that, in fact, women were not having children for the extra $20 a month. Joy says that it's impossible raise a child on $5,000.

Elisabeth counters with, "You also cannot ignore the fact that there are abortions done for superficial reasons and for reasons that are not extreme." How can we not ignore this fact? Well, because as Elisabeth says, "It's my personal feeling."

It's basically the same as "The only acceptable abortion is my abortion" meme that goes around a lot in both anti-choice and moderately pro-choice circles. Anti-choicers rely on the stereotype of the woman who is too lazy to use birth control and too selfish to give birth to prop up their political position. Elisabeth is ok with abortion, provided that the woman in question fits her definition of "in need." Of course, the description of the woman deserving of an abortion shifts depending on who you're talking to, and when you add actual people with complicated lives into the mix things get very messy very quickly. If I got pregnant tomorrow, would I "deserve" the right to terminate my pregnancy? After all, I'm a student living on loans, deeply in debt, in a foreign country, graduating law school in eight months and then studying for and taking the bar exam, and moving back into a fifth-floor walk-up apartment in Manhattan with two room mates come January. But then, I come from a middle-class family and I have parents who would help me and I could always do the adoption thing -- and giving birth right before the bar isn't that much of a hassle, right?

So I suspect I'd pretty much be the picture of the woman having an abortion for "superficial" reasons. And the "my reasons for abortion are way more justified than your reasons" game is a losing one.

Right along with the "women have abortions because they are selfish and superficial" schtick is the "but women use abortions for birth control" line. It shows up in the comments at Jezebel about halfway down the page. And it's kind of a funny argument -- I mean, if a woman isn't having an abortion to control whether or not she gives birth, why is she having one? Abortion is a form of controlling the number, timing and spacing of your births -- in other words, birth control.

What the "abortion shouldn't be birth control" crowd actually means is the exact same thing as Hasselbeck -- that women are having abortions for reasons they disapprove of. Take this comment:

I dont agree with everything Hasselbeck says but i understood what she was saying when she said it. I got angry when Whoopi said, its the worst thing a woman could go through. You think women want to have abortions?

Off the top of my head I can count 7 people I know who had abortions basically as a means of birth control.

3 girls in high school had about 3 abortions each. Their boyfriends were my good friends and i know they did because they drove their dumbass girlfriends to the clinic every time. I begged them to just try a condom. Or birth control and it never seem to get into their heads.

One girl in college had 2 in one year. Because she was 1.) broken up with her boyfriend and it was his but she wanted to date other guys and not want to be a freshman with a baby and 2.) because she just started dating a football player and she really liked him and didnt want to lose him because of them. I was her suitemate in college and I ripped her a new one when she told me. I told her to wrap it up and deal with it. and that she was a retarded assclown who shouldnt be allowed to have sex without proper testing.

Wow, what a friend. Your college suitemate tells you she's pregnant and she doesn't want to have a baby because she's no longer partnered with the man who got her pregnant, she's a freshman in college, and she's not ready to be a mom. You "rip her a new one" and impart upon her that she is a "retarded assclown."

The bad roommate got knocked up because her and her "friend with benefits" werent careful and she didnt want because he was, get this, UGLY. he was a good lay but ugly. She didnt want to be tied to him so she had an abortion. She didnt want the responsibilty and she really couldnt handle it because she could barely take care of herself. Once again I went through the roof. I did take her to the abortion clinic and I sat there and waited all day.

Again, the problem seems to be that the room mate got pregnant in a situation that the commenter disapproved of. I would say not wanting to be tied to someone you never had a real relationship with and recognizing that you are incapable of taking care of yourself, let alone a child, is a pretty good reason not to have a child. But not in the anti-choice world, where people who feel they are the least qualified and the least ready to have children should be the first forced into childbirth.

Its a sobering thing to go to a clinic you strongly oppose. I saw teenage girls who begged their mothers to let them keep it, I saw one woman who said outloud she couldnt keep it because then her husband would know she was having an affair.

Like i said, i dont always agree with Hasselbeck. I can understand why some have abortions. Rape and incest among other factors I absolutely understand. But we also have some fucking morons who go and do this. Makes me sad.

People do lots of things for reasons I dislike. For example, I think it's a bad idea to purposely get pregnant in order to save a failing marriage, or because you just want something to love. But you know, life is complicated,and while on their face those sound to me like really bad reasons, to the women living those scenarios they are valid and they are reflective of a context larger than a one-sentence description. The definition of "superficial" is pretty flexible, and when we start playing Vagina Police we get into some nasty territory.

Plus, who gets to regulate what's valid and what's not? Is Elisabeth going to run an abortion-approval company where she has to stamp your abortion-card before a doctor will see you?

Tagged as: abortion, the view, television, hillary clinton, hasselbeck, whoopi goldberg

Jill Filipovic is a New York-based freelance writer and a law student at NYU. More of her writing is available online at her blog, Feministe.