MoveOn Ad Shows the Misogyny of Republicans

Via Crooks and Liars, MoveOn.org has produced an ad that takes the words right out of the quivering jowls of Republican fetus-fetishists and has women read them.  Obama has said his campaign may use a similar strategy – "We may just run clips of the Republican debates verbatim" – but what's incredibly effective about this strategy is that it forces the viewer to confront the real human beings that the Santorum-slurpers are slandering.  

One thing that's depressingly common in any discussion about abortion is how easy it is to fall into the forced-birther rhetorical trap of forgetting that the woman exists.  It's even become common to argue that saying a fetus is not a person until it is born is saying that "location" determines personhood – as if my private organs should not be given any more consideration than any other public place (ironically, the same faction is generally behind laws that enshrine the so-called Castle Doctrine, where a person who comes onto the location of your private residence can be shot.  Your home can be defended with deadly force; your body? It's a PERSON, you murderous shrew!).  

It's one thing to think of the category "woman" in the abstract, to which all sorts of nasty stereotypes and lazy assumptions about their relative unimportance and comparative animality can apply.  It's quite another to hear these lines while looking in the face of a person (yes, as a feminist, I embrace the radical notion that women are people) who could be your mother, sister, daughter, or even yourself, and hear those words again.

Kudos to MoveOn.  I hope this gets played in every state that wants to mandate rape-by-instrument, and that MoveOn becomes the only advertiser left on Rush Limbaugh's show.