Coat Hanger Hysteria

The left’s standard response to common sense restrictions on abortion

Berkeley, CA has once again distinguished itself in the category of, well let’s just say unseemly public behavior. The Berkley City Council, by a vote of 8 - 1, yesterday voted to send letters of displeasure to 20 democratic members of the US House Of Representatives who voted in favor of the Stupak-Pitts Amendment to the House “healthcare reform” bill. The amendment prohibits tax payer funding of abortions.

Mixed in with the hundreds of thousands of other letters already pouring into the House expressing “displeasure” over you name it, the council’s letters needed that extra Berkley touch to get the special attention correspondence from Berkley deserves. And when progressives have the need to express themselves on abortion they usually like to say it with coat hangers.

So with each unhappy letter, the Berkley City Council included a wire coat hanger. Sure, everyone gets the extremely clever idea. But this tasteless display of feminist effrontery says more about the bitter, obsessive nature of the hard core abortion lobby than anything else.

The NOW gals on the council are beaming with pride. “It’s great to send a letter, but I think it’s more effective to send a coat hanger,” said Kriss Worthington. Ooh, right on sister

Susan Wengraf apparently struggled with the appropriateness of such a gesture, but in the end she cast her vote in favor of the coat hangers- for grandma’s sake. “My initial take was this is too extreme. But … I don’t want my granddaughter to go through what my grandmothers had to.” Golly, both grandmothers? One might wonder when grandma related the details of her coat hanger abortion to young Susie. Bed time story? Around the dinner table? Girl talk on the way to the five and dime? Ms Wengraf should be grateful the coat hanger didn’t get her mom.

The Stupak-Pitts Amendment, of course, has nothing to do with toppling the left’s sacred idol of abortion. Ms Wengraf’s granddaughter will still have the proud “right” to terminate the life of Ms Wengraf’s great grandchild. The amendment merely prevents American taxpayers from having to fund abortions under the guise of “healthcare benefits”. Yet, as with any attempt to place even minimal common sense restrictions on abortion, out came the coat hangers.

Parental notification for teenage girls seeking abortions. Forty eight hour waiting periods to reconsider the consequences of taking the life of your child. Requiring women considering abortion to be shown an ultra sound of the living human being in their wombs, so they can fully understand the magnitude of such a decision. There are simply no logical or moral arguments to be made for opposing such measures. Instead, coat hangers are supposed to say it all.

The ladies of the left have worn out coat hanger hysteria, ad nauseam. Impact wise, the Berkley gesture will rate about a two. One from the Huffington Post and another from OMSNBC. As for the recipients in congress, the only impact the coat hangers will have is if the congressman are in need of something to hang their coats on.