Shonda Rhimes Quotes
Most people, I think, have accepted that it's not up to them to control other people's choices, except, it seems, when it comes to Washington, D.C., where everyone has an opinion about people's uteruses.
Rhimes, Shonda. Interview. Time, 2013.
In 1988 a French pharmaceutical firm developed a drug that would produce an abortion with less risk to the woman than previous methods. Anti abortion groups threatened the company with boycotts, and the firm withdrew the drug from the market. The French government then ordered the company to release the drug, but vehement political opposition in the U.S. made availability in America problematical.
The first Jew to run for the Vice Presidency on a major party ticket.
The action referred to the President’s Executive Order Banning U. S. funds going to any organization which distributes information about abortion even if they pay for it with their own funds. Such an action in the United States would have been unconstitutional but foreigners are not entitled to Constitutional protection unless they are in the United States.
Actually it was as late as 1963, that the Supreme Court ruled that States could not make the sale of birth control devices or drugs illegal. In many jurisdictions in the United States, women who do not have insurance and cannot afford birth control, there are state and private organizations, like Planned Parenthood, who will provide them. However, some conservative forces are trying to put Planned Parenthood out of business. A few doctors and nurses who perform abortions and proscribe birth control have been murdered by the fanatics. Almost of the so called “pro life” forces not only oppose abortion but contraception and family planning as well. They tactically tend to concentrate first on abortion, but most also believe that the life and death issues are for them the same, as opposed to most American feelings. The literal prohibiting Biblical injunctions are even more specific about birth control than abortion.
This quotation is important for two reasons. First, it illustrates a typical political exaggeration about the opposition party priorities. The birth control insurance issue was far from the Republicans’ “single most important issue” with many others such as smaller government and tax reduction given much more priority. The majority of Republicans did not even see this as a significant issue. However, there were a few right wing religious extremists for whom this and abortion (which they saw as the same thing) was of the highest priority. Second, it illustrates how the radical right wing – the Tea Party – of the Republican Party sufficiently intimidated the rest of the party so that for that time, almost the entire party acted as if the birth control insurance issue was a very high priority. If the normal Republicans did not support the Tea Party ultra conservative issues, the Tea Party threatened to run a more conservative candidate against them in the Primary election—thus controlling the regular republicans including and especially the leadership. So Warren’s accusation appeared to be true based on the words and deeds (votes) of the majority of the Republican Party.
This quotation is very surprising to most people who are not familiar with the history of the struggle regarding abortion in America. In the early days of the family planning movement and when abortion rights were first advocated in America, the proponents were almost all Republicans. At the time, the Republican Party consisted of economic conservatives and social liberals—“Rockefeller Republicans they would later be called. At the same time the Democratic Party was aligned very differently. The Southern Conservatives and fundamentalist Protestants of the Bible Belt were all Democrats. Most Roman Catholics were Democrats. Intellectuals at the time tended to side with the Democrats on economic issues and with the Republicans on social issues. In the 1960s the Republicans went after the racist resentment in the South over the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Southern Democrats of the Solid South switched to the Republican Party, and many liberal republicans, reacting to their party now being the party of the the anti equality racists, became Republicans. The Southern Democrats then pushed out the moderate Republicans who were the social liberals.
Shonda Lynn Rhimes is an American television producer, screenwriter, and author. She is best known as the showrunner—creator, head writer, and executive producer—of the television medical drama Grey's Anatomy, its spin-off Private Practice, and the political thriller series Scandal. Rhimes has also served as the executive producer of the ABC television series Off the Map, How to Get Away with Murder, The Catch, and Station 19.
