I think TAPPED is being a bit hard on Katha Pollitt over her criticism of Dennis Kucinich's anti-choice voting record. While I agree with TAP that ideological purity tests on the left are not productive and that being anti-choice does not, necessarily, buy you a ticket out of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, Pollitt makes clear his voting record is a little bit more disturbing than that. He hasn't simply voted for anti-choice legislation, he's also voted for some of the more cynical and mean-spirited pieces of legislation, such as "[voting] for a ban on dilation and extraction (so-called partial-birth) abortions without a maternal health exception."
There are two ways to view that Bill. You can take it on its face and say its supporters had really made the moral calculus that the mother's life was worth less than a fetus, or, as I do, see it as just a cynical ploy to force a Clinton veto, which means they cared neither for the mother nor the fetuses they got so weepy about in their impassioned speeches.
So, let Dennis be anti-choice, fine, but he shouldn't support crap like that.
