Andrea Grimes
Commentary by Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
In a sick play on the #IceBucketChallenge for ALS, abortion supporters at RH Reality Check launched their own meme – #TacoorBeerChallenge” – to raise money for abortion.
According to Katie Yoder at the Culture and Media Institute, the new challenge is the brainchild of blogger Andrea Grimes of the RH Reality Check blog who said she started the meme as a “joke”.
“I started the Taco or Beer Challenge on Monday as something of a Twitter joke,” Grimes wrote on August 21. “What do tacos and beer have to do with abortion? I don’t know . . . . What I do know is that eating tacos and drinking beer is more pleasurable than getting doused with ice water, and that lawmakers around the country are passing increasingly restrictive anti-abortion access laws. Which means abortion funds are now more necessary than ever as legal abortion becomes harder than ever to access—especially for those of us who don’t live in major urban centers.”
However, she admits that the because the abortion stigma is real, it might be hard for someone to make that first abortion fund donation.
“It’s one thing to support abortion in theory, and a whole other thing to actually help pay for someone else’s—a total stranger’s, most likely—abortion. There’s a strong cultural narrative that tells us people who get abortions are bad, irresponsible, or cruel. That they are undeserving of care and understanding. That they are confused or heartless.
“That narrative (expletive) sucks. Abortion is common. Abortion is normal. And abortion is safest when it is legal and accessible—something abortion funds help to ensure in an increasingly hostile political climate. There’s nothing shameful about having an abortion, and nothing shameful about funding abortion. It’s so not-shameful, in fact, that you can be the kind of regular ol’ human being who eats a taco or drinks a beer and funds abortion.”
As Yoder reports, some people actually took her up on this challenge, to which Grimes boasted on Twitter: “Look at all these glorious humans taking the #TacoOrBeerChallenge! GAZE UPON THEM AND KNOW JOY AND RIGHTEOUSNESS.”
The crass insensibility of this “joke” represents a complete detach from the reality of what “funding abortion” is all about. We’re not talking about funding life-saving research such as what the #IceBucketChallenge is doing for people suffering from Lou Gehrig’s disease. We’re talking about funding the end of someone’s life.
Judging from the content of this blog, it’s apparent that the only person who needs a reality check is Ms. Grimes.
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