Yesterday the Michigan Senate approved a bill that will make a ‘Choose Life’ license plate available to vehicle owners for an extra $35. The proceeds from this license plate will go toward the anti-abortion fund called Choose Life Michigan.
Pardon our French, but this has to be a fucking joke, right?
Look, it’s one thing to support your beliefs and fight for a cause near and dear to your heart. But for our government to use its resources to help fund a group’s opinion really makes no political sense. Essentially, this gives the message that this is the side Michigan is taking.
While there are other license plates that donate funds to organizations like Boy Scouts, or organ donations, certainly these are less controversial.
Republican Sen. Patrick Colbeck says the bill will try to help mothers who have made the choice to affirm life while supporting pregnancy resource centers, abortion alternatives, and suicide prevention services. But while those are great causes, at the end of the day the license plate will say "Choose Life." Don’t tell us that Right to Life Michigan put all this time and effort into this bill just for the resources it will make available — they did it to send their message.
Sure, shit on this point of view, but know that if it were opposite — maybe with a license plate saying something like, "My body, my choice" — there would be an uproar from the opposing side.
Not everyone in Senate agreed with the bill. Democratic Sen. Rebekah Warren opposed the bill, saying it would be the first and most politically blatant license plate the state has ever had.
So, Rebekah Warren, I thank you, as a woman, as a human being that believes it should be her choice when and if she has a baby. Not the state's, not some group of people, and definitely not men.
Rachel Bidok is a summer intern at Metro Times.
