Silence of the Vagina Warriors

Darline Click noticed that the fembloggers -- who "have no problem with nasty mockery of Michelle Duggar" -- were suspiciously silent about the bizarre case of the woman who got in-vitro fertilization in order to give birth to octuplets, bringing her total to 14.

Then, one of them piped up with some weirdness about "the issue is childbearing by low-income women of color" -- telling me something I didn't know, and offering to take me places I'm not sure I want to go. Ace of Spades on Saturday:

Incidentally, I notice that Feministing hasn't commented on this at all, and I went back through five dreary pages of posts. Their usual joke -- "It's a vagina, not a clown car" -- is MIA. They tend to do this: There is no male villain in the story they can yell at about this, so it's not a story as far as they're concerned. If she'd had a husband, they would have posted about this twenty five times by now.

Well, finally, Little Ms. Presidential Push-Up Bra speaks:

On the whole, I want to caution people against assuming that this case has anything to do with the experiences of most women. . . . [H]er case is not especially good evidence that the law or doctors have a right to start pushing women around and making our reproductive decisions for us. The far more common cases are those when control is yanked away from the woman in question because her judgment is sound, but the control freak doctor or politician is on a sexist or racist high horse.

Ah, all those sexist/racist control-freak doctor/politicians with nothing to do all day but push women around! You see, this is just it: The news qua news is not of interest to Amanda. It's all about the Fierce Fury of Her Vagina, terrorizing those phallocentric oppressors, so as to elicit cheers from the sisterhood for her Intelligence and Courage, because taking on the powerful National Association of Racist/Sexist Doctor/Politicians is not a job for the faint of heart.

Ace is dead on target: In the absence of a husband who can be blamed for the octomom's oppression -- for a mother of 14 is certainly a victim in the eyes of the Sisterhood of the Sacred Abortion -- then the doctor must be blamed, or some unrelated rant about . . . something. There is exactly one narrative Amanda Marcotte is interested in, and because the octomom story doesn't confirm that narrative (indeed, it may be dispositive) then it is ignored as long as possible. When it cannot be ignored, throw some pretzel logic and fulminations about "choice" at it, then move on.

The odd thing is that there is any readership at all for such stuff.

UPDATE: From Aaron S. in our graphic department, behold . . . The Battling Beavers of Planned Parenthood:

UPDATE: Linked at Conservative Grapevine.