For most self-respecting political observers, the campaign shocker - Child out of wedlock! Drunk-driving conviction! - is usually an invitation for high-minded eye-rolling and second-order analysis. That is, we don't, or pretend not to, care whether those Swift Boat Veterans' allegations about Kerry are true or if Kitty Kelley's hellacious Bush cocaine rumors have merit. The responsible thing to do, we're told by the "liberal" media establishment, is to discuss the impact of these charges, question the timing and connections of the actors involved and, in general, act entirely disgusted that such nasty business is even covered at all.
All of which works, unless said nasty business is actually a matter of grave consequence. Consider, for instance, the case of former Oklahoma congressman and current GOP Senate candidate Tom Coburn, whose own campaign scandal the mainstream national media has largely ignored in what seems to be a fit of preemptive self-denial.
As first reported several weeks ago by Salon.com, Coburn - an obstetrician-turned-politician currently locked in a close race that could determine the control of the Senate - was sued in 1990 by a woman claiming that he had sterilized her against her will. The incident took place when the accuser was being treated for an ectopic pregnancy, a serious condition that occurs when an embryo begins growing in a fallopian tube. Usually treated by removing the embryo and permanently tying off the affected tube, Coburn is alleged to have unnecessarily tied off both tubes, preventing any future pregnancies.
No written permission for this sterilization exists, though Coburn claims that the accuser, 20 years old at the time, gave him oral consent. Medicaid reimbursed Coburn for the costs of both the necessary treatment and the sterilization even though Medicaid laws only allow for payment of sterilizations in women over 21; the candidate has admitted to reporting only the ectopic pregnancy in order obtain to full reimbursement.
The original Salon report focused on this last bit of irony - that Coburn, who was swept to the House of Representatives in the anti-government Gingrich revolution of 1994, had once defrauded and overcharged Medicaid - and the few national newspaper stories that followed largely stuck to this concern. Coburn, for his part, contends that he was merely looking out for the finances of his patient and that underage sterilizations were a routine part of his practice; as he recounted on a talk-radio show, "I've done this for lots to women who have come in for emergency things, who have asked me to sterilize them, underage, when they've already had three babies."
And so you'd think there'd be the foundations of a major story with national implications and, moreover, one that would produce plenty of fair and balanced angles with which to fill those countless one-hour cable gabfests still crawling on the fumes of Laci Peterson. Greta Van Susteren could tight-facedly inquire, "If a sterilization is included as part of another procedure, does it have to be listed separately in order to be paid for?" Deborah Norville could counter, "Is Tom Coburn a hypocrite for misusing Medicaid funds he'd later try to cut?"
But these questions are not being asked and, I think, for a very simple reason: At the heart of the Coburn matter are ramifications beyond fraud and consent and Medicaid bylaws so nasty and unsettling that even cable news does not want to get anywhere near the case.
Because, indeed, though Coburn is certainly a small-government fanatic of the highest order, his public image and political career rest on something far more visceral than fiscal responsibility: that is, heartland morality. This is a man who calls the "gay agenda" the biggest threat facing America, a man who prefers the death penalty for "abortionists."
The unspoken story is not that Coburn, by performing underage sterilizations on poor women, was somehow abandoning these morals but rather that he was carrying them to their logical conclusion. Thus appears the specter of eugenics, of an impoverished underclass - girls "who've already had three babies" - being ruled, as if by God through a clearly superior class, as permanently ineligible for future reproduction. For ultimately, the question of consent is beside the point: Who, honestly, do you think, brings up the question of sterilization? The scared teenaged mother facing an ectopic pregnancy or other possibly fatal condition? Or the kindly doctor, the good Christian, the congressman?
All of which may leave moderate Republicans profoundly uncomfortable. But in the end, it is not the right that wants to keep issues like the Coburn scandal untouched. Coburn, rather, most flummoxes the liberal orthodoxy.
When liberals see its opponent at the "conservative" extreme - and Coburn is a draconian caricature if there ever was one - they are forced to make the sort of value judgment they have been avoiding for at least a generation. That is, imagining Coburn sterilizing welfare mothers across Oklahoma forces liberals to give up the fantasy that the politics of morality merely represents a religious or cultural difference that can be ameliorated through mutual respect. To see Coburn and the "pro-life," "pro-family" forces as more than conscientious objectors to abortion or gay marriage is to finally engage in a debate that, like it or not, must evoke the serious black-and-white categories of good and bad.
Ultimately, an honest discussion of Coburn presses us to consider that there are indeed forces seeking the literal control of the human body - forces moved to inscribe upon all individuals the will of a "majority" neither particularly large nor particularly moral. Sterilization and doctor-subaltern power relations may be nasty business, but willful ignorance is worse. To paraphrase that great political philosopher George W. Bush, you're either against them or you're with them.
Jonathan Liu '07 does not send mixed messages.
