Letters to the Editor
-
To Rebecca
"Craig234 suggests that societies are able to turn barbaric acts into normative institutions by proclaiming a public consensus. This is indeed how such matters often play out, but the hole in Craig's argument is that pregnancy has historically been a kind of slavery for women, from which legal abortion represents a liberation."
I think you miunderstood my point here. I wasn't saying that consenus is manufactured to turn barbaric acts into 'normative institutions' - though certainly, supporters of some acts part of the population views as barbaric certainly do that - but rather, simply that some issues which have divided our society in the past make for misleading analogies to abortion, because consensus has been achieved on them, making it look easy. Because there is almost no one still supporting slavery, no one still suggesting that women should be denied the right to vote, these issues which once had large forces on the other side no longer need to have the 'other side' of the argument considered. This leads both sides to want to get to the same point on abortion.
But we're not too close. Rebecca tries to represent a majority as a consensus, but it's not the sort of consensus which exists on other issues such as the ones I just mentioned - consensus means virtually no opposition, not merely majority support for a compromise. And even that majority has some contradictory opinions.
No, because the right to life people see life as beginning at conception, they aren't about to see the first tri-mester as an acceptable compromise, any more than people would say compromise is acceptable on slavery or women's enfranchisement.
Rebecca makes the case for the first tri-mester compromise, but it's unsatisfying on the principles of both sides of the debate; it's telling the pro-choicers to give up the principle that it's their body until birth to appease the pro-life opponents for no reaosn other than lacking the political power for a clear win; and it's telling the pro-life people to give up the principle regarding the sanctity of life by allowing some innocent human beings to be killed in order to get the compromise to save some others.
How stable a compromise can that be when it leaves both sides adhering only because they are too weak politically not to compromise? If anything, it'll make them fight all the harder to change that political situation.
It may be the most practical thing to do to have the compromise Rebecca suggests, and both political parties have some interest in agreeing to it, but I see no reason to expect it to provide any long-term relief or consensus, and more than the Missouri compromise did on slavery, merely deferring a war for a few years.
While we're not going to have a civil war over the issue, we can expect to have conflict and strife continue.
T-shirts or no, Roe or no, anything or no, because this is a fundamental issue for mutually exclusive views.
It's not entirely unlike the intransigense of the middle east conflict, where you have millions who see the nation of Israel as an illegal invader, and millions who see Israel as a good and just nation protecting itself from hateful terrorists. Surprisingly, there may be more room for compromise, based on self-interest, in the middle east than on abortion, since each side has more to gain from compromise there than people have to gain by compromising on abortion.
-
One more thing for Rebecca
I forgot to include a section I'd meant to to respond to Rebecca's good point about the history of pregnancy.
Her point is well taken; and her comparing pregnancy in earlier times to a sort of slavery has some merit: even if some women at the time did not see it that way and did not mind it, if the culture put them in a position of having little choice but to get married and have child after child or face starving, it was still 'a form of slavery'.
Pro life people don't deny that abortion is liberating for women; but they'd deny that the only alternative to abortion is a return to the days of 150 years ago for women and pregnancy. Much liberation has occured independant of abortion. Pro-life see the price of the extra liberation abortion provides as the lives of people - too high.
In my view, the debate should shift a bit, to acknowledge that human life does begin at conception, and the real question is whether the earliest stages of human life should have legal protection. That seems to me a debate more based on fact, and allowing the focus to be on the real issues.
It's inconceivable (sorry) to some to consider the idea that some human lifes - say, those in the first tri-mester - should not have equal protection, and so they want to define the beginning of life differently. Please show me the human beings who did not develop through the first trimester? What does 'development stage of life' mean if the first trimester is excluded? Of course it's a stage of human development; and it maps to a unique person in that early stage of development.
Just as we debate about the protection of people who are in persistent begitative states, the real debate is about how much protection there should be for people before birth, especially in the first trimester.
There is a large majority view, for example, that the tradeoff of creating one developed person at the cost of destroying several fertilized eggs - people in the earliest stages of development - is justified.
There is a deep paradox to sort through between the arguably infinite value of a human life, and the triviality of the acts which create that life - a drunked one night stand, an unfortunate side effect of the process needed for in vitro fertilization, etc.
-
wait a minute
"...her comparing pregnancy in earlier times to a sort of slavery has some merit: even if some women at the time did not see it that way and did not mind it, if the culture put them in a position of having little choice but to get married and have child after child or face starving, it was still 'a form of slavery'."
There is so much wrong with this statement that I don't know where to begin. Who doesn't mind carrying, bearing and nursing 12 children? Who doesn't mind not being able to own property?
I realize that there were women at that time who proclaimed that it was the duty and obligation of men to take care of women and protect us from...well, men and the things they created, but these women were the 19th century equivilent of Anne Coulter and Phyllis Schaffly. They were held up as examples of what women should want and used to argue that not all women wanted to be free.
Do women in Saudi Arabia want equal treatment? Do they mind not having any rights? I'm sure some do not see it that way.
I can't even go on - that statement is just too ridiculous. We will never agree.