Re: [Fwd: Re: Culture and Technology (was Re: Abortion, Killing etc)]

[Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1@xxxxxxx>]

Katha:
>Yoshie, I don't think anyone is advocating not engaging with how people
>think about abortion!

I'm specifically referring to leftists who say we should compromise women's
right to abortion in deference to the sentiments of religious Americans in
the interest of the larger working class good.  Abortion periodically pops
up on left e-lists, and how many times have I seen references to "Seamless
Garment Catholics." etc.!  As if they were larger in number than pro-choice
Catholics!  Also there are many (unlike you) who suggest _all_ abortions
are weighty moral choices.  It's not that these people are advocating _not_
engaging with how people think about abortion.  They tend to romanticize
what religious working-class Americans say they think in the polls (which I
say is a far larger threat to American women than Islam is) and use it to
advance their "centrist" agenda (sorta like Clinton).  Also, several
decades' attacks from the Right (on feminism, anti-racism, etc.) seem to
have affected not just the general public but also leftists too.  I'm
saying we need to put steel in the backbone of leftists (very loosely
defined) and hold the ground, stopping and reversing _the rightward drift
among our own ranks_ (which is visible in the Nation magazine itself, as
you know).

>Paul for instance, discusses these issues with his students
>endlessly.  He asks them : well, why should you pay for your mistakes if
>you don't have to? That makes them think -- because in fact, they DON'T
>believe in paying for their mistakes -- for instance, they don't think
>they should fail a course, even if they do absolutely no work, rarely
>come to class and turn in their final paper late after being warned all
>semester that no late papers will be accepted. And many of them use
>illegal  drugs without thinking they belong in jail. etc

That sounds like an interesting way to make them think.  Actually in
abortion most people are (in practice) the same way -- they don't believe
in paying for accidents, mistakes, etc., so they have abortions if they
need or want them, whatever they say or have said, when it comes to their
own unwanted pregnancies.  However, material restrictions upon abortion
have come piecemeal, so in practice many people's ability to pay for their
past mistakes appear to them not so threatened.  You wrote yourself:
>Its
>true that many ordinary pro-choicers are complacent -- that's because
>the restrictions don't affect them and because they think Clinton will
>protect them.

Therefore, the practice-ideology inconsistency has mainly affected poor
women, rural women, etc. negatively, without many pro-choicers (who often
have their own ambivalent feelings about abortion) fighting back.

But we (here on m-fem) are interested in fighting back (on not just about
our legal right but also access, public funding, etc.), so the question is
not so much helping each person work out a moral position satisfactory to
his or her individual self as rethinking public discourse on abortion,
including pro-choicers'.

>  I think it's more a question of how you go about it. the appendectomy
>analogy comes across as a refusal to engage. It won't persuade anyone
>who doesn't already agree.
>  Or have you found that comparing abortion to a trivial operation is an
>effective way of getting people  on the fence to be more pro-choice?

Apparently even among leftists this analogy is controversial, even when it
is applied to only early abortions, which I think is a shame.

My idea is to put more focus on ordinary abortions and women who had them
-- abortions they had because they had something else they wanted to do
than become mothers.  When I had an abortion, that was the reason, not
because I was indigent, ill, etc.  I simply didn't want children.  I want
more women to speak about their experiences.  This way, we put the question
of women's own desire for autonomy at center stage.  I think that we who
support abortion rights may have erred lately on stressing hardship cases
too much in our efforts to gain sympathetic ears.

Yoshie