[Peace-discuss] abortion debate

[Carl Estabrook]

Tom--

You are of course correct that "the question of abortion, or emergency
contraception for that matter, cannot be neatly abstracted ... from the
entire mess of politics and history confronting humanity."  I've thought
for a while that it's a great error for both opponents and proponents to
treat those issues in isolation.  Instead of a political discussion about
rights and who possesses them, we have the increasingly feverish
insistence that abortion opponents must always be religious fanatics
arguing from mystic premises (who, e.g., "suddenly 'discover' that God
reveals conception starts earlier than He had previously revealed"), even
when they don't.

But must it be always and everywhere true, that moral issues cannot be
trans-historic phenomena?  That would seem to make that assertion
trans-historic and at least verge on contradiction.  Marx' assertion that
all morality is class morality alerts us to the importance of the social
construction of moral codes, but I don't think that that fact allows us to
assert that moral conclusions are always and everywhere solely the result
of an historical conjunction, liable to change from moment to moment, from
decade to decade, or even from productive mode to productive mode.

Circumstances, perhaps particularity historical circumstances, certainly
enter into proper moral decision making, but I still think we want to
maintain that we can find things that are absolutely wrong (absolute means
regardless of circumstances).  E.g., torturing children for pleasure would
I think be wrong under slavery, feudalism, capitalism, or communism, hence
absolutely wrong.  (Of course most things that are wrong, even very wrong,
cannot be absolutely wrong, and some trivial things might be -- lying,
Kant said).

You're as aware as I am of those who argue that Marx' own work is prompted
by a profound ethical imperative: things should not be this way.  It's
true that some Marxists have argued that he was merely an observer of
changing conjunctural ethical formations, but I doubt it: he was pretty
far from Auden's Unknown Citizen, who "...held the proper opinions for he
time of year; / When there was peace, he was for peace; when there was
war, he went."

It may not surprise you to learn that I'm a Chomskyan on this issue:
ethical principles are like the universal grammar of human language.
Different societies' moral codes are like different human languages,
varying a good bit according to local parameters, but all arising from the
same human mental structure.  (A view that has some kinship to
Aristotle's: "...there is in nature a common principle of the just and
unjust that all people in some way discern even if they have no
association or commerce with each other"; Marx, as the last and greatest
of the Aristotelians, held something similar, I think.)

Just as a Martian sociologist would regard all human beings as speaking
the same language with regional variations, so the same alien sociologist
would probably find all human societies following the same moral code,
with regional variations.  We're very much aware of those variations, as
we should be; especially since the Enlightenment, they have prompted us to
reasoned discussion and philosophical reflection on ethics (and a great
deal of imaginative literature), as attempts to discover at an always less
trivial level who we are and how we should act.

Chomsky asserts (and convinces me) that the attempt is not pointless.
People are not plastic, so you can't do anything you want with them.
Wittgenstein wrote in his Notebooks, "Ethics does not treat of the world
-- ethics must be a condition of the world, like logic."  We can make
moral discoveries, get to understand ourselves and our history better
(Marx' own contribution), and come to valid moral conclusions -- in
history, of course (how would we get out?), but nevertheless correctly: we
can conclude what then should be done.

[1] I think you misconstrue slightly the debate on this list about
"emergency contraception."  I objected to AWARE's co-sponsoring a rally on
the subject for two reason, one substantive and one tactical, but neither
of transcendent importance.  Emergency contraception may be necessary for
victims of rape, but it's understood by some as an abortifacient; its
general promotion does seem to suggest a casualness towards human life
that we decry in other US government policies. Tactically, it's the sort
of issue that Tom Frank describes in "What's the Matter with Kansas?" as
derailing progressive politics.  An anti-war group that wants to talk to
people other than self-described liberals should stay away from it.

Regarding "...the very practice as we know it today is made possible only
by recent gains in scientific understanding," it might be just as true to
say that it's made possible by marketing campaigns by the pharmaceutical
companies.  Some contradiction is involved when self-described Leftists
are shilling for the general use of a product from one of the most corrupt
and politically wired industries in the country.

[2] I certainly agree that abortion should be seen in the context of the
"broad-based assault on the gains working people made throughout the
twentieth century," but not the same way as you do.  E.g., the remark
ascribed to Che Guevara, "It's easier to kill a guerrilla in the womb than
in the hills," describes the anti-natal policies followed by the US
government in a number of Third World countries, as Alexander Cockburn has
described.

The task is to decide what policies (or moral positions) are reactionary,
not to dismiss them simply because some reactionaries hold them.  Ideas
are not responsible for the people who believe in them, as Marxists should
know better than most.  My radio colleague, Paul Mueth, likes to say, "If
your coalition doesn't include people who make you uncomfortable, it isn't
large enough."

But I've argued elsewhere that opposition to abortion belongs more
consistently on the Left than on the Right
<www.counterpunch.org/estabrook01172003.html>, and I'd contend that I
don't have too much in common with Right-wing antiabortionists, who have
been rightly characterized as believing the right right to life "begins at
conception and ends at birth."  Opposition to abortion necessitates
attacks on the conditions that most often lead people in this society to
have abortions -- and that means demanding universal health care,
guaranteed annual income, housing, free education, etc.

[3] And therefore I agree wholeheartedly in the need for "creating a
society in which the fundamental causes of the problem are eradicated ...
Poverty, violence, lack of time off for working women, lack of health
care, day care, etc., these are the problems that must be faced." The
Right-wing antiabortionists who think that they can accomplish much just
with a law are mistaken if not hypocritical. (For all their talk about
abortion, Republicans in power do nothing on the matter -- they seem to
prefer it as a shibboleth.) The people associated with the Consistent Life
position have often said that their goal is not so much to make abortion
illegal as to make it unthinkable, because anyone old enough to remember
knows that abortion was neither uncommon nor particularly difficult to
obtain before 1973, when it was generally illegal in the US.

[4] Those who say the state shouldn't legislate morality seem to be using
the term morality in a restricted sense, one that I at least don't
understand.  What else should the state legislate, except morality?
Aren't progressive campaigns precisely campaigns for the state to do
something morally appropriate -- to attack poverty, violence.
exploitation, etc., because people have a moral right not to suffer from
those things?  When people use morality in that restricted sense, they
seem already to have decided what belongs in the sphere that classic
Liberalism said lay outside the purview of government (like religion).  I
think the protection of human life is both moral in a larger sense and a
proper subject for state action.  We spend a lot of time demanding the
government do that in general.  The question is, Is abortion that sort of
matter?

Anarchism -- libertarian socialism -- was described more than a century
ago as having "a broad back, like paper it endures anything" (as do what
Bush calls "the internets").  It coincides with the Left-wing Marxism that
Lenin so excoriated, and it's clear that one of its major differences with
Marxism-Leninism is its hostility to the state, which Leninists hold must
be used to (in one sense) legislate morality against the unjust rule of
the bourgeoisie.  But an anarchist society would not be one of no rules --
just no rulers.  An anarchist society would have to be a highly organized
one, where both the polity and the economy would be democratically run.
Marx in his maturity wrote, "Freedom consists in the conversion of the
State from an organ superimposed on society into one completely
subordinated to it..."  Exactly.

To be an anarchist is to have a vision of such a thing, but it doesn't
tell you what to do today.  Do you seriously think it was inappropriate
for abolitionists to demand from the bourgeois American state of the 19th
century an end to slavery?  (Marx didn't think so, as his letter to
Lincoln at the end of the Civil War shows.)  I agree entirely that the
state is "an historical instrument by which one social class dominates
another; the modern US government is the instrument by which US capitalism
impoverishes millions in this country and leads us on terrible wars of
conquest abroad."  But it's important to remember what Perry Anderson
calls one of the basic axioms of historical materialism: that secular
struggle between classes is ultimately resolved at the *political* -- not
at the economic or cultural level of society..."  As a friend says,
"Sometimes the most revolutionary thing you can do is ask liberals [which
would include the present US government] to live up to their principles."

Thanks for your comments and a chance to discuss what I think are
important matters.  Regards, Carl


On Tue, 16 Nov 2004, Tom Mackaman wrote:

> One of the problems with this debate is that it treats the moral issues
> surrounding abortion as trans-historic phenomena.
>  In fact, the question of abortion, or emergency contraception for that
> matter, cannot be neatly abstracted as a "moral issue" from the entire
> mess of politics and history confronting humanity.  I think that much of
> this discussion has taken as a starting point that there exist timeless,
> unchangeable, universal morals that operate outside and above human
> society.  As much as we might wish that to be the case, I think a
> serious engagement with history shows it is just plain wrong.  Much
> could be said, but I wanted to make just a few points:
>  1.  The very practice as we know it today is made possible only by
> recent gains in scientific understanding.  Those who oppose it often act
> as though their opposition is based upon some timeless moral tablet,
> when in fact there would be no discussion were it not for scientific
> discovery.  The absurd stand against emergency contraception is a
> perfect example of this:  A scienftic discovery threatens to make
> antiquated the entire debate on abortion.  Instead, the anti-abortion
> zealots suddenly "discover" that God reveals conception starts earlier
> than He had previously revealed.
>  2.  We cannot separate the attack on abortion rights from the
> broad-based assault on the gains working people made throughout the
> twentieth century.  The same moralizers who attack abortion also attack
> basic programs such as Planned Parenthood.  And they attack the publics
> schools, Medicare, Social Security, and so on.  Some moralizers are no
> doubt sincere in their effort to defend life.  But many others are not,
> and no matter how one might wish it away, to join forces with the
> reactionairies on the matter of abortion is itself reactionary.
>  3.  To the extent that we accept abortion as a problem, the solution
> lies not in pressuring our reactionary government to outlaw it, as Carl
> calls for, but in creating a society in which the fundamental causes of
> the problem are erradicated, which Carl also, to his credit, calls for.
> Poverty, violence, lack of time off for working women, lack of health
> care, day care, etc., these are the problems that must be faced.
>  4. Carl, I know you consider yourself to be an anarchist.  But I have
> to point out that your call for the government to legislate morality is
> as far away from an anarchist position as can be, as when you write, "it
> would seem that sometimes government would have to be the driving force
> of individual morality (as in ending slavery?)".  Although I do not
> consider myself an anarchist, I know that the one of its central
> inspirations has been a revolt against state-sanctioned morality,
> especially in the historic epicenters of anarchism:  Church-dominated or
> -influenced states such as Italy and Spain.  And the basic tactics and
> strategy of anarchism is the destruction, not the strengthening, of the
> state and its police apparatus.
>  Socialists, who also should favor the dissolution of the state, should
> agree on this score.  We do not call upon the state to legislate
> morality or adopt new police measures.  We view the state as the
> historical instrument by which one social class dominates another.  The
> modern US government is the instrument by which US capitalism
> impoverishes millions in this country and leads us on terrible wars of
> conquest abroad.  It is a reactionary utopia to imagine that such an
> instrument can ever truly enforce "morality."
>
>
>