[Peace-discuss] peace and contraception

[Ricky Baldwin]

First off, Randall is correct that we shouldn’t have
been discussing this on the “peace” list in the first
place.  That list is strictly for meeting minutes and
announcements, as opposed to “peace-discuss.”

Secondly, I think we need to keep in mind that the
rally we are discussing is not for abortion at all,
but emergency contraception, as both Brooke’s message
and the original rally announcement I passed around at
the meeting have pointed out.  That is, emergency
contraception prevents fertilization and/or
implantation of the fertilized egg into the wall of
the uterus.  It prevents pregnancy; it does not
terminate it.  If someone has an objection to
contraception, let’s discuss that -- or discuss
abortion but not hinge this endorsement on it.

Thirdly, I have to say every time we have this debate,
we seem to start again at the beginning.  The only
objection to what most of consider abortion rights
seems to be the assertion that a fetus/embryo/zygote
at whatever stage of development must have the same
rights as an adult human being.  I’ve argued before
that I don’t think anybody really believes that -- the
evidence being all the restrictions on children’s
freedom, the control over their little lives that
parents routinely exert, and so on, that we can agree
on -- but besides that, as Carl is so fond of saying,
what is gratuitously asserted can be gratuitously
denied.

Carl does argue that opposition to abortion belongs on
the political left, because the left’s historic
direction is the expansion of rights to more and more
people.  But I think it’s an oversimplification of the
issue, because granting the fetus this more or less
absolute “right to life” means taking away rights from
pregnant women (or in this case, women who might
become pregnant without access to emergency
contraception).  These rights may include life,
health, autonomy to varying degrees, economic
well-being or a number of other things -- things the
left has fought long and hard for, I might add.  These
points have all been raised before and either ignored
or dismissed (like Carl’s reply to Jen’s point: “I
don’t take it seriously”) which I don’t think really
gets us anywhere.

Others have painted a moving picture of what these
issues mean to women's and raised points which, in my
opinion, deserve an answer of one kind or another.

And just one more point (sorry).  I’m troubled by this
argument that we shouldn’t risk alienating the
anti-war pro-lifers.  We never seem to worry too much
about alienating, for example, anti-war Democrats or
anti-war Zionists or anti-war free-traders or anti-war
pro-Chief folks or any number of other anti-war types.
 And I’m not suggesting we should sacrifice our
principles to do so.  The point is that we are
constituted as a very loose, anarchic group --
intentionally -- to allow for the widest possible
flexibility of action and discussion around certain
core principles.  

The problem here is that we disagree on the
application of those principles.  So be it.  But most
of us have been in crowds where we didn’t support
everything that was said or every position of the
principal organizers.  I know I’ve probably spent more
time in churches as a nonbeliever than I did as a
believer, and I’ve certainly spent more time meeting
with preachers.  Do we think that others can’t do the
same?  I know they can, if only from the diversity of
people who turned up on Prospect especially during the
fever pitch before the war.  Most of them I talked to
assumed they disagreed with us on some things (often
the disagreement turned out to be less than they
thought), but they weren’t shy about turning up.  They
didn’t check to see what other events we had
cosponsored, even if they could have, and they
couldn’t have cared less.  They were there for the
same reasons we were: to stand up against an unjust
war.  And I think, given the need and the hope of
making any difference, they’d be back.  

That’s really our job, in my opinion, to communicate
as best we can the need for and the hope of making a
difference through opposing the war, and then act
together, as we have been.  I seriously doubt we’ll
persuade one another on this issue.  I do think we
might be able to understand one another’s positions. 
Maybe we can’t.  But what we definitely can do is do
our best to maintain a hospitable environment for
disagreement, do what we do best, and stay as open as
we can to coalition efforts.  Coalitions won’t always
be possible, of course, but I think they usually are
if we work at it.  

I guess we’ll see where tomorrow night’s meeting
leads, but there’s my two cents.

Thanks for getting this far,
Ricky



		
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