[Peace-discuss] Obama gets another one right

[E. Wayne Johnson]

Just as all roads lead to Rome, one can arrive at the correct answer from
different directions. 

This from the CounterPunch archives...

Abortion and the Left
by CARL ESTABROOK

There is no orthodoxy more firmly fixed on the American political 
landscape than that opposition to abortion belongs on the Right, while 
"defense of abortion rights" is the linchpin of the Left. But a 
consideration of what Left and Right mean suggests that the conjunction 
may be accidental and only temporary.

It's a commonplace that the distinction between Left and Right is 
fraught with ambiguity. (When the Democratic party is spoken of as on 
the Left, it's gotten pretty silly.) And it's also generally accepted 
that the terminology arose from the seating arrangements in the French 
National Assembly of 1789.

But if we want a consistent usage for the Left/Right distinction, we 
might think of political parties ranged along a line according to how 
authoritarian or democratic they are. The further Right one goes, the 
more authoritarian the parties, and the further Left, the more 
democratic. (At the far Left end are the socialists, who want not just a 
democratic polity but a democratic economy as well -- investment 
decisions made not by corporations but by elections.)

Lenin's Bolsheviks, then, must be seen as a right-wing Marxist party, as 
must all twentieth century communist parties in the Marxist-Leninist 
tradition, owing to their authoritarianism And they were indeed so 
described by left-wing Marxists like Rosa Luxemburg and Anton Pannekoek.

The commitment to democracy and an ever-widening franchise means that it 
has been the Left under this definition that has called attention to 
marginalized groups in the modern West. The historic task of the Left 
has been to include in political and civil society groups formerly 
excluded on the grounds that their full humanity was denied -- e.g., 
Africans, Amerindians, and women.

Most arguments that hold abortion to be an ethically-acceptable choice 
depend on the assertion that a fetus is not a fully human person, and 
therefore the rules about killing human beings (e.g., that killing can 
be justified in cases of self-defense) simply don't apply to the 
argument. (It's true that some recent defenses of abortion have begun 
from the premise that abortion means killing a human being: as the 
defender of civil liberties Nat Hentoff puts it, it's finally hard to 
deny that "it's a baby.") Physical dependency -- the fact that the fetus 
depends on its mother's body -- is often, curiously enough, alleged as 
an indication of the less-than-full humanity of the unborn.

If the Left continues to draw out the implication of its principles, it 
will discover the marginalization of the unborn and unwanted as for 
example it discovered the marginalization of women in the first and 
second waves of feminism in the 19th and 20th centuries. And it's 
reasonable to suspect that the discovery will take as long and involve 
as many contradictions as that concerning women did -- and does.

There are of course groups on the political Left who have drawn this 
conclusion. Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote to Julia Ward Howe in 1873, 
"When we consider that women are treated as property, it is degrading to 
women that we should treat our children as property to be disposed of as 
we see fit." Emma Goldman thought that abortion was an index of the 
general immiseration of the working class, and the suffragist Alice Paul 
spoke of it as "the ultimate exploitation of women."

Contemporary groups with similar positions include the Seamless Garment 
Network, which organizes against war, the death penalty, and violence 
against women -- within which they include abortion. A Feminists for 
Life group was expelled from NOW for deviance on this issue, and there 
are a number of religious-based radical groups that are anti-abortion, 
such as that associated with the late Philip Berrigan, the anti-nuclear 
direct-action group, Plowshares.

But it's not just that the Left should oppose abortion if it is 
understood as it has wished to be for more than two centuries, as 
proposing the increasing democratization of human life. It should also 
do so because much of the thinking that leads to the position that 
abortion is generally acceptable depends upon a capitalist view of 
ownership, against which the Left is properly critical.

That the Left is opposed to capitalism should go without saying, 
although it's a bit abstractly theoretical. The Left stands for real 
democracy, and capitalism is fundamentally contradictory to democracy. 
(Democracy at a minimum presumes one person/one vote, but capitalism 
depends upon inequality, based on how much wealth one controls.) Of 
course what the Left confronts today is hardly capitalism (as its 
right-wing promoters and Ayn-Randists like Alan Greenspan should be the 
first to point out), but "state-subsidized and protected private power 
centers -- internally tyrannical, unaccountable to the public, [and] 
granted extraordinary rights by US courts in radical violation of 
classical liberal ideals," in Noam Chomsky's words.

But theory is always the last to know. Even though capitalism doesn't 
exist, our general view of society is no other than the ghost of 
deceased capitalism, sitting crowned upon the grave thereof. (It's 
happened before: arguments drawn from pre-capitalist societies, notably 
feudalism, still underlie much of the common law.) And ownership is 
surrounded with mystification in our understanding, because the modern 
ruling class is made up of those who claim to have this peculiar 
relationship to the means of production - they "own" them -- rather than 
consisting of warriors, as in the feudal society, or drivers of slaves, 
as in the ancient world. And those who don't control productive property 
in our society are even spoken of by a massively misleading analogy as 
"owning" their own labor (which they must sell).

Abortion is among other things a matter of political economy. 
Practically all of my friends who've had abortions or seriously 
considered doing so -- mostly privileged people -- have said that they 
acted for economic reasons, inability to afford the care of a child in 
the midst of a career being the principal one. It's our being caught in 
the cash nexus that dictates to the poor and well-to-do alike that 
abortion is necessary.

Even the approval of abortion by Nixon's Supreme Court -- not generally 
men of the Left -- depended in part on a calculus that abortion was 
cheaper than the adequate social services for which there was a popular 
demand a generation ago (Roe v. Wade, January 22, 1973). The justices 
were undoubtedly motivated by visions of an insistent "underclass," at 
home and abroad, in those days of fear of both revolutionary and 
demographic explosion. Like the US government officials 
contemporaneously pressing anti-natal polices on the Third World, they 
agreed with the remark (probably apocryphal) attributed to Che Guevara, 
that "It's easier to kill a guerrilla in the womb than in the hills."

Some recent defenses of the moral legitimacy of abortion have shifted 
from arguments based on the non-humanity of unborn children (i.e., that 
the fetus is not human enough to have rights) to what in the US are 
called libertarian arguments -- e.g., "I have the right to do what I 
want with my body (including the contents of my womb)." Defense of 
abortion on the basis of the ownership of one's own body is then similar 
to the right- wing account of "takings," which resists governmental 
attempts to limit what can be done with real estate.

But I don't /own/ my body; I /am/ my body. Talking of owning one's body 
arises from a malign mix of factitious capitalist theory and debased 
Christianity: I am then regarded as an immaterial mind/soul related to 
my body as the bus driver is to the bus -- a ghost in a machine, in the 
classic phrase. (Some Christians seem to forget that the fundamental 
Christian doctrine is the resurrection of the body, not the immortality 
of the soul.) It's finally this distancing, dualist, indeed Manichean 
idea of the self that casts abortion into the capitalist discussion of 
ownership.

Defense of the general acceptability of abortion on the basis of one's 
ownership of one's body is a capitalist position that the Left should be 
skeptical of, on its fundamental principles. But it's certainly correct 
-- if a little oddly put -- to say that every person has rights over her 
or his body: inalienable rights indeed (which means you can't even give 
them away), to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The abortion 
argument reduces to the question of how many persons are involved.



John W. wrote:
> Here's yet another perspective on the abortion issue.  I'm embarrassed 
> to say that it was posted on The Fox Forum, but I think the author has 
> much to say that should be considered.
>
>
> January 22nd, 2009 1:48 PM Eastern
>
>
>     Roe vs. Wade and the Rights of the Father
>     <http://foxforum.blogs.foxnews.com/2009/01/22/deseno_roe_wade/>
>
> */By Tommy De Seno/
> Attorney/Writer*
>
> /The emphasis must not be on the right to abortion, but on the right 
> to privacy and reproductive control./
> –Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg
>
> Today marks another anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, the Supreme Court 
> decision which overturned all state laws that would stop a woman from 
> having an abortion in the first trimester.
>
> While the topic I have chosen here, "Roe vs. Wade and the Rights of 
> the Father" may sound interesting, actually there is nothing to write 
> about. There are no such rights.
>
> A father can't stop an abortion if he wants his child, nor can he 
> insist upon an abortion if he doesn't want his child.
>
> This situation should trouble everyone, not from a religious point of 
> view, not from a personal choice point of view, but rather from an 
> Equal Rights point of view.
>
> Equal Rights for all people is difficult for any nation to achieve 
> peaceably, because it requires the group in greater power to yield to 
> the group of lesser power. This is usually accomplished only through 
> war. Our own Civil War is a perfect example of equality being created 
> by force, instead of reason and fairness, as it should have been.
>
> This week as I watched and read opinions about Roe vs. Wade, I could 
> find nothing, not a word among millions that addressed a father's 
> relationship to his unborn child.
>
> Two weeks ago I tried an experiment in anticipation of writing this 
> column. I wrote a column about gun control and posited that only men 
> should vote on the issue of guns. The logic (rather illogic) used by 
> me was that men buy guns the most, men are called upon to use them 
> most (when a burglar enters our home) and we get shot the most. Why 
> shouldn't men have the only voice on the issue?
>
> I wanted to gauge people's reactions to the thought that in America we 
> would ever give more weight to one person's view than another's 
> because that person can show the issue affects him more.
>
> As I walked around my city during these past two weeks, I was accosted 
> by people who wanted to take me to task for suggesting that women lose 
> their right to vote on an issue just because they may be affected by 
> it less than men. Some pointed out, quite rightly, that even if there 
> was an issue that didn't affect women at all, *as equal members of 
> society*, they should still have a voice in all decisions America makes.
>
> Quite right indeed.
>
> So where are all these well-reasoned arguments when it comes to a 
> father and his unborn child? Why do people who have Equal Protection 
> claims at the ready on other issues suddenly suffer constitutional 
> amnesia when abortion is mentioned?
>
> During every abortion a father's child dies, so fathers are affected. 
> There is much written about the post-abortion depression of women. 
> Nothing is mentioned about the father. A good father knows his role is 
> protector of his child. His depression must be crippling when the law 
> allows him no chance to save his child from death by abortion.
>
> In the Roe vs. Wade decision the Supreme Court found a privacy right 
> in the 14^th Amendment, which doesn't have the word "privacy" in it. 
> Then they found that the privacy right had a "penumbra" containing 
> other rights (penumbra means the shadowy area at the edge of a 
> shadow). In that shadow they found the abortion right. That bit of 
> mental gymnastics aside, it wasn't the most terrible part of the 
> decision. This was:
>
> The Court said that a woman my not be mentally ready to handle a child 
> at this stage in her life, or the child might interfere with her 
> career path, and that is so important to her that the State has no 
> right to make a law against it.
>
> So I ask today: Might a father find himself mentally not ready for a 
> child? Might a father find a child inconvenient to his career path? If 
> these are the rights women get to protect by choosing abortion, why 
> not allow fathers "the right to choose" also?
>
> I propose a "father's abortion." Let a father petition the Court to 
> terminate his own parental rights to his child before or after the 
> child's birth. He would be rid of his obligations to that child in 
> favor of his mental health and finances, the same as a woman does when 
> she aborts.
>
> As Justice Ginsburg said in the quote that appears at the top of this 
> FOX Forum post, the emphasis is not abortion, rather an individual's 
> right to control his own reproduction. If we protect such a right for 
> women, can we constitutionally deny it to men?
>
> I propose this not because it would be in any way good. I propose it 
> because constitutional Equal Protection demands it, and to show the 
> danger created when judges destroy democracy by making up laws that 
> don't exist.
>
> "Father's Abortion." It's high time for a test case.
>
> Any father with such a case can call me and I'll take it for free.
>
>
>
>
> On Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 5:13 PM, E. Wayne Johnson <ewj at pigs.ag 
> <mailto:ewj at pigs.ag>> wrote:
>
>     Ricky,
>
>     I find Obama to be quite consistent in his policy.  He supports
>     the killing of innocents both at home and abroad,
>     both with his warfare and with his "welfare".  One can't say that
>     Obama is incoherent as an international minister of death.
>
>     Abortion is the most explicit expression of racism and class
>     warfare in our contemporary world. 
>     It is the most dastardly and cowardly of all human rights
>     violations, since it violates the most fundamental Natural Right,
>     the Right to Life, and it attacks the Unborn, who are completely
>     helpless.
>
>     The operative social purpose of abortion is to rid the society of
>     "human weeds".  The founders
>     of Planned Parenthood identified as the poor and the Negro as
>     undesirables who should not be allowed to reproduce.  
>     Have you read Margaret Sanger's writings? Have you read about her
>     "Negro Project"?
>
>     I have some commentary at my website: 
>     http://www.liberty4urbana.com/drupal-6.8/node/43
>     I hope that you will watch the three videos there and then report
>     back with your take on those issues.
>
>     Also, *Lux Libertas* will be broadcast again on UPTV-6 at 10 pm
>     Sunday night.
>
>     Trent Cloin and I discuss the paradox and error of Abortion in
>     America in the first 30 mins.
>     In the 2nd 30 minutes we discuss MLK's April 9, 1967 speech "The
>     Three Dimensions of a Complete Life" which was
>     given in Chicago just 5 days after the "Beyond Vietnam" speech we
>     all heard last Sunday afternoon.
>     "Three Dimensions" does significantly address aspects of the
>     "Revolution of Values" which King called for in "Beyond Vietnam".
>
>     Wayne
>
>     Ricky Baldwin wrote:
>>     Put this one in the column of real differences, differences that
>>     matter to poor people's lives, among US presidents:
>>
>>     http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090123/ap_on_go_pr_wh/obama_abortion_ban
>>
>>     This is not as groundbreaking as closing Guantanamo Bay prison. 
>>     As the article says, Clinton did the same.  Still, it speaks to
>>     the tone Obama is setting in his first week in office.  And if
>>     Obama didn't do this, we'd be right to call him out for failing
>>     to act.
>>      
>>     Ricky
>>
>>     "Speak your mind even if your voice shakes." - Maggie Kuhn
>
>
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