[Peace-discuss] Obama gets another one right

[E. Wayne Johnson]

Thanks for your thoughtful response Ricky.  I think that you and I do 
agree that
we both want to do what's right, and I appreciate all your efforts to 
improve the
situation and un-quo the status even if it is terrible Latin.

copy to sf-core if you want... my posts bounce back from there

Of course I hated the attacks on/in Kosovo/Serbia/Yugoslavia and 
despised our involvement.  The history on the Philippines show that
the US was flat wrong.  You know more about India than me at this point.

Go read Maggie Sanger and see what she said.

You really are bringing in a lot of side issues.  Let's not obfuscate 
the main issue.

I always do agree that the woman has the right to make reproductive 
decisions. 
When she makes her decision to participate in reproductive activity that 
leads to pregnancy,
she also makes a tacit commitment to the results of reproductive activity.
A conception has occurred.  Life goes on, ob-la-di, ob-la-da, and now 
they both have an obligation.

The male and female have the power to create a new individual.  The new 
individual
they create has certain unalienable natural rights.  The possession of 
unalienable natural rights by the individual
is the most fundamental libertarian political right, and it is one of 
the foundational principles of these United States.

The new individual resides in the woman's body.  It's a fact that this 
is how biology works. 
If the new individual is killed by a willful act of force against it, 
another fundamental libertarian political
principle is violated, in that force is used against an innocent to 
deprive a natural right, in this case the
right to life.

This point is sufficient to stand alone by itself.

There is no such thing as the natural right to abortion. 
There is only the forceful and wrongful taking of another life
toward the end of fulfilling selfish misdirected desires.

Because the power to create new individuals is such an awesome thing 
with such awesome
responsibility, there is a complex social matrix to support and nurture 
the new life.

*

There are a multitude of societal ills that one can drag into the arena that
lead the woman to despair and the man to the forsaking of his 
responsibility.  Those
are complex indeed, but the salient point remains that the right of the 
woman over her
body ceases to be sovereign once she chooses to accept the man's sperm 
and share her
life with another life.  Her right to her body does not trump the right 
of the new life that
she herself chose to create.  Job in his time of despair cried out that 
he wished his mother had
kept her knees together, but things got better for Job.

It is wrong to say that a life can be rightfully robbed away if 
economics intervenes. 
The existence of evil in the society is no pretext for further evil.

It's likewise wrong, by the same economic subterfuge
- for the American Empire to kill people anywhere it wants for its 
economic interests.
-to disable a defenseless person with a ball peen hammer in the parking 
lot to rob them of their purse and groceries. 
It's the same thing as robbing rightful wages from an employee.

Standing up for the rights of the defenseless unborn should not be 
misconstrued as oppression even if
it exposes misconceptions or makes people uncomfortable.

Wayne

Ricky Baldwin wrote:
> Wayne,
>
> I appreciate your concern, as always, for the downtrodden, but I'm 
> afraid it's misapplied here.  Many people I agree with on most issues 
> would dismiss yours and others' anti-abortion views as another example 
> of your religious blinders; I don't.  My guess is that you are both as 
> sincere and as misguided and the many good humanitarians who 
> supported, e.g. the US attacks in Kosovo (to save the ethnic Albanians 
> from Serbian aggression) or the US conquest of the Philippines (to 
> save the locals from Spanish tyranny, etc.) or the British conquest of 
> India (to rid the Indians of superstition and slavery, etc.).
>
> But for starters, I think you will have to admit that the ethical 
> question of abortion rights has little to do with Margaret Sanger's 
> infamous Social Darwinism (which is anyway not quite the way her later 
> critics portray it, it seems to me), any more than your own Christian 
> views are questionable in light of the Crusades, the Inquisition, the 
> European 'civilizing' campaigns that masscred millions of indigenous 
> people on one continent after another, or the many other Christian 
> atrocities against the poor and downtrodden of the world.
>
> The question of whether abortion is a form of racism, or class 
> oppression, is more complex in some ways, though actually very simple 
> if looked at rightly, I'd argue.  True, abortion has been visited on 
> the poor and people of color in this country and others as an 
> oppressive campaign at times.  We can go further: forced abortions and 
> forced sterilizations have been practised as genocide for at least 
> generations.  Less overtly public welfare policies have targetted 
> oppressed groups in many ways from the days of workhouses, -- up to 
> and including reproductive policies my fellow NOW organizers and I 
> encountered (as an example) in Mississippi in the 1990s whereby the 
> locally administered Medicaid program would pay for poor  women to 
> have subdermal contraceptive Norplant insertions BUT NOT pay to have 
> them removed, regardless of the woman's wishes or even of the 
> side-effects or allergic reactions, which were not uncommon.
>
> It may surprise some honest abortion-foes to learn that NOW fought 
> such policies vehemently, by the way.  The reasoning is relevant 
> here.  NOW and other wrongly described "pro-abortion" groups currently 
> working in the US support a basic principle that simplifies the whole 
> issue: the individual liberty, autonomy, freedom, however you want to 
> describe it, of a woman as well as a man to decide what happens to her 
> physically, sexually, and in particular in terms of being pregnant or 
> not.  As such it is the most fundamental libertarian political right.
>
> Critics of the "pro-choice" movement rightly point out that such 
> decisions, often difficult enough in themselves, do not happen in an 
> economic vacuum - and so are not truly "free" choices.  Women and 
> their families or support networks (spouses, partners, siblings, 
> parents, close friends) must at times make tough decisions based on 
> economic realities not of their own choosing.  Nowadays there are 
> convincing statistical arguments that women overall have very nearly 
> caught up with men in terms of earning power, and the biggest 
> difference that lingers is that when women hit their child-bearing 
> years they fall behind and usually never catch up again.  Of course 
> some men encounter the same problem, but overall it is women.  For 
> these and many other reasons (oppressive parents, drug-use, birth 
> defects) abortion is not always a "free" choice any more than a large 
> family has been a real choice for billions of women for thousands of 
> years - they do it in part because their choices are severely 
> constrained.  This is not the only reason to support abortion rights 
> of course.  The basic argument for the right is an argument for human 
> dignity and autonomy, as I've said.  But this is the economic context 
> that can't be ignored.
>
> So publicly-funded childcare, maternity and paternity leave and other 
> employment considerations, free access to birth control and family 
> planning services, rational sex education, and free abortion on demand 
> are and must be all part of a comprehensive program of human rights 
> that includes women as valued equal members of society and not 
> second-class citizens.  It is part of why I believe the values of 
> libertarianism require also the values of socialism to be logically 
> and humanly consistent.  It is why conservatives who want to say they 
> support women's rights and oppose racism and oppression must pick and 
> choose which freedoms they support, which pieces of the overall 
> reality they bring into their arguement.  And it's why liberals who 
> want to support abortion rights are not always allies in the struggle 
> for women's rights, but their programs do sometimes coincide.
>
> Obama's move against the vicious "Mexico City" policy is progress, 
> toward allowing poor women and families in communities whose 
> livelihoods we have wrecked to at least find some maneuvering room in 
> that disaster.  Reagan's and both Bushes' policy of limiting the 
> options of the global poor, often our own victims, is oppression on 
> top of oppression; lifting that ban is at least mild relief.  It isn't 
> enough, but it is a step in the right direction.
>  
> Ricky
>
> "Speak your mind even if your voice shakes." - Maggie Kuhn
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *From:* E. Wayne Johnson <ewj at pigs.ag>
> *To:* Ricky Baldwin <baldwinricky at yahoo.com>
> *Cc:* peace discuss <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>; socialist 
> forum core <sf-core at yahoogroups.com>
> *Sent:* Friday, January 23, 2009 5:13:10 PM
> *Subject:* Re: [Peace-discuss] Obama gets another one right
>
> 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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>
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