[Peace-discuss] Obama gets another one right

[John W.]

On Sun, Jan 25, 2009 at 3:56 PM, Brussel Morton K. <mkbrussel at comcast.net>wrote:

Indeed, I wish and recommend that discussions of God's immanence, how "we"
> are a Christian country, and why women's ability to decide their own lives
> should be forbidden are inappropriate for a peace-discuss list. (I wouldn't
> recommend Nazi propaganda on the list either, but I suppose to some that
> would be bigoted.)  --mkb


You must have spent a great deal of time in academia, Mort, with its nice
neat little separate "departments" and classification schemata.  :-)  To me
we're all just discussing "life" in its various facets and permutations,
with our quirky individual personalities added into the mix.  If there's a
topic that you find uninteresting or abhorrent  (I have one or two myself),
just delete that particular message or message thread and move on.  I fail
to see the problem.

I'll also add here, completely parenthetically, that I particularly
appreciate the comments of Ricky Baldwin and Dave Johnson precisely because
they are relatively non-academic.  These are guys who have lived life out in
the big, rough, brawling, messy Real World (as I have), and somehow they
usually manage to see the forest for the trees.

John Wason




> On Jan 25, 2009, at 3:15 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
>
>  This is an assertion of settled religious prejudice, joined to the
>> anti-liberal view that people who disagree with such bigotry should just
>> shut up.
>>
>>
>> Brussel Morton K. wrote:
>
>
>>  A fine discussion, Ricky, but I for one am less forgiving of the
>>> religious fundamentalism-ideology that largely supports the
>>> anti-abortion/anti-contraception/anti-sex education/anti-women's rights
>>> movement in the USA, and those who now speak up for it on this listserve.
>>> They are beyond convincing because of their "faith".  I can understand that
>>> you may not want to get into a discussion of the myths , religiously
>>> inspired, that form a basis of this movement, a movement largely of willful
>>> ignorance and lack off empathy for many woman's problems when confronted
>>> with a pregnancy. They have unreasoning empathy only for the myth of the
>>> humanity of a sperm which happens, divinely, to meet an egg. --Mort
>>> I admired your remark: " the values of libertarianism require also the
>>> values of socialism to be logically and humanly consistent", although I
>>> think that the libertarianism of Wayne et al. are contradictory to broader
>>> social(ist) values and responsibilities. And I agree with others that this
>>> kind of fundamentalism has no useful place on this list.
>>
>>


> On Jan 25, 2009, at 2:11 PM, 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
>>>
>>>
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