[Peace-discuss] Obama gets another one right

[Brussel Morton K.]

A little ad hominem I would say. Is that too academic?  --mkb


On Jan 25, 2009, at 4:45 PM, John W. wrote:

>
> 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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