[Peace-discuss] 'Good speaking' about abortion

[John W.]

Here's an instance where Carl and I basically agree, if it matters.

I'm reminded of the incisive epigram of Anatole France, which I used to post
anonymously on bulletin boards all around the law school:  "The law, in its
majestic equality, forbids all men to sleep under bridges, to beg in the
streets, and to steal bread - the rich as well as the poor."


On Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 2:29 PM, C. G. Estabrook <galliher at illinois.edu>wrote:

"Reproductive freedom" as a euphemism for abortion begs the question (i.e.,
> assumes the answer to be proved).  It's freedom for the aborted only in the
> poets' sense of having shuffled off this mortal coil -- "And the fever
> called
> 'Living' / Is conquered at last."
>
> "Choice " is perhaps the most misleading of the euphemisms around.  (I've
> argued
> elsewhere <http://www.counterpunch.org/estabrook04182003.html> that
> "pro-choice"
> works rhetorically rather like "pro-troops.")  Many people who have
> abortions
> don't have the experience of having much choice in the matter at all.
>  Unless
> one is independently wealthy (and sometimes not even then) there often
> seems to
> be no practical alternative to abortion -- no "choice" at all.
>
> Our society says to anyone who's pregnant, "Look, we don't have medical
> care for
> you, a job, housing, or education  --  nor any support for your child after
> s/he's born -- but we'll allow you to terminate his/her life, if you want,
> if
> you do it in a timely fashion."  (And you can spend the rest of your life
> wondering how s/he might have grown up -- had there been any support.)
>
> The problem is probably particularly acute in the US: a British friend of
> mine
> says, "You Americans seem to regard having children as an expensive private
> hobby, like raising polo ponies."  I think it's worse than that: we regard
> it as
> something only members of some classes should be encouraged to do (but the
> discourse is occluded because we don't have classes in America...) Nixon's
> Supreme Court, which legalized abortion 35 years ago, were not exactly men
> of
> the Left -- in those distant, revolutionary days, they were perhaps a bit
> more
> concerned about the burgeoning of the unruly lower classes than they were
> about
> a newly newly-fashioned feminism...
>
> They situation was even worse abroad, where the U.S. pursued stern
> anti-natal
> policies for explicitly political reasons.  U.S. officials understood
> perfectly
> well why the admonition -- "It's easier to kill a guerrilla in the womb
> than in
> the hills" -- was ascribed to Che Guevara.
>
> To prevent the birth of unacceptable people had been a conscious American
> goal
> for some time, which is why the U.S. was the leader in the early 20th
> century of
> the eugenics movement -- preventing the unfit to breed (in which by the way
> a
> certain Dr. Arthur Estabrook was instrumental).  When the Nazis came to
> power,
> they copied -- with acknowledgments --  the American advances in the
> field...
> (See, e.g.,
> <
> http://www.freepress.org/columns.php?strAuthor=2&strFunc=display&strID=1225&strYear=2005
> >.)
>
> The world that "choice" envisages is rather like the never-never land of
> the
> neoclassical economists, where isolated individuals make "choices" with
> their
> "dollar votes" (which they have plenty of) from the cornucopia of goods
> produced
> by competitive capitalism.  It's a lie both times.   --CGE
>
> Ricky Baldwin wrote:
>
>> ...And, could I just add by way of aside, that in my own book both
>> "pro-life"
>>  and "pro-choice" are silly euphemisms.  If you're anti-abortion, opposed
>> to abortion, or a supporter of abortion rights, or reproductive freedom,
>> just say so.
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.chambana.net/mailman/archive/peace-discuss/attachments/20090330/73255e77/attachment.html