A little respect

The Cole posting struck me in pretty much the same way. Having once been pro-life, and gradually shifted to a (not entirely happy) pro-choice position over a period of several years, I don’t have much trouble seeing how one can be either without depraved motives.

I have found more than once that Cole will weaken, if not spoil, some pretty sharp observations with a piece of gratuitous silliness. His recent smackdown of juvenile know-nothing Jonah Goldberg was marred, I thought, by a needless and foolish version of the chickenhawk argument.

I agree with your respectful reading of the pro-life belief, but I always point out that a lot of people seem to act on it only while the offspring is in the womb; anyone who doesn’t also support policies that reduce as many born-child deaths really doesn’t hold Life as the absolute value they claim.

And if they support Life only while another woman is wholly committed to the support, they can fairly be tarred as patriarchal, whether female or not.

Perhaps factoring in how many of the anti-abortion folks are also against any form of contraception would help explain why Cole is generally right.

“People who are opposed to abortion generally have a pretty simple reason.” Are philosophers supposed to accept people’s professed simple reasons without investigation? I think this one time I read this German guy making fun of that habit for like a whole book.

Pro-lifers don’t hold funerals or memorials in the wake of miscarriages, for example.

Some of them do. (link to the Google-cache text since The Nation’s website is down for some reason.)

Seriously? German guy? Mustache? Not possessed of a robust constitution? “A Protestant minister is the grandfather of German philosophy”? Is any of this ringing a bell?

“Are philosophers supposed to accept people’s professed simple reasons without investigation?”

No, but there’s no excuse for just makin’ stuff up, either.

Or for conclusory, unsubstantiated generalizations about motives–typically complicated things not easily pinned down with a single descriptor.

Is Cole “generally right”? I think his generalization is likely to be wrong; but I won’t pretend I know as much without quite a bit more evicence.

Bravo, Ted, for sticking up for the other side. I wish people did this more often (liberals and conservative alike).

Kudos for your respectful treatment of an opinion you do not hold.

But when you say

“They believe that life begins at conception, and that there’s no bright-line moral distinction between a baby and a fetus.”

-it doesn’t have to be that simple. Pro abortion people might believe in a “bright-line” (is this a term of art? You mean “sharp division,” I take it?) distinction between baby and fetus at birth, or they might not. They might think a drawing of the line necessary for practical reasons at 24 weeks or birth or at some other point without believing that it marked any essential change. On the other side of the fence, generally anti abortion people might or might not believe in a sharp division as to persohood at conception. I, for instance, don’t see the extinguishing of the little lump of cells a day or two after conception as remotely similar to partial-birth abortion, though I would support a legal limit far lower than the current one.

The percentage of pro-life Americans who believe that abortion should be illegal in all circumstances – rape, incest, health of the mother, health of the fetus, etc. – is, mercifully, incredibly small. It is also very small compared to the rest of the pro-life movement. That is, most Americans who are pro-life believe that abortion is justified under certain circumstances. While these Americans are claiming that “life begins at conception,” they’re willing to accept that it’s fine to terminate a human life just because its father was a rapist.

This isn’t consistent with the strict “life at conception” view. It is, however, consistent with a puritanical anti-sex worldview, which would hold that promiscuous women should be punished for having sex, but that rape victims have been punished enough already.

Again, if the far right really did have a “pro-life” sentiment operating behind its anti-abortion movement, you’d see Jerry Falwell and James Dobson agitating for more money to Medicaid and welfare to help out single mothers, instead of heaping shame on them for not sticking it out with often-abusive and neglectful partners.

It seems to me that, and I may be parsing words too finely, but Juan seems to be saying that activism is based on patriarchical motivations. Given the confluence of actors, I don’t see how you can argue that he is wrong here. That is not to say that the pro-life position is inherently patriarchical (although it might be, I haven’t given it enough thought), the statement is not about the philosophy, but rather about the motives behind the action. Someone (Rasselas?) above is making the same point more cleverly and obliquely, but I am, above all, a simple man…

David Velleman, over at Left2Right, has written thoughtful and thought-provoking posts on Roe v. Wade. The key concept in his articulation of a defense of limited abortion rights is that of personhood. I’m not risking misrepresenting his ideas on this comments thread, so please go and read him if you care. The threads there are quite interesting, particularly because they also offer the perspectives of a few quite articulate conservative and libertarian commenters.

I think–but again, I may be misrepresenting voices absent from this conversation–that an important source of apprehension for pro-lifers is the irreversibility of development. What they understand as “life” is not personhood, but simply the natural, irreversible course of the life cycle. It is that which they sanctify, not personhood.

“I have known several working class women who combined a disapproval of abortion with no tendency at all to sexual puritanism.”

Disapproval of abortion is a totally different thing than active membership in the pro-life movement to make all abortions criminal.

I think Daniel just suggested that Catholic working-class women are more likely to be…how to put this delicately?…other than sexual puritans.

I think I’m losing track of this thread…

Before the discovery of the human egg about two hundred years ago, it was believed that the male emission (sperm were also undiscovered) was the whole of the new life, a seed planted in a field. The baby, in other words, was entirely the man’s. The woman was only a incubator.

There is still this overtone of male ownership of the new life. Demonstrators hold up pictures of fetuses, as though they were separate from the woman. But you can’t valorize the fetus without devalorizing the woman.

How to balance the interests of the fetus and the woman? You can’t. It’s an old truism that you can’t do only good — every action has results you want and results you don’t want. (There are no side effects, only effects.) You have to choose as best you can.

People who elevate the interests of the fetus may not realize how patriarchal they’re being — but they are. Unconscious doesn’t count.

Cole proceeds to take a disturbing consequence of his opponent’s philosophy, and constructs his own bad-faith explanation involving patriarchy.

I’m not sure that what Cole wrote implies that anti-abortionists are anti-abortionists because they are patriarchal. He seems to be saying that the effect of their activism is essentially patriarchal, because of the reasons he states (which are pretty much correct). That doesn’t mean patriarchy’s the reason anti-abortionists hold their beliefs. He seems to be talking about the effects of beliefs, rather than their causes.

There have been a lot of mention of the personhood aspects of abortion, but this isn’t the only aspect of difference between the two camps. Those who are pro-abortion can accept that a fetus is a person, but disagree with anti-abortionists over the circumstances in which it is permissible to kill someone. This is the whole basis of the sick violinist analogy.

This is quite an interesting route to go down. Only a small minority of people don’t think it’s permissible to kill people at all. Many anti-abortion campaigners are fine with others being allowed to kill people in a range of other circumstances.

People who are opposed to abortion generally have a pretty simple reason. They believe that life begins at conception, and that there’s no bright-line moral distinction between a baby and a fetus.

This isn’t always so, in fact. Yes, some Christians say that life begins at conception (some even say that using some birth control methods amount to killing babies, because they say they are abortifacients). But surely everyone can agree that a “fetus” late in pregnancy is a baby, not just a bundle of cells or a body.

I agree that Cole’s remarks were overstated and uncharitable, but I think there’s an important distinction that’s being overlooked in this discussion: the difference between pro-life philosophy and pro-life activism. The Cole quote is specifically discussing the latter; Ted’s remarks, and those of most commentators, are about the former insofar as they reference “people who are opposed to abortion.”

My very limited knowledge of the subject is that the classic study on the topic of pro-life *activism* is Kristin Luker’s “Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood”, which draws on hundreds of in-depth interviews with activists to reach the conclusion that, in fact, involvement in the pro-life or pro-choice movement isn’t so much about whether or not life begins at conception as it is about differing worldviews about the place of women in society and the structure of the family in general. “Patriarchal” has seriously pejorative connotations, but my sense is the claiming that pro-life *activism* is driven by traditionalism concerning family structure is plausible. (A further caveat: the book is two decades out of date; the sociology of pro-life activism may have changed dramatically since then.)

Historically, there has long existed a fundamental division of opinion regarding the institutions of marriage and family. An authoritarian regime held sway for over a century, lasting into the 1950’s. All sexual conduct outside marriage could be, and often was, legally prohibted. Marriage entailed a license from the State; divorce could be difficult. Homosexual conduct was a serious felony. Laws against abortion was part of that institutional regime.

Over the course of a twenty-year period, centering on 1967, a “sexual revolution” took place, which entailed a number of legal reforms and cultural and social changes. The constitutional legalization of abortion was part of that shift toward an institutional regime, which gives an individual great freedom of choice. Marriage became a contract freely entered into, and divorce was made easy. Sex outside of marriage, even homosexuality, is now considered a private matter.

Only on the subjects of abortion and euthanasia, do those, who favor an authoritarian regime have hope of persuading a political majority. On abortion, the anti-abortion activists have a simple argument against the potential of a terrible slippery slope.

Whether anti-abortion activists, in the main, make their simple argument with unalloyed sincerity, or whether, as seems plausible to me, they make it, in the hope of implementing a slippery slope of their own, a slope toward authoritarianism, ought to be a legitimate question. There’s plenty of signalling going on all the time, to indicate that anti-abortion advocates hope to implement an authoritarian regime. They have a general program, of discrimination against gays, of censorship of popular culture, of opposition to feminist equality, etc. And, the pro-life principles of many anti-abortion activists do not extend, for example, to opposition to the death penalty.

It is not uncommon in politics for a strong argument to be used as a club. In recent history, the U.S. was pushed into war by an argument regarding W.M.D. It was a difficult argument to counter, even when it was clearly supported by weak evidence (evidence we now know to be non-existent, though some advocates of war have never acknowledged their own deceptions).

Juan Cole evidently believes that “life begins at conception and human life ought to held sacred” is a strong argument, being used as a political club, by people with a far broader agenda and a weak fealty to the principle they so loudly espouse. It’s a position, with good supporting evidence. The people he means to attack are routinely abusive of those they oppose. Criticizing Cole for being abusive in turn shows too little respect for the substance of his argument.

Now we’re getting somewhere. A number of commentators are now making a distinction between the basic anti-abortion position, and the anti-abortion activist. Both sorts may claim to believe the same thing, but obviously something must account for the distinctive behavior of the latter, and that seems to have something to do with especially strong beliefs about traditional family values and the place of women and children in society. It probably also is connected to the feeling common among conservative activists that the world is falling to pieces due in large part to the damaging activities of liberals, and so a lot of the motivating anger is directed not just at the women having abortions, but at the liberals doing the abortions and passing the laws protecting them.

That said, I don’t think the distinction between the activist and the basic anti-abortion position is necessarily that great. Somebody above suggested that the anti-war liberal could just as readily be seen as acting out of anti-Americanism as the pro-lifer could be seen as acting out of pro-patriarchy. And in fact this is kind of true: those liberals who are motivated enough to go out on the street and protest the war do generally seem to feel that the country is going to pieces and being turned into the wrong sort of America (into a “homeland,” say). Obviously *they* wouldn’t call it anti-American, but it is certainly connected to the larger system of beliefs about the nature of America.

But the thing with abortion is, like the war, it does seem to affect how people vote, even non-activists. That is, many many people seem to believe these things strongly enough to take significant action based on them, often regardless of the politians’ other commendable positions. In this sense, the abortion thing gets a lot of people really worked up, and saying the pro-life position is just due to a different definition of life is missing the point as much for all the masses of pro-life hot-button voters as it is for the activists. And for all these people, I do think the larger-scale explanations, connecting to pro-family/patriarchy, need to be wheeled in. Why object to the abortions, yet spend so little time upset about miscarriages? (Because those babies aren’t being *killed* by liberals.) Why vote based on aborted babies but not on starving children? (Because those abortions are being done by selfish, uncaring women–who in fact are also largely at fault for their starving childrn.) Just as the war makes even a fairly moderate liberal so mad because she or he sees it as connected to so many other evils, the basic question of abortion–not why is there a disagreement, but why is it so vehement, even among non-activists–has to look out into the broader cultural war that’s going on.

Which, of course, a lot of posters here have said in many fewer words.

To offer a different aspect of the subject of this thread, I’ll say something from the perspective of someone who’s written and spoken with quite a large number of people for many, many years now about abortion with the aim of getting both sides to understand that they each start from different premises, each typically are certain the other takes their position in bad-faith, and generally to get people to respect people and conclusions with which they disagree. (I do this so much, I have no desire at the moment to do it here, especially since so many others, from Ted’s good example, are doing so.) I should also state that I’m adamantly pro-choice myself, though favor restrictions on late-term abortions.

The interesting thing I have to report is that I’ve been more successful with pro-lifers than I have with pro-choicers. As a pro-choicer myself, this has left a bad taste in my mouth. I guess the reason is that the position the pro-lifers think the pro-choicers are taking, and the bad faith in which they think the pro-choicers are taking it in, is relatively straightforward (if a little undefefined), and I don’t think there’s as much diversity of opinion and ambiguity of belief on the pro-choice side as the pro-life side.

But on the pro-life side, as people have so well expressed above, both things are true: many people take this position completely in good faith; that is, it really is about protecting what they believe is human life. Still, though, many others really are much more “anti-choice” than they are “pro-life”, and this seems to be especially true with the most prominent activists. So when you try to argue (as people are asserting and disputing above) that a pro-lifer isn’t necessarily anti-choice hiding behind pro-life rhetoric, you have the problem that, in fact, a bunch of them are.

Brackdurf, you say, “Why object to the abortions, yet spend so little time upset about miscarriages? (Because those babies aren’t being killed by liberals.)” Many liberal posters on this blog (and not only them) have objected strenuously to torture while spending very little time upset about natural deaths by illness that might well be as painful as torture. Do you think the CT posters’ ojection to torture was just because of their political disagreements with the torturers?

You also say, “Why vote based on aborted babies but not on starving children? (Because those abortions are being done by selfish, uncaring women—who in fact are also largely at fault for their starving childrn.)” In fact there is not universal agreement on which political parties or measures will reduce the number of starving children.

Actually, mrm, I heard a Radio Four programme a few days ago about a pro-life group in Italy who do advertise for adoptive mothers to take on unwanted fertilised eggs. Not my position, I just thought it was interesting.

“I think Daniel just suggested that Catholic working-class women are more likely to be…how to put this delicately?…other than sexual puritans.”

Freud thought so, speaking of Germans with facial hair.

And who was the Englishman who said something about how, even though reason must always yield to revelation, only reason could determine what was revelation and what was not?

Some odd and ends.

‘Still, though, many others really are much more “anti-choice” than they are “pro-life”, and this seems to be especially true with the most prominent activists. So when you try to argue (as people are asserting and disputing above) that a pro-lifer isn’t necessarily anti-choice hiding behind pro-life rhetoric, you have the problem that, in fact, a bunch of them are.’

I would think that the bigger problem is that many of them aren’t and thus gross and insulting generalizations of the type made by Juan Cole should be avoided.

‘And many of the most fanatical supporters of putting fetus before mother are women, so I don’t know if it can be called misogynistic. Maybe self-hatred? That a woman should be so in denial of self that she sacrifices her life for another?’

Dear heavens are you making fun of liberals? I would call that woman Mom! I would think any Mom would do just that. And I hope that any Dad would try and prevent her from doing that. Call me patriarchal protector of my baby making machine. Or say I love my wife. The motive is all in the eye of the beholder.

Bruce Wilder,

Are you arguing for or against sexual authoritarianism? Before I tell you if making a man free is good thing, first tell me what the man will do with his freedom. Break homes and sire penniless bastards?

Everyone does realize that the sexual revolution is patriarchal plot by men to get as much trim as possible while avoiding the responsibilities of fatherhood? Right? No one is laboring under the false consciousness that it is about empowering women or some such nonsense? Everyone here is much too self aware for that, right?

I would have to look it up, but I distinctly remember a study on Canadian pro-life activists.

Catholics were characterized as tending to concentrate on the belief that a fetus is a human being. Evangelical Christians were characterized as tending to concentrate on opposing abortion within a context of preserving sexual morality.

Now, I think that abortion is actually a pretty simple issue, in theory. Either a fetus is a human being or it isn’t. If a fetus is a human being, then abortion should be illegal. If a fetus is not a human being, then abortion should of course be illegal.

However, determining whether or fetus is actually human happens to be a point on which neither side has been able to put together a 100% compelling.

Accusations of patriarchy and anti-woman sentiment commit the sin of the genetic fallacy. It may be true that opponents of abortion are patriarchal, but that does not affect the quality of their arguments, many of which could be easily stated by a non-patriarchal individual. Likewise, it is false to claim that a fetus can’t be human and abortion must be legal because otherwise women are put in adverse economic situations. The logic is similar to the argument that global warming can’t possibly be occurring because otherwise corporations would lose money and people would lose jobs. Both arguments deserve snickering.

Of course, neither of these fallacies means that the pro-choice position is inherently flawed, it just means that some people of that persuasion are illogical. The pro-life position also includes some illogical talking points, but I somehow think that the readers of this site are probably quite familiar with those and don’t need me to go over them.

“The pro-life position also includes some illogical talking points, but I somehow think that the readers of this site are probably quite familiar with those and don’t need me to go over them.”

Yep. But if I may get sappily earnest here, what’s happening here goes right to the heart of why it’s really hard to have productive civil discourse. People are constantly arguing against what I hesitate to call a “strawman” because that criticism is so cliched I don’t think it means anything to people anymore. Hmm. The thing is, our caricatures of the “opposing side” are built out of features that are essentially true (as caricatures are), but that are emphasized selectively and together draw a picture of an idealized, coherent opposing viewpoint that doesn’t, in fact, really exist. Okay, so that’s a strawman. But one oft-overlooked extension of this that I see all the time is the accusation of hypocrisy against that strawman. People pick one prominent view of the opposing faction, and then show how it’s contradictory to another prominent view of the opposing faction. Thus, the opposition is a hypocrit and can’t be trusted to argue in good faith. Rarely does anyone acknowledge that, hey, the opposing “faction” is made up of individuals who very likely aren’t identical to our idealized (and conveniently for us) hypocritical strawman version. We’re very sure of our identification of evidence of bad-faith, and now we know what those rascals are really up to.

This is exactly what’s happening in this particular argument, but it happens everywhere. People who are conservative have a caricature of what they think liberals are, and vice-versa. And everyone spends all their time arguing against these caricatures. If anyone says, “hey wait, you’re mischaracterizing my position”, the response is either something like “you may claim that’s not what you think, but I don’t believe you” or “well, you’re the exception”.

This is why I was arguing above that even if you have good reasons to suspect that someone else is arguing in bad-faith, it’s really very destructive to argue as if you’re pretty sure that this is the case. It’s much more productive to argue as if you think you’re opponent is arguing in good faith, even if you strongly suspect they aren’t.

Just a note for MQ — it’s not that hard to see why people would think God told them fetuses are people. In Isaiah 44:2 God refers to himself as “the LORD that made thee, and formed thee from the womb” (KJV) or “the LORD… he who made you, who formed you in the womb” (NIV). He doesn’t say “the LORD who formed a clump of cells that later became thee”. He specifically says “you”.

You can insert the standard rant here about how modern Christians pick and choose the parts of the Bible they want to believe are eternal truth (gays: wrong forever! lobster: now OK! that’s just an old health regulation!), but their reasons for believing in divinely backed fetal personhood ARE right there in the magic book for all to see.

Ted, I think that’s dangerously close to suggesting that discourse doesn’t matter. (Is this the kind of group you can get away with saying that in?)

I think we should follow arguments where they lead. I’m skeptical that prolife arguments lead to patriarchy, because I think that morality coheres, or should. But perhaps that’s not what you mean, and you mean something more like: this argument may be true, but recognizing the truth of the argument may have bad consequences (in society). I’m skeptical of that position–as I said, my bias would be to following arguments where they lead–but even if such arguments might have occasional prudential force, why would we think that this is such an occasion? How would we weigh the injustice (assuming that the prolife arguments are right) of the legal regime in this country today with the injustice of the consequences of righting those wrongs?

Could those who are on the other side reasonably make a prudential argument in favor of patriarchy, if antipatriarchy arguments reinforced prochoice laws?

Finally, in light of the many interesting posts on family at CT the last couples of days, why should we believe that any particular result from prolife legislation would result? Couldn’t antipatriarchy legislation, in conjunction with prolife legislation, counter any supposedly natural effects?

As (I think) the first commenter who has gone the other way — from radical pro-choice activist to the mushy middle, I’d point out that there is (at least in the polls) a coherent view on abortion that pretty consistently polls a majority: first trimester abortion should be legal in the case of rape, incest, or the life of the mother, and not in other cases (although I suspect that in practice, most of those people would also want an “out” for very young girls).

However, people who hold this belief do not consistently define themselves as pro-choice or pro-life. Some of them, because they think abortion should be legal in some circumstances, call themselves pro-choice; others, because they think that almost all abortions currently being obtained should be illegal, call themselves pro-life. The extremes–the belief, on the one hand, that abortion should be legal until well into the third trimester, a right so sacred that it overcomes the right of parents to be informed of their children’s medical procedures; and, on the other hand, that if your baby will kill you, the state should get right in there and force you to have it anyway–are prevalent among the activists, but relatively rare among the people who vote on the issue. I might argue that one of the big problems that the pro-choice side is having right now is that, having basically achieved its dream legislation, it is having to fight for the hard core extreme view, while the pro-life side has the luxury of arguing for “mushy middle” things like parental notification and partial-birth abortion bans.

The characterisation of pro-life groups as being opposed to birth control, and therefore obviously trying to control women, is more than a little tendentious. Social conservatives are, obviously, trying to preserve a familial structure that they think is valuable and good. But one could as accurately argue from the pro-life side that the pro-choice side contains a lot of people who are trying to break down that family structure, and are in favor of abortion rights because women will not be able to get out of that family structure unless they are willing and able to kill their babies. This is certainly one of the elements in feminist support of abortion, but it is not the only one, and reducing this to a war over family roles misses the main point, which is that we are in a genuinely difficult area where there are simply two conflicting sets of goods: the fetuses right/need to get born, and a woman’s right/need to conduct her life without being a prisoner of biology. These rights are not mediable; one has to give. I find the belief, on both sides of the debate, that people have discovered some obvious transcendental supremacy of one over the other, to be incredibly arrogant, and I include myself in that, during my more radical days. This is reflected in the language: each side casts their preferred “winner” as having rights, while denigrating that the loser might have any.

I’m going to make one more attempt to derail the personhood focus of the thread.

I think that abortion is actually a pretty simple issue, in theory. Either a fetus is a human being or it isn’t. If a fetus is a human being, then abortion should be illegal. If a fetus is not a human being, then abortion should of course be illegal.

Almost everyone believes that, in some circumstances, it is permissible to kill human beings: conscious, sentient, aware human beings. You can all think of your own examples. If you accept this, the argument that, if fetus is a human being, then abortion should be illegal simply does not hold any weight. There are plenty of circumstances where it is morally permissible (and legal) to kill people. Abortion may be in the same class as killing in self defence and similar acts. That the fetus is innocent makes no difference. There are circumstances where it is morally permissible (and legal) to kill innocent people. Again, there are lots of examples which you can come up with yourself.

I really don’t think that personhood arguments are all that useful.

Sebastian, you are not in any way typical of the pro-life movement (in that you allow for any abortion to be legal at all). Nor do you believe, judging from your ObWi posts, that personhood begins at conception. My comments were specifically directed at that idea and in regards to Ted’s assertion that the pro-life movement stems from a belief that “life begins at conception.”

In fact, the suggestion made by you – along with many other anti-abortion commenters in this thread – that abortion becomes less comfortable as the fetus develops stands in stark contrast to the view asserted by the majority of the pro-life movement (and ascribed to them, initially, by Ted) – namely, that human life begins at a single moment. As I note in my second comment, the vast majority of the pro-life movement doesn’t behave in accordance with this statement (allowing for abortion in the case of rape and incest, etc.).

Geez. I’m speaking to deaf ears, huh? “Any other argument is horseshit.”

“That the fetus is innocent makes no difference. There are circumstances where it is morally permissible (and legal) to kill innocent people. Again, there are lots of examples which you can come up with yourself.”

So what? The same argument could be used against the pro-choice position’s focus on reproductive rights (that is, they’re not absolutley protected in all cases).

Personhood is at least as legitimate a core issue in this discussion as reproductive rights. It’s obvious to most of us, I think, that finding some way to balance the two is the very core of the problem. But, as we see above, pro-choice activists tend to simply deny that personhood is an issue, and pro-life activists tend to simply deny that reproductive rights are an issue. In both cases, as jane galt says (curses! agreeing with mcardle!), “tendentious”.

I am one liberal who believes that Juan Cole’s comments – and several of the messages in this thread – illustrate perfectly why liberal Democrats fare so poorly on cultural/social issues, even when their cause probably has the support of (a small majority of) the population. If Cole’s position is that abortion expresses or represents support for a “patriarchal” ideology, he needs to explain why women’s views on the subject do not differ appreciably from men’s. Anyone familiar with pro-life activists knows that at least half of them (including the most extreme militants) are women.

Exactly on point. As the Center for the Advancement of Woman (headed by former Planned Parenthood guru Faye Wattleton) found, 51% of American women claim to be opposed to abortion in all cases except life, rape, and incest. (See page 10 of this PDF report.) Why is Cole (and his ilk) so dense that he thinks it helps his side if he bashes the majority of women in this country as “patriarchal”?

Keith, would it make you feel better about agreeing with McArdle if you could simultaneously point out that her initial statement is…tendentious?

You don’t just get a solid majority with her no-abortion-with-limited-exceptions formula. You also get it with simple “limited abortion.” The country is closely divided, and pro-lifers get the good press these days, but the polls haven’t changed significantly in decades, and the polls are pretty clear: most Americans favor abortion rights. Note the careful use of the term “rights,” with its implication of freedom of action for the woman. The strict no-abortion position doesn’t even poll in the 30s, suggesting that Megan’s one step shy formulation is a home run, and the Clinton formulation – safe, rare, legal – is actually the solid majority view.

Far fewer people support elective abortion in the third (or even second) trimesters than support an absolute ban; more importantly, there is no national politician who supports abortion rights beyond what’s outlined in roe v. wade, while there are literally dozens of anti-abortion absolutists in the House and Senate.

None of this is directly relevant to the rather more intellectual discussion going on here (all horseshit aside), but I think it’s important to have a grasp on what Americans believe, and who has what position. Extremists win by pretending that the other side is equally extreme. With abortion, as with many other issues right now, the Republican position – as measured by where their elected officials stand – is the radical one. The Democratic position is not. Strict “pro-lifers” may insist that any abortion-accepting position is murderous and thus inherently radical, but that’s Humpty-talk. Radical means out of the mainstream, and Republicans like Santorum & Coburn are out of the mainstream on abortion, not Dems like Boxer or either Clinton.

Life doesn’t begin at conception. It’s passed on at conception. Life began long ago and has been developing in myraid forms ever since. Human beings, carrots, amoebas, ducks, turtles, all have common ancestors. All is process, development.

A fertilized egg is human. What else could it be? It’s a human in its first minute, hour, week, month of development. All “stages” are arbitrary. This doesn’t mean that all fertilized eggs have the right to be born, grow, and become president.

All eggs and sperm are human, and have the potential to grow into persons if combined and nurtured. Obviously this is impossible.

Former folklore identified a moment called “quickening,” when the baby could be felt to move in the worm. Before that, it wasn’t a part of the community, of the community’s consciousness.

One becomes a “person” in community. All our kids had strong personalities that we could recognize, looking back, even before they were born. But they became “persons” only in family, in community. Conception doesn’t supply personhood, only potential.

As I said before, people who elevate the interests of the fetus regardless of the interests of the woman involved are in effect patriarchal, whether or not they’ve thought through the implications of their beliefs.

We can argue whether patriarchy is a good or bad thing. (Tribal society is usually led by a strong male, hopefully backed up by elders and wise women. Kingdoms are tribes with trappings. But kings aren’t necessarily the only form of government possible, or in modern conditions, the best. We can depart from our heritage for good reason.)

This may be my own intellectual inadequacy speaking here, but a number of commenters seem to think that their opponents are either A) Stupid (because they can’t see the brilliance of knock-out debating points), or B) Arguing in bad faith (because how else to explain the way they continue to cling to wrong-wrong-wrong positions?)

Do y’all really believe that these questions can be argued out once and for all, and that a conclusion can be arrived at that will serve as a once-and-for-all, rock-solid policy foundation? I mean, not just as far as you personally are concerned, but in some larger, more general, the-truth-has-finally-been-arrived-at kind of way?

A-ha-ha-ha.

Sorry. It seems to me that, especially on topics like abortion, we knock up against the limits of debate pretty quickly. Are there arguments on either side that haven’t been rehearsed, elaborated, and revisited a zillion times? Is this discussion really going to go anywhere it hasn’t already been? Is this a case where arguing further stands any chance of really advancing the discussion?

Especially in the case of something like abortion, you run up against feelings and experiences at a certain point, and pretty damn quickly. I’m not sure how susceptible these are to argument or analysis. (Or how susceptible to analysis they should be.) But, past a certain point, I’m not sure what the point of going after these feelings and experiences in analytic/intellectual/debating ways is either.

An example? A woman I know — Jewish, liberal, ’70s-feminist — came out of Oberlin and went straight to work at a NYC abortion clinic. She lasted about a year. I asked why she left. She told me that nothing had prepared her for the reality of abortion. Many of the women experienced horrible moods and remorse. And in the procedure room she saw little fingers and feet being swept out of the women having abortions. She told me that the picture the pro-choice people who’d filled her with enthusiasm for the abortion cause had given her hadn’t included any of that.

These days, she continues to think — regretfully – that abortion should be legal and available, but she also thinks it should be discouraged. But it isn’t a position based on debate, consistency, intellectual rigor, or any such thing. It’s a position based on experience, intuitions, sympathy and feeling. Try to engage her in debate about abortion, and this woman — every bit as bright as you and I are — will tell you she doesn’t want to argue, her position is based on her experience and her feelings. She doesn’t want to debate; as far as she’s concerned, what she’s seen and how it made her feel have given her the material she needs to come to a (fuzzy, regretful, admittedly imperfect) policy stance. Make very single brilliant debating argument you want, you aren’t going to budge her. You’re just going to annoy her with your lack of respect for her experience and her feelings. And, in this case, I’m very much on her side — brilliant though your arguments may be, I’ll still think you’re totally missing the real point.

Anyway, perhaps it doesn’t hurt to remember that for many people the realities they encounter are far more important than the abstractions that arguments and debates over principles throw around. Rehearsing all the familiar old arguments … I mean, have fun doing so if you find it entertaining or enlightening, or it gets your blood stirring, or something. I’m not sure what you hope to accomplish, though.

I look forward to having this observation defeated by dazzling intellectual debating points …

keith m ellis wrote, Most Americans strongly support abortion in the first trimester and moderately to strongly oppose abortions in the third. This is contrary to both the pro-choice and the pro-life positions, which are extreme in comparison. The Dems are as beholden to the pro-choice extremists as the Repubs are to the pro-lifers.

That’s silly. What fraction of those of us who consider ourselves pro-choice fit your outline of a “pro-choice extremist”? I’ll wager it’s at least one order of magnitude lower than the fraction of pro-lifers who fit your definition of “pro-life extremist”.

The Democratic position, AFAIK, is to support Roe v. Wade, which (again, AFAIK) doesn’t provide much legal support for abortions in the third trimester (except perhaps for the life of the mother). The Republican position, AFAICT, is to support the “Human Life Amendment” or whatever they’re calling it, which is pretty consistent with what you’re describing as the extremist pro-life view.

Keith M Ellis wrote, RvW does support, nevertheless, third trimester abortions and the majortion of Americans do not.

Without more details, that’s misleading. You’d have to detail what third trimester abortions RvW allows, and then look at polls on that topic.

For example, my impression—though I don’t see that anyone has firm numbers on this—is that quite a few third trimester abortions are done in cases of anencephaly. I’d wager that people’s opposition to third trimester abortions would on average change in that case.

I agree that there are more people who are extreme at the the pro-life side of the spectrum than the other. So? What has that to do with anything?

You’re claim that Dems are as beholden to the pro-choice extremists…

As long as the pro-life activists deny the right to an abortion in the first trimester, and as long as the pro-choice activists defend the right to an abortion in the third trimester, they will both be out-of-step with majority sentiment and will be opposed or ignored.

You again appear to be conflating an uncondition right to a third trimester abortion with a conditional one. I would wager that a majority is opposed to an unconditional right to an abortion in the third trimester, but I’ll also wager that a majority is in favor of third trimester abortions where the life of the mother is in danger.

keith m ellis wrote, The Dems are as beholden to the pro-choice extremists as the Repubs are to the pro-lifers.

Here’s what the 2004 Democratic Party platform says on abortion: We will defend the dignity of all Americans against those who would undermine it. Because we believe in the privacy and equality of women, we stand proudly for a woman’s right to choose, consistent with Roe v. Wade, and regardless of her ability to pay. We stand firmly against Republican efforts to undermine that right. At the same time, we strongly support family planning and adoption incentives. Abortion should be safe, legal, and rare.

Here is the 2004 Republican Party platform’s position: As a country, we must keep our pledge to the first guarantee of the Declaration of Independence. That is why we say the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed. We support a human life amendment to the Constitution and we endorse legislation to make it clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to unborn children. Our purpose is to have legislative and judicial protection of that right against those who perform abortions. We oppose using public revenues for abortion and will not fund organizations which advocate it. We support the appointment of judges who respect traditional family values and the sanctity of innocent human life.

jane galt wrote, …it’s safe to say that Democrats who oppose partial-birth abortion bans and parental notification laws are on the fringe of public opinion.

Not clear.

Left out of the so-called partial birth abortion debate is why partial birth abortions are being performed.

Suppose, for sake of argument, a large number of such abortions are performed for anencephaly. Suppose the polling question is rephrased as “do you support this procedure, described by groups opposed to abortions as ‘partial-birth abortion’, and by medical practitioners as X, in cases of anencaphaly, a condition in which much or all of the baby’s brain is missing and in which case the baby has zero chance of surviving?”

Similarly for questions on parental notification: what if the girl’s parents are abusive (in the limit, we could posit a situation where the father is the girl’s stepfather)?

Finally, look at my post from April 3rd, 2005 at 6:33 am and tell me who’s more out of step with the average American.