File spoon-archives/marxism-feminism.archive/marxism-feminism_1997/marxism-feminism.9705, message 108


From: cbcox-AT-rs6000.cmp.ilstu.edu (Carrol Cox)
Subject: Re: M-FEM: (fwd)Abortion - whose rights?/05-28-97
Date: Thu, 29 May 1997 22:29:37 -0500 (CDT)


    It seems to me that one aspect of this continuing attack on a
woman's right to an abortion is that left and feminist forces, by
emphasizing "choice" rather than "right," and often arguing and/or
admitting that abortion is a "very serious" matter have seldom
really challenged the chief barrier, both practical and ideological,
to the exercise of this right: the classification of abortion as
a moral issue. It

    It isn't. It is a matter of a medical procedure, no more subject
to moral debate than the style of one's haircut or one's preference
among authors of crime fiction. As the late Lisa Rogers presented
it in a debate two years ago on the marxism list (predecessor of
all the present marxist lists) (I quote from memory): In a jar,
Daddy-O, in a jar."The debate was triggered by a communist from
Canada who had rather gratuitously, if I remember correctly, brought
the subject up with a long discourse on how serious a decision
abortion was, etc. etc.

    I came to feel strongly about the obnoxiousness of regarding
abortion as a "moral" issue from year after year reading papers
by college women which showed them tied in knots by the heavy
moral discourse about the subject.

Carrol


   

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