Date: Tue, 27 Jan 1998 19:30:57 -0500
From: Yoshie Furuhashi <Furuhashi.1-AT-osu.edu>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Morality and Law Are Not Necessarily The Same Thing


Leo wrote:
>Since James actually speaks to the issue, it may be possible to establish some
>meaningful dialogue here. It has become apparent to me, over the course of
>this debate, that there is a underlying premise to the arguments of the 'non-
>morality' school which most of the remainder of us do not share. Simply put,
>there is a belief that once you establish a matter as a question of morality,
>of right and wrong, the state is compelled to intervene on the 'right' side.
>Thus, if we insist that there are moral choices to be made with respect to
>reproductive decision-making, they conclude, we must be putting forward a
>'trojan horse' for state intervention in decisions over abortion.
>
>The problem is that our Trotskyists and Stalinists start from the
>authoritarian premise that the state ought to determine all questions of
>morality.

It turns out that it is Leo--not his critics--who underestimates the
*agency* (moral or otherwise) of political actors and social movements.
Morality does not directly lead to the state intervention. It is political
actors and social movements which have interests in advancing their
morality that have attempted to and often succeeded in making the state
intervene in the lives of individuals. Also, such political actors and
social movements can and do try to make the state define what counts as
"privacy," not to mention who counts as "legal persons," according to their
interests as well. It is a war of positions. Advocates of women's
emancipation survey the theatre of ideological warfare, examining the
terrains of social relations, ideological climate, balance of forces,
historical conjuncture, and so on, before analyzing whether it makes sense
to make abortion a matter of individual moral choices, just to take one
example, from the standpoint of feminism and marxism.

>The problem with abortion is that far more often than not, there are morally
>justifiable reasons for having an abortion, and so an across the board
>prohibition of abortion is not justified, and would do far more harm than
>good. Moreover, even though certain abortions, such as abortion for sex
>selection, are morally wrong, there is no practical or feasible way to
>identify when that is the reason -- all a person has to do is hide their
>motive -- and so no way to prohibit the morally unjustified without also
>banning the morally justified. Thus, James H. is correct, in my view, in
>arguing that there should be no restrictions on abortion with respect to the
>motive for abortions. He is also correct in seeing that this means that a
>person may very well do the wrong thing. This is why I believe that one of the
>more powerful pro-choice arguments is that women are the moral agents most
>likely to make the right decisions with respect to reproductive freedom.

And then Leo miserably contradicts himself. One one hand, he recognizes
that it is practically impossible to second-guess women's intentions. On
the other hand, he clings to the argument that the best pro-choice position
is to say women are moral agents most likely to make the right decisions.
If it is impossible to "identify" when the reason for abortion is "morally
wrong," (and unless a woman volunteers to "confess," it is also impossible
to determine if she made a "moral" decision as opposed to a political,
medical, aesthetic, hedonistic, or utilitarian decision [among many other
possibilities]), the claim that women are most likely to make the right
decisions is a hollow one. Besides, "right" decisions according to whose
standards? Yours?

Yoshie




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