File spoon-archives/marxism-thaxis.archive/marxism-thaxis_1998/marxism-thaxis.9801, message 749


From: LeoCasey-AT-aol.com
Date: Fri, 30 Jan 1998 20:13:59 EST
Subject: M-TH: Abortion Redux


In a message dated 98-01-30 18:09:48 EST, Yoshie writes:

<< The guy obviously doesn't give a damn about women's
 emancipation, and that is why he harps on Carrol's word choice, instead of
 expending any intellectual effort to expand women's zone of privacy or to
 create the conditions under which women and workers at clinics can exercize
 their agency without fearing for their lives or punitive moral judgment of
 conservative social forces. >>

Of course, you know absolutely nothing concerning what I have done in support
of a woman's right to choose and in defense of clinics, but you would rather
impute all kinds of nonsense rather than even ask the question, because that
would require you to face the possibility of an answer that would show one
does not have to submit your worldview to be a defender of a woman's right to
choose. Actually it is distinctly more than a possibility, but I specifically
did not raise the issue because I think it is irrelevant to the quality of the
argument I offerred. It makes about much sense as arguing that one's position
is correct because one is a woman. But I am not about to let the baseless and
unsupported allegation stand unchallenged.

Now we are finally told, after days of wholehearted defense of the 'whim'
thesis, that Carrol simply had a poor choice of words, and that what he really
meant to say was 'at will'. Too bad that no ever contended that a woman's will
should be restricted. The vituperation seems to grow in proportion to the
inability to defend the stance originally taken. Moreover, we are told that
the point always was that abortion was morally 'neutral'. But even this
'argument'  can not be sustained by the Petchsky quote, unless one wants to
take the rather bizarre position that a woman taking charge of her life is a
amoral stance -- neither right nor wrong. The feminism I have always supported
saw the process by which women took control of their lives as a positive,
moral right.

Leo


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