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It is a cross-posting extravaganza. (Many thanks Intransigentia) But no, really, if you ever need to explain to your friends about Patriarchy or white male privilege or hetronormativitiy or any of the diverse topics along those lines, these two posts are not bad places to start.
The first is a post from Shakesville. It is long for a blog post but well worth the read. Check out the article here.
The second is a post from the Pursuit of Harpyness, it is a personal anecdote, but a good look into the hetronormative standards which pervade our society. The comment section is also quite informative for this article. Find it here.
I am regularly humbled by the brilliance that is out there on the ‘Net but the eloquence of this post deserves a repost. The article in question is about Palin and her somewhat unjust treatment. The section on the pro-life movement was particularly interesting to me and I will quote that section.
The entire article can be found at madamab’s the Widdershins blog.
Thank you madamab. She says:
[…] “Legislatively speaking, the pro-life movement has done its very best to make it impossible for women to control their own reproductive organs, and they continue to do so at every opportunity. From attempting to overturn Roe v. Wade and return us to the days of the coathangers and back-alley abortions, to their latest crusade against contraception (falsely conflating it with abortion) and pushing abstinence-only education (which, ironically, has led to more unwanted pregnancies and STD’s), to the heartless lies the Pope recently told about condoms and AIDs, to the senseless murder of Dr. Tiller (which the lovely Ann Coulter has characterized as “termination in the 203rd trimester“), the pro-life community has been utterly consistent in its refusal to see the massive amounts of harm it is doing to its own sisters and brothers; real, fully adult sisters and brothers who have to live with the consequences of their moral myopia.
I honestly do not see how in the world a woman can call herself a feminist, and still reserve the right to meddle in and ruin the lives of other women (and the men who love and support them). Bearing an unwanted child can be immeasurably harmful to a woman, especially if it is a child of rape. (One in every six women will be raped in her lifetime in America, so please do not tell me this is a rare occurrence.) By contrast, despite the pro-life community’s attempts to “prove” that abortion causes mental and physical harm to women, no scientific study has actually done so. I am very sorry that the pro-life movement sees abortion as murder, but it’s not. I am very sorry that the pro-life movement values the potential life of the baby over the life of the mother; however, to say I think this is ethically wrong would be an understatement.”
I am humbled by the concision of the article and particulary this passage. The internal links will be jumping off points for further discussion I am sure.
Joyce Arthur on her post from the Pro Choice Action Network made quite few relevant observations about the abortion debate. Here she frames the issue in terms of a woman’s rights and the prevalence of abortion.
“Anti-choicers insist that the key question in the abortion debate is whether a fetus is a person or not. If so, abortion is murder, they say, and therefore obviously immoral and illegal. That is not the key question at all, of course – anti-choicers are committing the “fetus focus fallacy.” The practice of abortion is unrelated to the status of the fetus – it hinges totally on the aspirations and needs of women. Women have abortions regardless of the law, regardless of the risk to their lives or health, regardless of the morality of abortion, and regardless of what the fetus may or may not be. On average, abortion rates do not differ substantially between countries where it’s legal and countries where it’s illegal.[2] Which reveals a more pertinent question: Do we provide women with safe legal abortions, or do we let them suffer and die from dangerous illegal abortions?
Some anti-choicers argue that even though women will have abortions regardless, that doesn’t mean we should make abortion legal, since we don’t legalize murder just because some people will commit murder anyway. This analogy fails because everyone in society agrees that murder is wrong and must be punished, but there is no such consensus on abortion. Second, very few people commit murder, but a majority of women will either have an abortion, or would have one if they experienced an unwanted pregnancy. As we learned from Prohibition (of alcohol), criminalizing behavior that large numbers of people engage in has disastrous consequences for public health and law and order.”
I would feel better if this was not really the par for the course from Alberta politicians. I would think by now that they would have taken a page from Harper’s federal playbook and kept the loons muzzled and in the background. The recent kerfuffle with Bill 44 (and the mess it is going to cause) coupled with statements like this:
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“Men are attracted to smiles, so smile, don’t give me that ‘treated equal’ stuff. If you want Equal, it comes in little packages at Starbucks.”
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I’ve just posted the highlights of the train-wreck from CBC. For a detailed analysis please see The Intransigent One’s comments. Insightful and well worth the read.
Well on the bright side, aside from social conservatism, Alberta tories do a wonderful job of mismanaging our natural resources. It is comforting to know our beloved conservative party possesses a solid, fail enhanced position on resource management, once they are finished mucking about with social issues.
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Edmonton-Calder MLA Doug Elniski, seen in a photo posted on Facebook, took down his blog on Monday. The argument from self ownership thread brought to my attention some of the ways the issue of abortion is dealt with. Semantic difficulties seems to be an area where a more thorough investigation is warranted. The language problem is described quite accurately by Joyce Arthur on her post from the Pro Choice Action Network.
[a]… major fallacy perpetrated by the anti-choice is their interchangeable use of the word “person” with the terms “human”, “humanity” or “human being”. These terms are not synonymous. For example, anti-choicers often confuse the adjective “human” and the noun “human being,” giving them the same meaning. I’m struck by the question they often pose to pro-choicers: “But isn’t it human?” – as if we think a fetus is really a creature from outer space.
If you point out that a fetus consists of human tissue and DNA, anti-choicers triumphantly claim you just conceded it’s a human being. Now, a flake of dandruff from my head is human, but it is not a human being, and in this sense, neither is a fertilized egg. Anti-choicers will respond that a fertilized egg is not like dandruff, because the egg consists of a unique set of chromosomes that makes it a distinct human being. But with cloning, a cell from my dandruff is enough to create a new human being. Although it would have my identical genetic make-up, it would still be a unique individual, because human beings are much more than our genes. Also, both a fertilized egg and a cloned cell represent a potential, not an actual human being.
It’s a worn cliché, but it bears repeating – an acorn isn’t an oak tree and the egg you had for breakfast isn’t a chicken. So the only objective scientific fact we have is that fertilized eggs are human (the adjective) – not that they are human beings (the noun).
Pro-Choice argumentation seems to be a little underrepresented on the web. I found an insightful article from the Pro-Choice Action Network that provides some useful argumentation against the anti-choice arguments. I will include the main section of the Fetus Focus Fallacy in this post.
“Anti-choicers insist that the key question in the abortion debate is whether a fetus is a person or not. If so, abortion is murder, they say, and therefore obviously immoral and illegal. That is not the key question at all, of course – anti-choicers are committing the “fetus focus fallacy.” The practice of abortion is unrelated to the status of the fetus – it hinges totally on the aspirations and needs of women. Women have abortions regardless of the law, regardless of the risk to their lives or health, regardless of the morality of abortion, and regardless of what the fetus may or may not be. On average, abortion rates do not differ substantially between countries where it’s legal and countries where it’s illegal.[2] Which reveals a more pertinent question: Do we provide women with safe legal abortions, or do we let them suffer and die from dangerous illegal abortions? Read the rest of this entry »
The debate on the initial thread has been… interesting. The capacity for people to talk past each other is quite distressing. I am really starting to appreciate the work George Lakoff has done on the issue Cognitive Framing in his book Moral Politics. How we think about and respond to issues is based on this cognitive framework which can affect how we view opposing points of view and how credible we judge them to be.
That being said, it is important to review the arguments in favour of ownership of one’s body.
1) A person owns themselves.
2) Self ownership implies the right to free will
3) In having free will, you cannot have a duty to perform any affirmative actions.
Conclusion– You have no duty to provide another with the means to live.
Therefore it is permissible to remove anything classified as a separate entity from your body.
The objections raised to this have been middling at best and include the assertion that the sylogism ‘begs the question’ by not addressing the issue of fetal rights or the status of the fetus. The actual explanation of the begging the question was left at that, but I will extrapolate and make the objection that the term person should also be applied to the fetus/zygote/blastocyst etc. (Note: Allowing this extrapolation does not invalidate this particular argument and it is still a strong argument for the right of a woman to control her body)
If we are to allow the idea of personhood to a fetus then it is important to allow the distinction between the biological definition of human and the moral definition of human. Biologically, the mass of cells in question can be defined as a ‘human being’ (and is often shrilly bleated repeatedly by the opponents of choice) but certainly not a fully functional independently biological entity. Is it fair to describe the zygote/embryo/blastocyst as equivalent to that of an adult human being?
This would entail this view:
1. Embryos are human beings.
2. All human beings have equal moral status.
3. Therefore, embryos have full moral status.
The implications of this argument have been discussed in part 2 of this series, which makes the claim that to be consistent those who endorse this claim must also accept the fact that spontaneous abortion is a much larger and more pressing issue that should be dealt with first, if we are to define the embryo as having full and equivalent moral status as an adult human being.
Going back to the conclusion of the first sylogism, we read that “In having free will, you cannot have a duty to perform any affirmative actions” the anti-choice side would put forward that the woman does have the duty to perform an affirmative action, that is to let the fetus grow in her womb (at direct risk to her health) as we have defined the embryo in question as having full moral rights equivalent to that of an adult human being, and therefore positive affirmative actions must be taken.
Therefore, if we are to follow the argumentation, we all have the absolute duty to save human beings and if given the opportunity to take affirmative action that will save a life we must do so. The implications of this are far reaching as consider the following case:
A house is on fire and someone is trapped behind a deadly wall of flame. That person will perish if we do not act to save his life. We are obligated then, to run into the fire and attempt to save his life, if we subscribe to the notion that it is a duty to take positive affirmative action.
So,the rights view of the anti-choice stance, to be consistent, should state that whenever there is an opportunity to take affirmative action to save a human life, it must be undertaken. This would lead to people being obligated to be the ‘hyper-good samaritain’. That is risking their life and abandoning their rights in order to save the life of another. This situation, clearly, is absurd.
This situation calls into question then the idea that a fetus/zygote/blastocyst should have the moral equivalence of an adult human being.
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