>From a practical consideration, if you start by excluding everybody who is
not pro-choice from a left coalition, you leave yourself in a hole from the
start. Maybe you think you can fill that hole with pro-choice absolutists,
but the recent track in elections is not encouraging on that score.
Personally, I wish more pro-life Catholics who feel compelled to vote for Republicans because of the abortion issue would promote other pro-life concerns there, such as support for social welfare, universal health care, equal access to education, a living wage and opposition to capital punishment. But I would make sure they feel welcome in the Democratic Party and I would take a Bonior in a minute over a blow-dried liberal who was correct on choice and a few other hot-button social issues but sided with the big-buck boys on economic issues.
-- Jim C.
>> Katha Pollitt writes:
>> >
>> > Why is it wrong to insist that a Democratic politician be pro-choice? It
>> > seems to me that that's the minimum bottom line one could have. I would
>> > NEVER vote for a politician that wanted to criminalize abortion. That
>> > would be like saying I do not value my own daughter's life. . . .
>
>I value my daughter's life too but the right to choose
>to abort is not the only thing her life depends on.
>And it happens that easier access to abortion might
>have meant that she would never have come to be, a
>thought I can hardly contemplate.
>
>We could imagine multiple litmus tests, each with
>compelling goals. Each one shrinks the political
>sphere more. Litmus tests are inherently impractical,
>and too much impracticality is really impractical.
>
>If I had a set of litmus tests, reproductive rights
>would not be first. But rather than absolutes
>I would prefer to weigh the entirety of a politician's
>offsetting positives and negatives.
>
>In my political tent, I would trade 100 middle-class
>pro-choicers for 100 Catholic pro-lifers who supported
>aid to the poor in preference to what we have now or what
>we had three years ago. I would trade a David Bonior,
>perhaps the greatest pro-labor stalwart in the house,
>for a Babs Mukulski, my politically-correct pro-choice
>Senator, who voted to kill AFDC and doesn't know the Fed
>from the Fonz.
>
>I think a less politically-fragmented working class has
>more potential to do justice to women than the politically-
>united pro-choice consensus we are living with now has
>to challenge the nation's economic and social policy.
>
>> > think a politician can propose to deprive 52% of the population of the
>> > basic ability to decide how many children to have, and when to have
>> > them, and also claim to stand for the people.
>
>Do you really want to invoke the democratic
>principle? Suppose 'the people' favor a ban
>on partial-birth abortions, or parental
>notification (as polls suggest they do)?
>
>"The basic ability to decide" on family size is
>not in question. The right to abortion is, and
>they're not the same thing. The latter is much
>narrower in scope, though weighty enough in itself.
>
>> > However, there is still a considerable streak of anti-choice
>> > "populism" in the Democratic Party. David Bonior is anti-choice, Gephart
>
>In the working class is where it is.
>
>> > is lukewarm. . . .
>
>I should admit my concerns are not exclusively
>on the political side in this case. Though I
>acknowledge a self-interest in the pro-choice
>position, I can't justify it to myself philosopically.
>Any right, element of sympathy, or perogative one
>imputes to a woman inheres, in my view, no less
>to a fetus. I also acknowledge that a one-inch
>long fetus is much less compelling than one whose
>entire body, except the head, protrudes from a
>woman giving birth. I don't have a neat logical
>explanation of where the line is, but it is quite
>obvious where the extremes lie. The little fella
>with the breeze on his tush is a person. What
>else could he be?
>
>As for the suggestion heard here that there is no
>difference between a fetus and sperm, all sorts
>of wicked jokes come to mind from which I will
>restrain myself.
>
>C. Cox wrote:
>
>> . . .
>> young women. The line of division is, "Is the fetus a human being?" If
>> one answers "no," then the only relevant considerations are the woman's
>> own conceptions of purely personal self-interest; no moral question
>> exists. If one answers "Yes," then the position becomes hopelessly
>> incoherent (even for pro-lifers, since their position does not allow them
>> to differentiate between adult humans and unspent sperm.
>
>This is a silly caricature of the pro-life position,
>regardless of how you feel about it. At least when
>Monty Python did it, it was funny ("Every Sperm Is
>Sacred").
>
>MBS
>
>Opinions expressed here do not necessarily represent
>those of anyone else associated with the Economic
>Policy Institute.
---------------------------------------- THE PROGRESSIVE POPULIST James M. Cullen, Editor P.O. Box 150517, Austin, Texas 78715-0517 Phone: 512-447-0455 Internet: populist at usa.net Home page: http://www.eden.com/~reporter ----------------------------------------