Katha:
First, I apologize for hogging the space on this list, but I think this issue is too important to let it go.
I fully agree with you that the claims of the religious right leaders about 'protecting womens' rights' are manipulative and disingenous. I may add that my tolerance for organized religion, on a scale ranging form 1 to 10 is negative 5, and I have no intention whatsoever to defend their position on this or other issues.
I think where you and I differ is how we view the motives of common people who join this kind of movements (or rather anti-movements). I simply do not believe that the views of the leaders - i.e. what we most often hear -- represent the views of the followers. In some cases, they might. But in many cases, people join these movements for various reasons that have little to do with their support of the movements ideology (I'm talking in general here, not just religious right). Some of them might be emotionally troubled individuals who are lured by a false promise of social acceptance, others might be brough tin by their friends or family members, still other may find in th emovement's rhetoric what they want to hear rather what the leaders want to say.
I can easily see how the anti-medical establishment rhetoric some of the anti-abortion activists use can resonate with the beliefs of the working class people, especially that church agitators are skilled in speaking the language the working class folks understand and can relate to. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about the Left that speaks, for th emost part, the language of professional establishment.
> I also think to regard abortion as a non-issue because Roe v Wade
>setttled it, as Woytek does is to ignore what's really going on in this
>country. Roe v Wade may be settled law, but what it MEANS is up for
>grabs. If, as I suspect, it will turn out to mean abortion is legal but
>hard to get, expensive, and subject to all sorts of delays and
>difficulties, then the "abortion is safe because of Roe' position will
>turn out to be the elitist one: urban, adult women with money will be
>able to find abortions; young, poor and rural ones won't.
> Legal abortion IS a class issue. But in the opposite of the way you
>argue: legal abortion, and access to it, matter most of all for working
>class women. By the l960s, almost all the women who died from illegal
>abortion were working class, most of them black and Hispanic.
> What about them?
Again I fully agree. But the problem is that many working class peopl edo not see it as such. Part of the problem was framing reproductive rights as a question of "choice" - a word that has little meaning for the working class people, beacuse their choices have been taken away by the people who talk about choice - corporate managers who 'choose' to close the plant, dumpt toxis waste in their neighborhood etc.
So while I agree that the access to abortion is a working class issue, it was framed as a 'middle class issue" - a mistake that right wing agitators eagerly exploited (cf. It's a child not a choice" slogans).
So to reiterate:
1. I think that the abortion issue (as well as race or school prayer) was a distraction created by the right wing, precisely at the time when corporate elites were dividing the spoils of the cold war;
2. The right wingers were successful because they framed their bogus claims in a language that resonated with the working class - which has been largely written off by left wing intellectuals.
3. I do not think that we should accept the opinions expressed by the right wing movements' leaders as representative of all movement followers.
Regards,
WS
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