abortion litmus test

Max Sawicky sawicky at epinet.org
Fri May 29 15:19:16 PDT 1998



> 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.



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