One last chirp on this, if I may.
Justin writes:
>In any case we are talking about abortion rights in a
>capitalist and patriarchal society.
A point of which we must not lose sight, I think. When I referred to the Right's preaching and imposition of responsibilities in absence of (logically, in my view) corresponding rights, I felt it a particularly telling point in our concrete setting. Here and now, 'woman' is tied to 'child' in all kinds of arbitrary ways - typically heavy on the responsibility and light on the rights.
Like all social issues, abortion is a different topic for every historical setting. While, for instance, women have no guaranteed rights over what gets into their wombs and bear the brunt of the responsibilities for the twenty-odd years that follow birthing, it is simply totalitarian sexism to wrest from them also the hard-won right to choose on abortion.
Whatever the act of abortion constitutes, it occurs within a determinant social setting that is currently threatening to at once to add to the formidable responsibilities borne by woman and take away the last of her rights (the Australian Capital Territory tightened its abortion laws only this morning).
I'm reminded of Rawls's 'veil of ignorance'. Were I to be cast to earth, would I risk coming into the world as one of that half of the population inevitably deprived of rights and responsibilities as child, and then of rights but not responsibilities as adult - effectively designated as both social incubator and care-giver?
This unfreedom is of the very nature and order those of us inclined to Marx's way of thinking bemoan and oppose when it comes to the set of all workers.
To neglect the issue is to be internally incoherent, I think.
Cheers, Rob.