Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
> Steve Perry wrote:
> >Meeting your argument on its own ground raises an interesting
> >point. If a pregnancy is reducible to a mere "biological contingency"--just
> >another lifestyle choice-
It seems this debate has run its course. Perhaps it would be useful, however, to recollect what for non-misognynists is the starting point of discussion -- that is the strategies and tactics to be followed by the left to eliminate all legal, social, and ideological barriers to women's access to abortion. Steve's posts might be worthwhile to examine over on m-fem as a specimen of the sort of thing that makes an independent women's movement necessary, but it hardly seems worthwhile to reply to them.
A subordinate question introduced early on in the discussion was how a principled position on abortion might affect coalitions. That debate, as is the case (I think) with all attempts to discuss coalition politics in cyberspace) was abortive < :--)> because in fact coalition politics can not be discussed in the abstract (and in a media necessarily separated from practice issues can only be discussed in the abstract). In practice almost all of the endless quibbles and fears brought up on a maillist simply disappear. About 3/4 of the people I have worked with politically here in Bloomington the last 30 years have been religious -- some even protestant (white and black) fundamentalists. I have never made any secret of my atheism or my approval of abortion, and it has *never* been a hindrance to coalition work. It is not that I have somehow successfully "solved" some difficult "problem" of coalition work: it is that the problems one can dream up in the abstract do not even come up to be solved in practice. (The leadership of FLOC may be right-to-life -- but I doubt they will refuse the support of those who differ -- and no one asks FLOC to enter pro-abortion coalitions.)
In any case, I think the moralistic wailings of Steve and Eric should be ignored rather than replied to.
Carrol