>mbs:
>It would follow that the only thing wrong with the
>practice of eugenics, from a pro-choice point of view,
>is if it is socialized, or under the purview of the
>state.
it's a moot point, given that, as you note, no one can read minds. furthermore, it's also a moot point given that this type of thing is extraordinarily rare. it's not inconceivable, no. and, as i've already explained, the root of that sort of thinking doesn't issue from the practice of abortion but from other social ills that ought to be addressed before we imagine that we should limit or question the sincerity of and need for and seriousness of parents' decisions to have an abortion.
furthermore, in order for it to truly be considered eugenics, then i'd say it'd have to be organized in some way, don't you think? that is, there would be an ideology behind it, it would take on some sort of or set of organizational forms, would operate as a movement and so forth. i don't think eugenics ought to be a label slapped onto just any old thing because what eugenics means becomes so various as to mean nothing.
Privatized eugenics -- abortion for purposes
>of 'micro-managed' birth control, as it were -- should
>be perfectly all right, since prior to birth we are
>talking about living cells that are without
>personhood and thus disposable on the whim of other
>individuals.
that you think having an abortion is a whim is a bit of a problem. assuming that parents choose to do this for any old reason and that those reason are but mere whimsy--which is what you might as well say--is well uummm totally out in left field. in fact, when that ball gets done flying we might want to map the galactic coordinates because i'm sure wherever it touched down you've got to have landed on an unknown galaxy.
>Rather than ask what is a fetus, I might have asked
>instead, what is a baby less than, say, a day old?
>Or one that has lived in an incubator for a week?
>'It' has no socialization to speak of. And if only
>socialization makes us human, then the baby is not
>human and has no rights.
sounds to me as if you're raising it in order to stir up the shit. your concerns become rather meaningless as we've said time and time again if you were to consider that we ought to focus our attention on eradicating the need for abortions and very late term ones in the very first place. all of your worries disappear--poof! voila!--as soon as we address those issues and you know this. very few people have late term abortions. many of them are before true viability. and, moreover, the reasons for having them are often very very serious. the procedure as i told you last year is extraordinarily painful and not fun at all. any woman who undergoes one knows this and has to think long and hard about doing it. that you think anyone would willing spend all that cash and go through the agony for a whim is surprising.
furthermore, it isn't socialization that makes us human. it is our practice of thinking that a baby is human that makes us human and are what makes us engage in the practices of socialization. it is no longer a potential human being when born but is one.
as to the issue of rights--where are those located anyway? what makes them somehow apolitical--somehow outside of the social? because this is what you are suggesting and why i think you have a difficult time understanding feminist arguments for abortion without turning them into individualist arguments that depend on the discourse of "rights"
what are rights in the first place? rights are defined by the state, the polity. they aren't natural or god given simply by virtue of one's birth, despite what the declaration of ind. says. so, since rights are political and depend on social institutions and social practices to make them so and to make them real in their effects, then a baby has rights if a particular society says it does and acts on that belief.