Mindspring censorship

jf noonan jfn1 at msc.com
Mon Feb 8 12:48:17 PST 1999


On Mon, 8 Feb 1999, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
> >But saying that it's all said and done, instead of answering Alex's main
> >question is, indeed, conducive to the creation of a priesthood, Ken. And
> >that no one but Charles and I would bother to sell him a klew is indicative
> >of that in the extreme. "Here," say Ken and Carrol, "it's all settled. No
> >need to discuss it, cause we said so" Sounds like a priesthood intepreting
> >the Latin to me.
>
> I agree with Ken here. One of the main tactics that the Right have
> successfully used (whether they have done so consciously or not) to make
> abortion less available and more expensive is to keep us (the
> pro-reproductive rights + freedoms side) debating how to 'justify'
> abortion. As if it needed a 'thoeretical justification'! How insulting!

Whatever do you mean? I can give you, chapter and verse, the ACLU (liberal, bourgeois) *argument* in favor of a woman's right to choose abortion. I can give similar *arguments* in favor of most civil and human rights. If there is a Marxist argument (is there?), would you please state it? Claiming that it was settled a long time ago does not answer the question, it merely attempts to silence the questioner.

I am not saying that leftists should give ground to the right in the sense of allowing the *political* argument to be re-opened, but why cannot the issue be discussed amongst leftists from a *philosophical* perspective. Jesus, people on this list will ponder the most abstruse aspects of this or that implication of that or the other text of Marx's, but somebody asks a fairly obvious question (which may or may not have an obvious answer) and people don't even want to talk about it. Strange indeed.


> Wouldn't you feel incensed if someone (esp. on a 'left' list in the late
> 90s!) were to ask for a 'justification' of homosexuality or a 'reason' to
> defend political actions against homophobia?

Yes I would, but then I would object to veiled accusations of homophobia on a left list and, in fact, the last time I called someone on it, they shut right up.


> Demands for 'justification' for abortion are measures of our inferior
> status as women.

That is not what is going on here. If you can't see that, you don't want to.


>
> Yoshie
>

--

Joseph Noonan jfn1 at msc.com



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