On Sun, 7 Feb 1999 Apsken at aol.com wrote:
> Marxists oppose all forms of human oppression, and therefore
> unconditionally support unrestricted access to abortion.
There are those of us who accept the protasis (as an imperative, if not an exceptionless indicative) but think the argument fails because the suppressed premise -- viz., that human status begins only when the cord is cut -- is false.
> ... the Daley administration of Chicago, as closely linked to the
> Catholic church as any, instructed welfare case workers to counsel
> pregnant recipients to "consider" having abortions, and even
> sterilization.
An interesting example that would seem to raise a question about whose interests the promotion of abortion can serve, objectively speaking...
> That Alex gleefully reacts to a poster who slips in the Catholic line
> supported by Hitchens and Hentoff is disgraceful.
Neither is Catholic; both are (I think) explicit atheists, and to my mind their approaches contribute far more to progressive causes than those who are especially concerned exactly to determine who's Marxist and who isn't.
> Until such "comrades" have both the capability and willingness to
> volunteer their bodies to host the unwanted embryos of others (that is,
> to submit themselves to the oppression they advocate), they have no
> legitimate standing to argue against women's right to be equally free.
This seems to be an argument of the form, "I can do what I want with what I own and am immune to criticism" (ruthless or even ruthful)
-- a peculiar sort of Marxism...
--C. G. Estabrook