Don't you Carrol.
Anyway, regarding this bit:
>The opportunist slogan, "pro-choice," does
>indeed need to be attacked over and over again. Not only our arguments but
>our tone must continue to treat abortion as falling in the same category
>as anti-biotic shots (though they can be more morally ambiguous),
>fingernail trimming, etc.
As one not inclined to Carrol's scientific amoralism, I feel an argument should in fact be at our disposal on abortion. All that talk of educating the foetus (not the product of bible-belt fundamentalists, but rather the Californian hip-individualist, competitive-gestation set - who'd all be ever-so pro-choice, I'm sure) seems to me to have some implications for us all.
What I think should be remembered is that Marx was very much about freedom and unfreedom. Positive freedom is all about possessing agency - to (a) recognise and (b) deal with - ethical problems (the ethical problem with, for instance, the exchange relation is that it occurs 'behind our backs' - Marx detests 'the hidden hand' as it logically precludes our relations being a function of our conscious regulation).
Taking away either of these (I tend to think Carrol's stance takes away the former, and the right-to-lifers take away the latter) takes away the ethical freedom of women.
Furthermore, society put a lot of those foetuses in there (not all women can control what gets into their wombs, for instance) and society dictates what the ramifications of pregnancy are (eg. the role of 'mother' and the variety of long-sustained freedom-infringing imposts it places upon this status, and the economic implications for the child).
By my current reckoning, Marxists must commit themselves to promoting agency for each and all of us. It must also recognise the social setting within which ethical dilemmas are resolved by each individual. We must therefore not oppose abortion, must realise we can not judge any individual's decision, must insist on each individual's control of her body, and must insist on a fundamental reappraisal of what it means to be 'mother'.
That's all I think.
Cheers, Rob.