from '97 interview with The Progressive http://www.enteract.com/~peterk/Progint.html
Q: Moving on to perhaps the subject that got you into hottest water with the left: abortion. Could you talk a little about your view on this?
Hitchens: Two points I wanted to make. One, that the term "unborn child" has been made a propaganda phrase by the people who called themselves "pro-life." But it's something that has moral and scientific realities. It's become very evident indeed that this is not just a growth upon the mother.
If that's true, what are the problems? It need not qualify the woman's right to choose. It need not. But it would be a very bold person to say that what was being chosen didn't come up. What I argued in my column was this was a social phenomenon. This is the next generation we're talking about. Considering the unborn as candidate members-- potential members--of the next generation; wouldn't that strengthen the argument for socialized medicine, child care, prenatal care?
There's a reason why this is the only country where it's a mania. Because it's between the fundamentalists and the possessive individualists. It's ruined politics, absorbed a huge amount of energy that should have been spent elsewhere.
Q: But you're not agreeing with the religious right on this?
Hitchens: No one who is not for the provision of sex education, contraception, and child care should be allowed to have any position on abortion at all--and those who do should be met with fusillades. Women will decide it, that's a matter of fact, as much as a principle.
Q: So, what is your position regarding the continued legal status of abortion?
Hitchens: There's no choice but choice. I mean that to sound the way it does sound. But there are choices about the conditions in which that choice is made.
I'm very much opposed to euthanasia. I've never understood why more of these people can't commit suicide. Why do they need a Doctor Kevorkian? It's very theatrical. I believe in a right to decide.
But I'm against all blurrings. There's a very sharp dividing line in the case of an infant. I'm against fooling with that. Everything in me rebels against that. The conclusion I've come to as to why it' s such a toxic question in America is it isn't about the rights of the unborn child. I think it's an argument about patriarchy. It is a metaphor for the status of women in what is still in some ways a frontier society. [clip]