abortion

[C. G. Estabrook]

There is no orthodoxy more firmly fixed in the American political
firmament than that opposition to abortion belongs on the Right, while
"defense of abortion rights" is the lodestar of the Left.  But the
conjunction may be accidental and only temporary. The commitment to
democracy and an ever-widening franchise means that it has been the Left
that has called attention to marginalized groups in the modern world.  
The historic task of the Left has been to include in political and civil
society groups formerly excluded on the grounds that their full humanity
was denied -- e.g., Africans, Amerindians, and women.

Most arguments that hold abortion to be an ethically-acceptable choice
depend on the assertion that a fetus is not a fully human person, and
therefore the rules about killing human beings (e.g., that killing can be
justified in cases of self-defense) simply don't apply to the argument.
(It's true that some recent defenses of abortion have begun from the
premise that abortion means killing a human being; as the defender of
civil liberties Nat Hentoff puts it, it's finally hard to deny that "it's
a baby.")  Physical dependency -- the fact that the fetus depends on its
mother's body -- is often, curiously enough, alleged as an indication of
the less-than-full humanity of the unborn.

If the Left continues to draw out the implication of its principles, it
will discover the marginalization of the unborn and unwanted as for
example it discovered the marginalization of women in the first and second
waves of feminism in the 19th and 20th centuries.  And it's reasonable to
suspect that the discovery will take as long and involve as many
contradictions as that concerning women did -- and does.

There are of course groups on the political Left who have drawn this
conclusion.  Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote to Julia Ward Howe in 1873,
"When we consider that women are treated as property, it is degrading to
women that we should treat our children as property to be disposed of as
we see fit."  Emma Goldman thought that abortion was an index of the
general immiseration of the working class, and the suffragist Alice Paul
spoke of it as "the ultimate exploitation of women."

Contemporary groups with similar positions include the Seamless Garment
Network that organizes against war, the death penalty, and violence
against women -- within which they include abortion.  A Feminists for Life
group was expelled from NOW for deviance on this issue, and there are a
number religious-based radical groups that are anti-abortion, such as some
of those around the anti-nuclear direct-action group, Plowshares.

  =========================

  C. G. Estabrook

  Green Party Candidate for 

  US House of Representatives

  15th Illinois Congressional District

  "A Choice for A Change"

  24 East Green Street - Suite 14

  Champaign IL 61820

  217.355.7313

  <www.carlforcongress.org>

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  "One great source of the strength of the ruling class 

  has ever been their willingness to kill 

  in defense of their power and privileges. 

  Let their power be once attacked 

  either by foreign foes or by domestic revolutionaries, 

  and at once we see the rulers prepared to kill and kill and kill. 

  The readiness of the ruling class to order killing, 

  the small value the ruling class has ever set upon human life, 

  is in marked contrast to the reluctance of all revolutionaries 

  to shed blood."  --James Connolly

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