-One reason I am opposed to Roe v. Wade philosophically is that it encourages -this binary approach to rights and in many ways empowers the rhetoric of the -"right to lifers" who just propose an alternative trump card to the right to -privacy (always a rotten part of the decision, since a defense of women's -right not to be enslaved either individually or socially as a group is far -stronger in any case). -- Nathan Newman
+It sounds like we agree on the bottom line. Abortion is +not a matter of rights. It is for the State to set the +bounds for determining who or what lives or dies.
I wouldn't phrase it that way because "the State" always does so, whether through legislatures or the courts, so that isn't really marking one side of the debate or the other. What is clear is that "rights talk" really works well only when dealing with non-retarded, sane adults in comparison with one another-- and then only as a good set of rule of thumbs for a series of values debates that "rights" ratify.
When you deal with children, fetuses, animals, those with mental illness, we always start "amending" rights and finding them far less absolute. At some point, the amendments become like the old "adjustments" made to Ptolemaic astronomy and the whole system collapses. At that point, it's better to return to basic values discussions and the broader political realm.
My view of law is that they are useful at enforcing a round of negotiations embodied in a particular law. By leaving it to courts to work out the details of enforcement in a semi-independent way, it prevents continual political warfare on the details. But when society faces a chasm of disagreement where there is no truce on an issue, it should stay in the political realm until embodied in a particular legal form.
-- Nathan Newman