Choice

[Michael Pollak]

On Thu, 30 Jan 2003, Dennis Perrin wrote:

> > To me, it's a bedrock issue. If women can't control reproduction,
> > they're not free, and structurally subordinated to men. I don't see
> > why I should let someone who thinks otherwise speak at my political
> > convention.
>
> Well then, you're not for "choice" -- you're for obedience to a line.
> Which is fine. Just dispense with the "choice" chat and say what you
> really mean.

Dennis, you seem to be willfully misunderstanding the nature of slogans.
They are abbreviations for longer and more specific statements that don't
fit on a button.  They are not postulates that lie at the bottom of
Euclidian systems.

Pro-choice is short for "pro a woman's right to make a choice of whether
or not she wants to have an abortion."  And against anyone who's against
that.  It's shortened to pro-choice to make a slogan out of it.  It's an
abbreviation for being passionately favor of one specific choice.  It is
not a philosophy about being in favor of choice in general.

So there is no contradiction at all in being pro-[this specific] choice
and excluding people who are against it.

Similarly there is no contradiction in being "pro-life" and being for the
death penalty or war.  Because everyone knows pro-life is short for "pro
protecting the life of the fetus."  Pro-life is simply an abbreviation of
it.  In both cases of course the specific shortenings were picked to
emphasize their most appealing aspects.  That should surprise no one, and
I can't see any inherent grounds for objecting to it.  You don't advocate
a cause by crying stinking fish.

You seem to be mistaking abbrevations for specific political demands for
generalizations about all human activity.  They're not.

Michael