``The conflict is not at bottom between the state and individuals, though. It exists between classes, culturally mediated by gender and sexuality...'' Yoshie
I don't want to put too fine a point on it, because we're agreed. But there is a basic difficulty here. While marxist, generally leftist, and socio-economic analysis wants to define conflict between groups, the legal and existantial experience is with individuals, in their physical isolation as bodies. The dicotomy between a particular body versus its group identifications is part of the game of power that the state exercises as a means to divide various groups, say working class divided by gender or race versus economic class. So to a certain extent, failing to note this, obscures some of the understanding of how power is exercised as well as resisted.
``The ruling class, however, seldom get themselves directly involved in campaigns against abortion.... Instead, power in this instance wells up from below, in the Foucauldian biopolitical fashion, and ends up in the hands of the power elite...''
I think the peculiarities of the case of abortion, illustrates something that isn't noted very often. Prior to the modern secular State, the Church was the ruling authority over bodies as social figures and so there is a residue of religious authority held pridominately in the underclasses. So I am not sure it is that accurate to say `wells up from below.'
The struggles between church and state for realms of power over society has left a remainder of spheres of conflict in a kind of historical pattern. Part of the problem we face in the US is the attempt of the Right to re-impose various religious codes through state power, in effect re-integrating the originary separation of church and state---for the purpose of regulating the social body. In this case, the underlying underclass identification with the church as a social base is used by the right...
It's too complicated at this point... Gotta go to work...
Chuck Grimes