**** If Yoshie's analysis is right, winning over a substantial proportion of the people in the middle involves changing people's ideas about the guilty character of voluntary female sex. Here it is unlikeky that rational argument will make any differewnce. We need at the minimumj a rhetorical strategy that will help people come to see and experience female sexuality as innocent and delightful, not dirty and sinful.
That will not affect the intellectual logic of the abortion debate. Even innocent pleasures do not weigh much against killing innocent people. So we will still need to answer the first problem. But it would help undermine the political support for antiabortion positions by changing the motivation many people have to support more or less extreme antichoice positions. ****
The first time I have ever been able to quote my favorite novelist in a political context. From the final chapter of _Emma_:
**** But Mr. Woodhouse--how was Mr. Woodhouse to be induced to consent?--he, who had never yet alluded to their marriage but as a distant event.
When first sounded on the subject, he was so miserable, that they were almost hopeless.--A second allusion, indeed, gave less pain.-- He began to think it was to be, and that he could not prevent it-- a very promising step of the mind on its way to resignation.****
Mr. Woodhouse is one of the more frightful characters in fiction -- perfectly innocent, wholly well meaning, and utterly destructive. (Austen specializes in such portraits of the utterly destructive.)
"He began to think it was to be -- a very promising step of the mind on its way to resignation."
How did that fine Gay slogan go: We're here. We're Gay. Get Used to it!
We have to convince people that abortion on a whim is here. It's here to stay. Get used to it.
As the late Lisa Rogers used to say: "In a Jar, Daddio, In a Jar!"
Carrol