``...The only problem is that I don't see how we can ever get to have universal health care that includes coverage of abortion by defending only women's right to decide, necessary as it still is to defend it...'' Yoshie
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This is another of those issues that I think there are much more productive ways to approach.
If you start with the woman, the mother as the body, then you are lead to the basic right of control and determination over your own body. But before launching off into abortion, we could focus on an expanded concept of body in relation to the state. Since the state assumes the right to total regulation of the body, but absolutely no responsibility for its care, why not reverse this equation?
What are the rights of the state over the body? Notice that the state presumes both possession and ownership, much as if its inhabitants were its children and the state were the parent. The state presumes the complete freedom to determine and regulate all manner of dispositions over the body. For example the state presumes to regulate who lives and who dies and how, who should be born and who should not, who is permitted to mate with whom, in what manner and under what circumstances, how the offspring will be raise and by whom, as well as what are permitted activities of that offspring. These comprise the total biological existance of the body from conception to death and beyond to the manner of disposal. Now the state is also presuming to regulate the molecular level of the body and the disposion of its molecular products and means of inheritance.
That is one hell of a lot of power. Time to start disabusing the state of many of these presumptions. We could start anywhere: universal healthcare, with abortion or abolishing the death penalty, or ending the war with Iraq before it starts, or by pleasantly fucking the next nearest warm other who accepts the offer, or proceeding to clone ourselves if we wish.
The state presumes to tell us if or when such activities are permitted, and I for one have no interest at all in listening to the state's opinion, particularly this state on any of these matters.
These questions can be completely recast as conflicts of power.
Chuck Grimes