Comcast rejects antiwar ad

Nathan Newman nathanne at nathannewman.org
Thu Jan 30 08:51:23 PST 2003


----- Original Message ----- From: "Doug Henwood" <dhenwood at panix.com>

Dennis Perrin wrote:
>As I said to Liza, professional "pro-choicers" are only "pro-choice" when
>people agree with them about abortion. The "pro-choice" Dem party, during
>its '92 convention, wouldn't allow Pennsylvania Governor Robert Casey to
>address the delegates on the abortion issue because he had the wrong
>opinion. And to really stick it to Casey, the Dems invited pro-abortion
>Repubs to address the delegates instead.
>What's "pro-choice" about that?

-Choice: abortion should be legal and it's up to the woman to make the -choice. Casey and other anti-choicers want the state to make that -decision. -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.

I'd agree that "pro-choice" and "free dissent" are not the same thing, but as the debate on Kusinich for President shows, it's worth dicussing whether there is a progressive, anti-abortion form of feminism and support for women controlling their reproductive role.

One problem with certain forms of "pro-choice" politics, especially of the libertarian version, is that they don't support the choice to have a child well. If having a child means you are impoverished without day care, derailed in your career into the mommy track, and otherwise denied a full range of life choices, there is no "choice" involved in having an abortion-- it's a form of societal blackmail telling women to have an abortion or lose out on any non-baby choices, notably not a choice faced by men in patriarchal contexts.

So being pro-abortion is not the same as being pro-choice. Unless the politics supports a full range of social supports for women having children and careers, it's not real. And so asking pro-abortion Republicans who support economic policies denying those choices to women is an insult to the idea of being pro-choice, and it does show an intolerance to anti-abortion progressives who remain loyal on economic issues, yet see economic libertarians given more respect than they get.

I don't think a fetus is a child with rights, but if one did, as some progressive folks do, it doesn't seem beyond the pale of acceptable politics for them to argue that two rights are in conflict here, and as long as society does everything possible to ease the burden on the mother-- making adoption simple and easy, providing full health care, making career discrimination against mothers a felony, providing total health care and child care for mothers who want to keep the child, and so on-- this wouldn't subordinate women structurally to men and could be considered a reasonable accomodation of conflicting rights.

I wouldn't vote for this platform but I also wouldn't want to censor the discussion by those who might want to promote it.

-- Nathan Newman



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