> > Jeez, Nathan, why not draw the obvious and indeed feminist conclusion
>> that mandatory fatherhood is also deplorable? The current practice of
>> running down the father for child support before affording children
>> access to (too meager) public support is sexist and regressive and we
>> should oppose it. All children (and indeed all people) ought to have
>> basic rights to food, shelter, education, healthcare so that no one's
>> well-being hinges on the good will or sense of responsibility of this or
> > that or the next male.
>===================
>
>This just anonymizes the structuring of obligations in the society
>and anonymizing
>obligations leads precisely to the culture of mutual indifference
>many claim to abhor.
>I'm not disagreeing with what you write by any means, but a paradox
>is showing in
>demanding a libertarian-individualist approach to bodies and their
>dispositions and
>intentionalities yet calling for the State to coerce others to
>refrain from using the
>State to coerce us while respecting the obligations we call for. I
>for one don't know
>how to overcome the paradoxes-aporias of how we go about
>constructing a socially
>stable public-private distinction.
This so-called "paradox" exists in the United States (among other nations) for simple reasons of _presence of sexism_ and _absence of social democracy_, not because of any complex philosophical "aporia." In Sweden, which is less sexist and more social democratic than the USA, there is no such paradox in practice:
***** Abortion is a right in Sweden and is free on request until the eighteenth week of pregnancy.
<http://cwr.utoronto.ca/cultural/english/sweden/health.html> *****