[lbo-talk] Greetings to the March for Women's Lives

Stephen E Philion philion at hawaii.edu
Sun Apr 25 20:37:27 PDT 2004


CGE passed along the following from an Allen Stairs summarizing a Don Marquis:

Each side misses the mark. The pro-life principle is too broad. It might well show that killing a cancer-cell culture is immoral, or so Marquis claims. (Here we might note: the pro-lifer means that it is wrong to kill a human being; not a human cell. But if a newly-fertilized ovum counts as a human being, then the distinction is not so clear after all.) On the other hand, the pro-choice argument is too narrow. It doesn't show that killing infants or retarded individuals is wrong.

--seems evenhanded, eh? but actually it's quite a deceptive bit of misrepresentation of the prochoice position. Marquis is correct about the 'prolife's position being broad and essentially juridically unuseful (and keep in mind, it is on the juridical terrain that this battle matters most). The prochoice argument in no way implies that killing infants would not be wrong, nor retarded individuals. In fact anyone born who is murdered is murdered, end of story in the prochoice camp. On the matter of abortion, there is far more disagreement and doubt as to whether or not an abortion is 'murder' or whether using a condom is 'murder'...thus the very problematic policy implications of legally categorizing abortion 'murder'. 99.9 % of the population agree that killing a person who has been born is murder, regardless of their condition. There are different categories of murder, surely, and those are debated, along with the severity of the punishment for those crimes, but whether or not they are murder is not a matter of debate. In the instance of abortion this is plainly not the case. ---------------------------------------------------- Pro-choicers point to facts that seem to count in favor of the non-personhood of the fetus, and go on to conclude that abortion is acceptable.

--actually although it is indeed acceptable, the prochoicers' argument is actually a legal one, i.e. it is not murder and should not be punished. ---------------------------------------------- Pro-choicers, on the other hand, have to find a way of broadening their conclusion to deal with the cases of infants, children and the mentally retarded.

--no, they actually don't, there's no connection. legally they're separate issues. ----------------------------------------- These beings don't count as persons by typical pro-choice criteria.

--rubbish. -------------------------------------------- The pro-choicer avoids biology and typically appeals to psychological characteristics.

--no, it's really simpler than that. the prochoicer's argument in a nutshell is women should not be put in jail for having abortions, nor should they be tried for capital one murder (for what other kind of murder coud abortion be aside from planned "killing" of a defenseless person?). The position is that we should not decide our juridical code along the lines of the Church or Saudi Arabia.... --------------------------------------------- This is like what he has to say about killing; killing is wrong not because of its effects on the killer, but because of its effects on the victim -- the loss of all potential for value in his or her future...

--Such thinking is clearly confused, for if we take it to its logical destination, we have to put every woman who has an abortion in jail for life (captital one murder, eh?) and their doctors and nurses and possibly conspiring husbands/boyfriends. Think about the implications for even a minute and you can see why as social policy juridically categorizing abortion as murder is based on little in the way of rational thinking. And in the end, that really is what matters, since *that* and not moral victories is what the prolife movement sets as its endgoal--a society that juridically categorises abortion as murder *and* enforces that juridical code severely.

Steve



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