[lbo-talk] Re: I'm not sorry day...

[Carrol Cox]

Doug Henwood wrote:
> 
> joanna bujes wrote:
> 
> >Doug quotes:
> >
> >"New York,NY - Jennifer Baumgardner, writer, announces a campaign to
> >amplify the voices of women who have had abortions. The campaign
> >will kick off with "I'm Not Sorry Day" on January 22, 2004, a
> >recasting of the Roe v Wade anniversary. Other events include a
> >documentary and a t-shirt campaign."
> >
> >This is such a bad idea. There's a tremendous amount of work left to
> >be done on behalf of women's rights (as women) for choice, for
> >childcare, for maternity benefits, etc. to focus on abortion
> >exclusively is not good. I favor a woman's right to choose as the
> >least possible evil -- but an abortion is still not a good thing.
> >Having an "i'm not sorry day" is fodder for the right-to-lifers but,
> >I suspect, won't do much to recruit for the women's civil rights
> >movement.
> 
> I'm not female, so maybe I'm not qualified to say this, but your
> reaction strikes me as exactly why something like I'm Not Sorry Day
> is needed. Abortion is far too stigmatized, and too many women feel
> guilty about having one. And millions of women who've had abortions
> aren't properly organized politically to assure that abortion remains
> legal.

Yes. A major political error, I've always believed, of the women's
movement of the '70s was making choice rather than the rightness of
abortion its central slogan. Abortion is a medical procedure, not an
ethical issue.

It is really too bad the archives of the old Spoons marxism lists are
not available, or that someone hasn't saved the posts of Lisa Rogers. I
greatly admired her slogan on the issue: IN A JAR, DADDIO, IN A JAR.

Incidentally, was the death of Carolyn Heilbrun mentioned on this list
or on some other I subscribe to? I've been reading her _The Last Gift of
Time: Life Beyond Sixty_. A delightful work. For example: "The detective
stories I write under the name of Amanda Cross are often assumed to be
autobiographical, tgo arise from memory and desire, which they do not.
When I portrayed some fictional members of the Harvard English
department, no one believed they were not portraits of actual Harvard
faculty. . . .the conviciton tha these characters were based on life
persisted. I came to understand this oinly with the realization, which
was some years in coming, that all pompous, self-satisfied, established
male professors have similar characteristics; if you have described one,
you have described many." (pp. 120-21) The Amanda Cross books are also
highly entertaining.

Carrol


> 
> Doug
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