>Yoshie writes:
>"Who are you to tell women what women are supposed to feel after an
>abortion? If women feel just relief after an abortion, it's better
>for women in particular and humanity in general. We should create a
>society in which every abortion is safe, free, easy, and wanted by
>the woman who have it and every motherhood is a wanted motherhood
>supported by an array of state-funded programs such as health care,
>child care, paid parental leaves, etc."
>
>Who does he have to be?
A woman who actually had an abortion, or at least a woman who is open to the idea of having an abortion.
If a straight person who is ambivalent about same-sex love says that he thinks that gay men and lesbians must feel conflicted about being gay men and lesbians, his opinion is worthless.
>We have a shared humanity or we don't.
There are some things that all human beings have in common. Pregnancy and abortion are not among them. Men are biologically incapable of becoming pregnant.
>Moreover, he's not telling anything: He "doubts" that women feel
>nothing but relief after an abortion. That's as hesitant an
>assertion as could be made.
There is nothing hesitant about his pronouncement about "ideological cant":
Thomas wrote:
>I doubt that any (save those who are able to insulate themselves
>from their feeling and emotions by ideological cant) manage to feel
>JUST relief after the procedure.
What Thomas is saying is that only those whose feelings and emotions are blocked by "ideological cant" (an expression that conveys contempt and condemnation) feel just relief after abortion. In short, he argues that women who feel just relief after abortion are inhuman monsters and that women should therefore feel sad, angry, depressed, ambivalent, etc. after abortion if they want to be considered human beings. -- Yoshie
* Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>