When I was doing clinic defense and other pro-choice work in Ann Arbor, we used to say we opposed abortion on demand -- a polite request should be sufficient.
Abortion is politically and philosophically _hard_. Philosophically the best defenses of it seem to commit one to untenable (both ethical and political) positions. (For example, if you deny that the fetus is a person, why is infanticide wrong? There doesn't seem to be anything person-making about whether it's inside or outside the woman.) So do the best objections to it. (A fertilized egg is a person? Puleeze.) Still it's not hard to see why the antis (or could have) have a good deal of reasonable basis for their position(s).
Politically, it's very hard to see how there can be (even provisionally) an acceptable compromise that makes any sense, since the 'split the baby' or 'moderate' views the majority tends towards are incoherent, and from our extremist perspective, as from the other sides, the issues does look like a dig-in-and-die-at-your-post one.
I don't know what to do with this. Politically I will continue to support pro-choice positions and politicians, of course. But the issue is a polarizing one and galvanizing for the other side.
Heretically, I agree with John Hart Ely that Roe v. Wade was premature and at the time legally improper (but I think that judicial lawmaking powers should be exercised with extreme caution and modesty -- I'm more with Holmes and Hand than Brennan or Warren), I also think it was probably unfortunate as a rallying cry for the right to call the evangelicals, who were very far from uniformly reactionary before the mid 1970s. Still, its overturn now would be a catastrophic defeat. While _that_ would now be lawless, after Roe, Webster, and Casey, it does not pay to underestimate how lawless and activist this Court is.
I'm just musing. I don't think there any any easy answers. Broadly speaking the politically sensible course is ethically intolerable and vice versa, and the ethics of the extreme positions on both ends are murky at best.
--- Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
> On Mar 9, 2007, at 3:52 PM, Carrol Cox wrote:
>
> > In practice "mostly legal" will mean
> illegal.period for women from low
> > income sectors. But "mostly legal" does enter a
> cutting wedge, so to
> > speak. If one can get an abortion for the
> convenience of better health
> > it's a slippery slope to an abortion for the hell
> of it -- which
> > ultimately is the only defensible position.
>
> This is not the way the American mind works. It's
> all about hugging
> the middle and avoiding extremes. Your position is
> an extreme; even a
> radically pro-abortion guy like me is uncomfortable
> with the phrase
> "for the hell of it." And if that's my reaction, the
> reaction of the
> Vital Center would be very very harsh.
>
> Doug
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