[lbo-talk] Catholicism, was Re: blacks about as morally conservative as Republicans

[Jenny Brown]

Wendy Lyon wrote:
> There's nothing reflexive at all about my skepticism regarding the
> Mexican statistics on that page. You make too many assumptions. I
> doubt those numbers because they are not in keeping with the things
> that I read or heard from Mexican activists themselves in the wake of
> the Mexico City law change. I would put more credence in their reports
> than on some random poll on the internet that happens to have a number
> of other dodgy statistics.
>   
Fair enough.
> I wrote:
>  
>>  OK, but I think you'll want to look at what's changed.  There's been a
>> backround drumbeat of 'personhood-from- conception,' (although this is a
>> liberalizing of earlier life-from-before-conception, 
>> birth-control-is-murder
>> position of the Church)
>>     
> Wendy Lyon wrote:
> No, they're still opposed to birth control too.
>
>   
You misread me.  Is the Catholic Church's official position that barrier 
methods/ C.I. are murder?  I thought they climbed down from that 
centuries ago.  Yes, there's a resurgence of that charge with the birth 
control pill and MAP here, but it's based on a theory of secondary 
action which classes those forms of birth control as possible 
abortions.  In other words, when birth control is murder it's only 
because it's an extremely early abortion.
> Well, that wasn't how it was portrayed in anything I read during the
> elections. There was a speaker from Italy at the last international
> abortion rights conference I went to, in September, and she didn't say
> anything about it either. I've no doubt this is a factor in some
> people's opposition to abortion but it doesn't appear to me to be
> anything like the major factor.
>
>   
In the U.S. the rhetoric of the right on abortion is around race and 
immigration, if you listen closely, but the abortion rights movement in 
general doesn't discuss this or attack it.  If you ask why there is a 
resurgence or traction of anti-abortion or anti-birth control ideas, 
they'll use religion as the explanation, even though the rhetoric is no 
more religious than it ever was, but much more focused on race.  I have 
my theory on why the abortion rights movement is not willing to go 
there, but this is not the forum.

Jenny Brown