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insofar as compromise on this is concerned, have a look at the pattern of posts above:
conservatives operate within their particular discursive frame..it seems that if they focus on the accusation "murder" shrieked early and often, the complexity of the question can be erased. because it works for them in that way. the agency of women, their control over their bodies, is not an issue for the right.
MURDER! MURDER! (words usually thrown about by folk who also support bush's colonial war--which is arguably illegal--across which every single death is arguably murder--no problem--not with murder as such)
these accuations are usually followed by my favorite move, which a friend refers to a "wave the fetus."
why?
because the opponents of abortion know that if they even acknowledge the other frame of reference, they loose. they cannot argue their case on across the question of the right of women to control what happens to thier bodies. the best they can do is that it "discriminates against men" which is of course absurd, as astrahl points out above more eloquently than i could.
this "discrimination against men" thing is itself yet another example of the reductio ad absurdium of arguments about discrimination that the right indulges in constantly--on questions of affirmative action (echoing petit bourgeois arguments against reconstruction, a great lineage) for example--the ridiculous legacy of the bakke decision. why this argument? because if they acknowledge the opposition, their frame of reference on this, they loose. same thing with the gay marriage question, which is obviously one of equal protection--but on these grounds, the right would loose, so it is for them a "moral" issue.
a sorry state of affairs.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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