Quote:
:
my argument is that keeping the procedure legal and safe has nothing to do with the complexity of the debates that women (primarily) would have over whether they would or would not have the procedure.
the claim that one must make the procedure illegal because not to makes it a matter of course to have an abortion is, to me, offensive as an assumption. i do not think the decision about having one is easy. i know several people who have had them, and for each it was really really difficult, the decision. it is patronizing for those who oppose the procedure to imagine that there is no debate within folk about whether to use it or not. this is the most basic area of disagreement i have with anti-choice people.
This is one anti-choicer who doesn't disagree with you in the slightest here.
|
if you agree with this, then i do not see why you would require that abortion be illegal.
assuming that you do.
you could continue to oppose the procedure; if the situation arose, you could make arguments with a partner/wife that would explain your position.
which would put you in the position to make concrete evaluations about particular situations and views on them--on the basis of which you could consider the question of justification, etc.
you acknowledge that there are circumstances that would justify taking a life---it would follow, then, that you would hold open the possibility that arguments could be advanced that would make an abortion justifiable for you.
it would also follow that, dispostionally, you would not be inclined to concede this, particularly not in the abstract.
but no-one who finds themselves in a position of having to discuss whether to have an abortion or not approaches the question in the abstract.
and i would assume that if you were to find yourself in agreement that, given the particulars of the situation, that you would support your parnter/wife in a decision to go through with an abortion, that you too would prefer that the procedure be safe.
which is, i think, the same scenario that those who argue that the procedure should be legal would envision.
the simple fact of the matter is that not everyone who considers having this procedure does so. why is that? perhaps because the ethical questions are taken seriously, and the debate that the anti-choice folk assume does not happen in the context of abortion being legal in fact does happen.
but if that is true, then much of the wind disappears behind the sails of claims that the procedure should not be legal.
====
this exchange:
Quote:
who are you to presume to judge whether the criteria a woman who chooses to have an abortion brings to bear on the decision are or are not adequate?
The problem here is that I don't see a relevant difference between this question and "who are you to presume to judge whether a woman was justified in committing infanticide?"
|
was entirely my fault:
i put the question in the wrong place so it came off completely differently than i intended. it followed from, and was oriented by the point that preceded it--i should not have split it off, nor should i have posed it as a question, particularly not in that snippy way.
i didnt notice until this morning, when i read through the posts.
mea culpa.
it was a technical screw up.
====
there is an enormous difference between thinking about this question as one that is always particular and thinking about it in general.
if you think about it as always particular, then we--both of us--arrive at a position like that outlined at the start of this post.
when the argument shifts to a more general level, views polarize because the complexity of particular decisions gets erased behind a much more simplistic view of abortion.
at that level, it is all to easy to become hyperbolic. for all sides.
the curious thing in this exchange is that it turned on the problem of generalization---we seem to have advanced arguments that route consideration through particulars, but not in the same place--you objected to the characterizations of anti-choice folk in my earlier posts--i objected to the tendency within this debate (in general, over abortion) to avoid the actual decision and its complexity, which is always undertaken by particular people facing particular situations that involve particular stakes. you want to focus on the characteriztion of the opposition: i want to focus on the deep questions that arise during the process of deciding whether a woman will avail herself of this procedure.
====
as for the 3 criteria you outline, i think them all elements of the discussions about whether, in a given situation, the procedure should be undertaken. i dont think anyone really argues that an abortion is not about the life of both a baby and the (potential) parents. no-one thinks this is not a decision about lives.
this has been interesting.
glad i happened to be reading blake, whose fine quote about reptiles of the mind rationalized entering into a discussion that i would usually not want to have.
thanks for explaining your position. and it is good that things drifted away from their cranky beginning.