roachboy

this whole category "male reproductive rights" is modelled on the (sadly) successful legal strategy that the far right empoloyed to stand affirmative action legislation on its head...which was rooted in the fucked up logic of the bakke decision.

the arguments are superficially kind of tricky.

think about its origin in the right's "arguments" in its anti-affirmative action campaign--they take earlier legal arguments about discrimination--which were rooted in the logic of equal protection--and repeat them in such a way as to stand the initial usage on its head.
there is a formally consistent core to the argument--that it, the claims are logical in themselves---the trick for conservatives is to make this type of argument and then try to limit debate to that particular claim, to the exclusion of all other considerations if it can be managed.
a cynical chap could say, with reference to the anti-affirmative action claims, that affirmative action, which was designed to extend the logic of equal protection to a group previously cut out as a function of racism, itself discriminates against racists.

but that does not fly politically.

rephrase then: aa discriminates against the primary beneficiaries of the previous racist order.

that doesnt work either---so extending the argument--broadening it out to include something of its political motivations (that is to speak the truth about motivations)--undermines the power (such as it is) of the kernel of logic at the core of the argument--that using equal access arguments to expand a given legal space to include folk who were previously excluded function (in theory) in a contradictory manner to generate new types of discrimination themselves.

so keep the debate as narrow as possible and go on at great and snippy length about the injustices that follow from this very narrowly defined logical problem. if you are backed with enough money, you can buy legal counsel that will find a judge politically amenable to hearing such an argument and then you are off to the races/-ist.

that way you can gut equal protection as an argument at all, in the longer run, but defunctionalizing it. and so it is obviously best not to admit anything of the political motives behind it. narrow narrow focus is your friend.

so here:

for the equal access argument to operate at all with reference to abortion law, there has to be a category called "male reproductive rights"--that the category is in itself problematic is secondary to its logical function--to float this designation is to posit--that is, in this case, create out of thin air----a class of people, defined by a particular interest, which are excluded by laws that enable abortions to be performed.

if you accept that category, then the equal protection argument would follow logically.

the attempts to generate and maintain a VERY narrow focus on this fake "principle" of equal protection in this context has been the dominant feature of the posts which have weighed in as objecting to abortion under the pretext of objecting to the "violations' existing abortion law inflict upon this fiction called "male reproductive rights."

the politics behind it are obvious: the folk who argued for such a violation of "male reproductive rights" would, in other contexts, be squarely anti-choice.

so it is that this category is yet another tactic--at once more shallow and more problematic than others--of the anti-choice movement, the goal of which is to effectively eliminate the legal protections afforded to the procedure of abortion. period.
there is nothing else behind this, nothing else to it, and nothing else of interest about it.

there is no such category "male reproductive rights"....so the arguments that are predicated on them are meaningless.

from which follows the claim that the whole manoever is a fraud.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite