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it is really pretty simple, this:
if you oppose abortion dont have one.
strangely enough, that is an entirely viable option under the present legal scenario.
under it, folk who imagine there to be a god who would disapprove are free to imagine that there is a god who disapproves and to act accordingly. there is no reason for this to be more than a position that can shape discussions that precede having this procedure.
or: theirs is a position within the game, not a position about the game as a whole.
or: arguments from the anti-choice sectors are political arguments dressed up in the register of theology or "science" or "philosophy"---they are neither compelling or binding on folk who reject the politics. nor should they be. there is no contradiction between such opposition and the fact that abortions are legal and safe.
what irks me is the assumption that you often encounter from the antichoice crowd that the present legal situation entails a cavalier attitude toward abortion--that somehow the safety and legality of the service itself evacuates the complexity of the decision to have one--this hallucination entails the idea that it is the right that takes this matter seriously--by extension, then, no-one who disagrees with them politically does.
every so often you see a group of far right activists arrayed along a public way holding up huge images of aborted foetuses--the assumption behind this as a political action is the above. but when you talk to these folk, the ones behind the huge images of aborted foetuses, you find the "thinking" to be extraordinarily narrow on the question itself---the real problem appears to be that not everyone believes as they do.
the antichoice crowd is wrong about the assumption that they are required to force serious discussion of the implications of having an abortion--an assumption that is both offensive and patronizing. the positions typically outlined on the matter by the antichoice crowd are not even about abortion directly--they are about the frame of reference within which their opposition to abortion functions. the opposition, then, is not shaped by the issue itself, but rather by a desire to impose its religious assumptions on the rest of us. so far as i can determine, that is the reason for the anti-choice movement. the assumptions about the ease of abortion is a correlate of this position, a way of recoding their total intolerance of differences in views.
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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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