Ed Brayton is a freelance writer and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
I'm moving a discussion that started in the comments on another post up top so it doesn't get lost. A couple of people are insistently claiming that every single person who opposes a woman's right to have an abortion is, by definition, misogynistic. Others reject that argument, including me. Not only do I reject it, I think it's precisely the kind of lazy, shallow, overly simplistic thinking that is far too common in our political dialogue today.
Now, I do not doubt for a moment that there are plenty of misogynists among the anti-abortion crowd. Hell, I've known some of them personally. But it simply isn't logical to jump from that agreed upon fact to the conclusion that every one of them must be a misogynist. I'm pro-choice myself, but is it really that difficult to imagine that someone could sincerely be convinced that abortion is murder, period, and therefore must be stopped? I don't think it is. I don't think they're right, but I do think one can hold this as a sincere position.
Here's what I think is really going on here: assuming an evil agenda is easier than engaging someone's real position. It's what Matt Nisbet would call a convenient cognitive shortcut. It makes the world so simple when you can just dismiss the person taking the position out of hand without having to engage the position itself. But sometimes the world just isn't that simple; sometimes, frequently in fact, a clash of ideas really is a sincere dispute between people who both care about doing the right thing even if they disagree on what the right thing is.
We hear such sneering dismissals of one's ideological opponents all the time, and from every side in such disputes. To wit:
Anyone who is against affirmative action is a racist.
Anyone who is for affirmative action just wants a free ride.
Anyone who is for school vouchers just wants to destroy public schools.
Anyone who is against school vouchers just wants our kids to languish in bad schools without any hope of getting out.
Anyone who thinks it's okay to have "under God" in the pledge of allegiance is a theocrat who can't wait to start stoning homosexuals and non-virgins.
Anyone who is against having "under God" in the pledge of allegiance hates religion and hates God and wants to destroy the freedom to worship to pave the way for their atheistic, communist utopia.
Bringing it closer to one of the main issues discussed on this blog:
Anyone who rejects teaching ID in schools is part of the Darwinian Orthodoxy seeking to censor their enemies to protect their weak position from intellectual engagement. After all, they only believe evolution so they can escape the reality of God and their nature as sinners.
Anyone who supports teaching ID in schools is just trying to pave the way for a Christian reconstructionist dystopia that institutes the Barbaric legal code of the Old Testament as the civil and criminal law of the land.
I bet the ones aimed at positions you hold sound really stupid; I know they do to me. In fact they're all stupid, but not always for the same reason. Sometimes they're wrong just because they're wrong, because they ascribe an evil motive that no one on the other side holds at all (like the claim that the ACLU defended NAMBLA because they love child pornography); most of the time the presumed evil motives may be true, but only for a particular subset of those who advocate the position, yet we casually paint everyone on the other side with the same broad brush.
Are their misogynists who are against abortion? Of course. Are there some ID advocates who advocate theocracy? You bet. Are there some racists who are against affirmative action? Absolutely. Are there some who advocate religious recognitions like "under God" in the pledge who want to impose the Mosaic law on us all? Certainly. But it is a non sequitur to conclude that therefore everyone on the other side of those issues must feel that way. It simply isn't logical.
It is possible to hold a sincere and principled belief that abortion is wrong without hating women. It is possible to hold a sincere and principled belief that affirmative action is wrong without hating minorities. It is possible to believe that the government should pay some lip service to religious truth without wanting to coerce anyone into believing or worshiping against their will. And if we're going to complain when our opponents paint us with such a broad brush and presume evil intent, we owe them the same courtesy.
Such arguments are made as a means of a priori dismissal. They tend to cloud our judgment rather than aid in it. Once we've decided that the contrary position is not just wrong but evil, all serious thought about the subject ceases. So does all meaningful communication. Such shallow thinking is seductive precisely because it's all too easy. Probably none of us are entirely immune to it; I know I'm not. But it's something that rational people should make a concerted effort to avoid.
Comments
I will believe that anti-abortionists are honest in equating abortion with murder, when they also decry the natural failure of early embryos to implant in the womb as the largest cause of human death, and when I start to see even a sliver of motion from them to detect their "children" who thus die. So long as they remain unconcerned about this -- a lack of concern that seems to me quite rational -- I am suspicious of their sudden concern when a woman causes this on purpose.
Posted by: Russell | February 4, 2008 10:22 AM
Russell: Don't forget the anti-choice folks who are also against birth control and comprehensive sex-ed. Hard to take them seriously when they rail against preventative measures while at the same time railing against abortion.
Posted by: Soldats | February 4, 2008 10:33 AM
Excellent post and thank you for it. I'm an atheist who has a mixed opinion of abortion based on what I think is reasoned thought, not misogyny or religion. I can't for the life of me, figure out how it could be wrong to terminate a pregnancy early on, say in the first trimester. But how any sane person can defend abortion in the third of healthy fetuses is unfathomable.
I can't stand it when I'm accused of being either sexist for this position by pro-choicers, or wishy-washy by pro-lifers. I see it as the only logical conclusion.
Posted by: Butch | February 4, 2008 10:36 AM
I think it's a matter of reaching what you beliefs is the logical conclusion of someone's position and then just assigning them that conclusion as if it's what they're actually starting out with. Let's say I decide that not having affirmative action is going to hurt black people, and therefore I support it. But I also conclude that since that will be the effect of it, anyone who opposes affirmative action must want to hurt black people, and therefore is racist. That assumes that they agree with my line of logic, when they probably actually don't. That could be because one or both of us is mistaken. Affirmative action may be right, but not for the reasons I think, or it may be wrong for reasons other than what my opponent thinks. But I'm making an easy error in assuming that they share my beliefs about the implications of their thinking.
People by and large don't seem to spend a lot of time understanding someone's reasoning for holding a position if it's a position they oppose. That makes the world a fertile field for straw men and blanket categorizations.
Posted by: Gretchen | February 4, 2008 10:39 AM
Nice blog. Thank you.
Posted by: Ian | February 4, 2008 10:51 AM
While I can agree that in part it's a cognitive shortcut, in this case there are a lot of nasty realities for even the best pro-lifers (who, for clarity here, I will call strictly anti-abortion, as opposed to the others who have sullied a pure position), who would actually support social programs to support pregnant women who didn't have money, and then support a social program framework which supported those unwanted children in an effective manner. Pro-life up and down the spectrum. Not just 'pro-babies-being-born.'
First, it is documented (and I'm doing this quickly, so you'll have to forgive me lack of citations) that when abortion is illegal, the number of illegal abortions goes up out of sheer necessity, and illegal unsafe abortions mean dead women. Women have been (attempting to) abort children for hundreds of years with good, fair reasons that have nothing to do with hating children or disrespecting life. It's better to risk their life destroying the fetus than half a dozen other bad outcomes. For money, to keep from being beaten, because they were raped to cause it as part of a genocidal war, it will kill them, whatever. Those conditions will always be part of the landscape.
Secondly, anti-abortion, no matter where you honestly believe life begins, requires you to accept that women mean less than potential babies at some point. Not real babies. Potential babies. Things that could turn into babies. The step beyond eggs and sperm separately. Their lives, their choices, their everything means less than something growing inside them. It may not be 'hate', but it is flat out saying that women, and their wants and needs, mean less than any possible child. That is the reality of it. You can do it with a smile on your lips and a song in your heart, but it's still not a pro-woman stance. It is, at best, a _slightly_ anti-women stance. It isn't about how you feel about it, it's about how it actually is.
A wacky sci-fi scenario which basically lays this dichotomy flat out is, 'Imagine a world where aliens, who we had recognized as fully sentient and as valuable as humans, and biologically compatible with humans, except for the fact that both human men and human women could become pregnant with a 100% alien baby. And the aliens insist that once this happens, that nobody be allowed to stop the gestation.'
Basically nobody on the pro-life side would buy that, and yet, to be absolutely logically and morally consistent, you have to, because their life is just as valuable as yours. But it wouldn't fly. Why? Because the outcry would be 'Are you trying to tell me that humans are worth less than aliens? What about our people?' And that right there lays out _exactly_ how most everyone would think it actually was, were it not for that pesky 'But it's okay when it's our women, that's what they're supposed to do' argument.
The realities of our world are that if someone is anti-abortion, they are at least in part against giving women a chance to take control of their own lives. And in America, that's about as bad as it gets. And when the best case is being anti-freedom, the worst case is... mighty damn bad. It isn't about what they think the results of their reasoning are. It is about what the reality of the results of their reasoning is.
I know people with reservations and squicks towards abortion. It happens. But when it moves into policy, it's not about your squick anymore. And as long as people try to make it policy, it will be an ugly, ugly argument forever.
-Mecha
Posted by: Mecha | February 4, 2008 10:53 AM
(singing) One of these things is not like the other...
The trouble with your argument is that, unlike in the examples you give, the 'sneering dismissal' of abortion opponents has a genuine factual basis to it; that is, anyone who genuinely believes that a fetus is fully human and thus that abortion is (premeditated, and therefore first-degree) murder would support the same penalties for a mother who has an abortion as for any other murderer or accessory to murder (death, if they support the death penalty, a long prison term otherwise). Very very few abortion rights opponents in this country support penalties equivalent to murder for women who have abortions, which suggests that they don't genuinely believe that a fetus is a human being, which makes it a fair question to ask why exactly they oppose abortion.
And it doesn't help the anti-abortion-does-not-equal-mysogony case that one of the main arguments against penalizing women is that all/most women are forced into abortions or don't really understand what an abortion is - that is to say, the anti-abortion-rights crowd claim that women, like children, lack moral culpability for their actions. I'm not certain how this doesn't reveal a certain level of mysogony.
You've probably seen this chart before, but it's worth linking again.
Posted by: ithaqua | February 4, 2008 10:57 AM
There are a few pro-lifers who are actively politically campaigning to make abortion illegal, who are also working to provide rape crisis services, to make adoption cheaper and easier, to encourage marriage and adoption by every responsible person who wants to do so (regardless of sexual orientation), who are working for equal pay for women so they have an enhanced ability to make these choices, ect. ect. There are even a few of these who are also vegetarian- who's 'pro-life' stance extends not just to human lives, but who's entire life philosophy is geared toward minimizing suffering. These people I am sure are not passively misogynistic. The rest of them, I am not so sure about.
Posted by: Becca | February 4, 2008 11:02 AM
I'm glad to see this conversation continue and touch upon other subjects where emotional debate can easily cloud our perceptions. I think it is valuable that we engage in discussions without demonizing and generalizationing the motives and positions of those we oppose. The debate has far too many complexities and variables to be anything but a personal decision in the end. It was obvious to me in the previous discussion that the misogeny comment did nothing to help clarify the issue except to show how emotionally charged it is, and that I believe we all knew (ok I'm generalizing) before we read the posts.
Posted by: JoH | February 4, 2008 11:16 AM
"So long as they remain unconcerned about this -- a lack of concern that seems to me quite rational -- I am suspicious of their sudden concern when a woman causes this on purpose."
It's quite possible to make a distinction between course of nature and deliberate action. We do it all the time when it comes to a child dying of disease vs. murder, where only the latter is a cause for outrage and positive legal action.
Again: just because WE can argue that something is inconsistent and morally unconvincing as an excuse doesn't mean that people don't already have answers to criticisms like you are making. You may find those answers unconvincing yourself, but them holding to reasoning you think is wrong is not the same thing as believing that it's secretly insincere.
Same goes for the anti-birth control vs. anti-abortion thing. Many of these people hold the position that both are just plain wrong, and neither should be allowed or encouraged even if one might hurt the other. The alleged inconsistency here is, again, more a matter of hostile characterization than grappling with the actual position.
Posted by: Bad | February 4, 2008 11:19 AM
Banning abortion would effectively force women to bear children. How is that not misogynist?
Posted by: dc | February 4, 2008 11:20 AM
dc,
Please understand I'm not anti-abortion, but lets use that same logic this way:
"Advocating child support laws forces men to support children they didn't want. How is this not misandrist?"
The trick is accepting that a fetus is a human life. If you do that, then of course it has just as many rights, but no more than, the adult female. You can't kill another person for convenience sake. The example I used works because the child isn't at fault if the man doesn't want it, it's still a person and has the right to be supported. If the fetus is a human it has the right to not be terminated.
Again, I'm not advocating that position, just explaining the logic.
Posted by: Butch | February 4, 2008 11:41 AM
Butch: financial support is not equivalent to giving over your body to a highly specialised and invasive parasite for 9 months. Paying child support is not potentially fatal, but pregnancy is. You can't demand the use of another person's internal organs, even to support your own life. The fact that so many people fail to see that is what leads to many of the charges of misogyny. It's almost like some people don't even see women as human, since the right to bodily autonomy is about as fundamental as human rights get.
Oh, and the mythical abortion on demand in the third trimester is just that: mythical. Third trimester abortions are almost always strictly for urgent medical necessity, in cases where the life of both mother and foetus is immediately threatened by the continuation of the pregnancy. And even then, they're pretty rare.
Posted by: Dunc | February 4, 2008 11:57 AM
Ed,
I agree with you that demonizing the opposition is taking a lazy shortcut. That's a big part of the explanation. I'd like to add a second part - By demonizing your opponent, you're no longer merely participating in a debate, you're now heroically doing battle against evil. Makes you feel _good_ to be such a courageous hero instead of just a debater.
Lazy behavior that inflates your ego. How powerful a drug is that?
Posted by: EK | February 4, 2008 11:57 AM
Great post, Ed.
I think this is something that needs to be pointed out more. I've been accused of being a mysognist by certain feminists simply for disagreeing with them, heck, even for not completely toeing the line where I agree with them. It seems like 'mysoginy' is an overused word, in general. I somehow don't think there are as many people out there "hating women" as the use of that word would imply. Heck, one can even be a sexist jerk without necessarily hating women.
But as you say, it is easier to label someone with something that you can then safely ignore as "evil" and not worth listening to than it is to actually adress the content of what someone says. In times past I saw a similar phenomenon with debates I had with those of the more right-wing bent - their dirty word is now 'liberal' so they labeled everything and anything they disagreed with as 'liberal' or they'd label you a 'liberal' and then you could be safely ignored as automatically discredited.
Posted by: Disgusted Beyond Belief | February 4, 2008 12:19 PM
"Russell: Don't forget the anti-choice folks who are also against birth control and comprehensive sex-ed."
Well, some are and some aren't. My sister is a member of a rather loony (to my view) fundamentalist church. Someone visited their church to talk aobut abortion. He said that their opponents say that all abortion opponents are also against birth control, but (he said) "We are, after all."
He was met with stony silence. Most of the women in that congregation were not opposed to birth control.
On the larger point, I suspect a fear of the slippery slope. If I give my opponent credit fro actual thought, rather than calling him lazy or stupid or evil, then I am giving ground. If he does have well thought out positions, is not my position weaker? I am (or at least feel that I am) on stronger ground if I insist that creationists are all deluded or stupid.
(I don't actually feel that way. Just using myself as an example)
Posted by: BaldApe | February 4, 2008 12:21 PM
Well, when the debate becomes centered on women as rational, thinking people and not as people who are willing to abort on the whims of the time, then I'll allow the pro life side some slack. Right now, they feed into a misogynistic stereotype because they behave that way. Their rhetoric, when they admit there is a woman involved in the abortion debate at all, is so demeaning to women it would make me cringe if I weren't misogynistic. To wit: women want to abort because being pregnant would interfere with a trip they had planned; women want to abort because they want to fit into clothes for some event (usually a prom dress); women want to abort because that's their birth control. When you have the pro life side represented by Randall Terry (Operation Rescue), Phyllis Schlafly, James Dobson, Pat Robertson, Rick Santorum, etc., and others poohpoohing the very real medical problems some women face with pregnancy and childbirth, it's hard to look at them and think they are NOT anti-women.
Posted by: BC | February 4, 2008 12:42 PM
EK said:
Apparently very powerful. Sci-fi author David Brin has written an essay on his website as an open letter to researchers to study whether self-righteous indignation can be addictive. He speculates that this may be part of the reason for the degeneration of our public discourse into culture war in recent years.
Posted by: Big C | February 4, 2008 12:45 PM
BC - I don't think anyone is denying that some anti-abortionists are misogynistic, but once again, you can't lump them all together with generalities or expect to know their motives. Most extremists on either side are irrational but it doesn't help the debate to use them as examples of the entire movement. You are falling into the good vs evil debate, I don't know any rationally minded folk that would agree with or use your examples and some of them are pro-life.
Posted by: JoH | February 4, 2008 12:59 PM
"Such arguments are made as a means of a priori dismissal. They tend to cloud our judgment rather than aid in it. Once we've decided that the contrary position is not just wrong but evil, all serious thought about the subject ceases. So does all meaningful communication."
Well said - as is the entire piece. But it is clear from the comments above that it falls on deaf ears. Deaf ears like mine, when I listen to the absolutist "Abortion is a divine sacrament of our autonomy" crowd above.
Posted by: Sweating Through Fog | February 4, 2008 1:02 PM
"I'm pro-choice myself, but is it really that difficult to imagine that someone could sincerely be convinced that abortion is murder, period, and therefore must be stopped?"
It is, somewhat, because not only would one have to understand incredibly little about neurological development in the womb (no brain, no pain), but would also have to have no interest in learning about the subject, nor in dealing with the comparatively far greater number of spontaneous abortions, nor in considering future suffering of both parents and their unwanted children, nor in understanding the "skin cell" rebuttal to the potential person argument.
It is hard to imagine this particular constellation of beliefs and lack of knowledge surviving for any period of time without being shored up by religious convictions (and, unless there's one I don't know about, all of the anti-abortion religions are highly misogynist). Hard to imagine, but not impossible, I guess.
Posted by: Jason Failes | February 4, 2008 1:19 PM
I'm nominally pro-choice myself (but wish to see the rate of abortion go down considerably; abortion of a healthy fetus is a very sad thing to me) but I'd like to rebut Jason Failes somewhat. I know some pro-lifers who are very passionate about their position (though they do feel that if the mother would die, abortion is acceptable). They are not lacking in understanding. These people (I'm thinking of three specific people at the moment) are very well-versed in fetal development, and fascinated by the process. They know that in the early stages of the pregnancy, the baby does not feel pain. Yet they do not feel this is enough to make abortion acceptable. It is not because it's a potential person -- to them, it already *is* a person. They are not misogynist. They are not excessively religious. What they are is afraid of a slippery slope where we decide that certain people are not people just because they lack certain mental faculties.
I disagree with them. I do not deny that such a slippery slope could exist. (Most people would agree that an anencephalic could be aborted, morally, but what about others? Down's Syndrome, for instance? It's a gray area. My feeling is that we should avoid drawing a line in the sand because in the situations which lead to abortion, things are already complicated. The parents would not be considering abortion if the situation were simple enough for an arbitrary line in the sand (such as the capacity for sentience) to be useful. I think abortion is much like war -- a horrible, tragic, evil thing, and something which nevertheless sometimes becomes necessary. It is important to conduct it with compassion, wisdom, and a full knowledge of what's being done. That's the closest we can get to being sure the right thing is done, in my opinion.
I see pro-lifers demonizing pro-choicers and vice versa all the time. And the sad thing is, I've found that most of them actually agree on most of it. But they're too busy hating one another to notice.
Great article. I will certainly be returning to this blog to read more.
Posted by: Calli Arcale | February 4, 2008 1:38 PM
Except even a completely real, fully grown person could not coopt someone else's body to use for life support. So they obviously think there's something about women that gives them less right to their own body than we would normally give to a human.
And it seems to me they are deciding that people are automatically worth something because of some kind of soul, which is, in some people's books at least, excessively religious.
Posted by: nicole | February 4, 2008 1:48 PM
Whole lot of lumpin' goin' on. Take a side, discuss opponents' motivations in terms of their perceived goals, get accused of intellectual inadequacy.
It's kind of tempting to infer that a convenient cognitive shortcut is on display...
More to the point: if there is a thoughtful, non-misogynistic component to the anti-choice movement, it remains deep in the rear echelons, unrepresented by that movement's rhetoric, leadership, or street activists. The closest any of them come to "supporting women" (that I've observed, in about eighteen years of pro-choice work) is advocating the sorts of programs that Ed Brayton would instantly denounce as coercive nanny-state-ism.
Posted by: Pierce R. Butler | February 4, 2008 2:02 PM
dc -
Banning abortion would effectively force women to bear children.
Umm, it would? Then how is it exactly, that I know many, many women who have never once had an abortion, yet have also never once been forced to bear a child?
When you have the pro life side represented by Randall Terry (Operation Rescue), Phyllis Schlafly, James Dobson, Pat Robertson, Rick Santorum, etc., and others poohpoohing the very real medical problems some women face with pregnancy and childbirth, it's hard to look at them and think they are NOT anti-women.
No one is saying that there aren't a whole lot of misogynists on the anti-choice side. I daresay that there is no one on that list that isn't a misogynist. That does not mean that every anti-choicer is a misogynist.
Jason Failes -
It is, somewhat, because not only would one have to understand incredibly little about neurological development in the womb (no brain, no pain), but would also have to have no interest in learning about the subject, nor in dealing with the comparatively far greater number of spontaneous abortions, nor in considering future suffering of both parents and their unwanted children, nor in understanding the "skin cell" rebuttal to the potential person argument.
Ignorance a misogynist doth not make. In a perfect world, everyone would be exceptionally well educated and capable of discerning bullshit propaganda for what it is. In reality, there are a whole lot of folks, who for a variety of reasons, buy into all sorts of propaganda that bears little, if any relationship to the truth. This is true in the abortion discussion, the discussion of science education, discussion of environmental issues (on every side), discussions of alty-"medicine," animal rights discussions, gay rights discussions and probably every issue under the sun.
Sometimes the ignorance is willful, probably most of the time. But often enough, the ignorance exists for lack of any understanding otherwise.
I am reminded of a discussion I got into in Clay Center, Kansas, when I went to meet my biological father for the first time. Clay Center exists solely because it is where the grain co-op and Clay county government (such as it is) has to be somewhere. I was eighteen at the time, spending my days hitch-hiking the U.S. I had multiple earings in both ears, hair halfway down my back and a very pretty-boy appearance.
As I was sitting in the only diner around, having breakfast and a coffee, I was approached by a farmer who asked; "Are you one of them queerfolk? (actually his first question was about whether or not I was one of Tom Cook's boys) There was a total lack of malice or disdain in his demeanor, he was truly just curious. So I said no, but I mentioned that a fairly large percentage of my friends are. The next question, again without malice or disdain was; "Why is it that them queers are so fond of sex with small animals?" We ended up spending the better part of three hours talking about gays and clearing up the vast misconceptions he had about homosexuality.
Before talking to me, he was pretty well against gay rights. This was not because he has any hatred or malice towards men who want to have relationships with other men, it was entirely due to his total ignorance about gays. Mostly based on the notion that gays like to have sex with animals and the worse, children. It never occurred to him that the sources he had learned about gays from, might just be very biased. I think the same is true of a lot of people and their opinions about a variety of issues.
This is just not nearly as black and white as some folks here would have it. I think that trying to claim that everyone who is anti-choice is a misogynist, merely serves to further alienate people who are anything but, who merely come to the conclusion they have, because of ignorance rather than malice. Calling them such, merely puts our rhetoric on the same level of that of everyone on dc's list which I quote above.
Posted by: DuWayne | February 4, 2008 2:07 PM
From a government standpoint, the debate should be about competing rights. At what point does a human organism's right to life trump another human organism's right to manipulate its body.
Biologically, as soon as an embryo is fertilized, it becomes a living organism of the species Homo sapiens. This does not make the organism a person with all rights and privileges. Until a human organism reaches 35 years of age in the US, the person does not have all rights and privileges. There is a sliding scale where a human organism acquires more rights as it increases in development. From conception to 35 years, right are being acquired.
There are no easy answers to this question. This is why I think that there is so little common ground. There are variety of ways people can disagree. They can disagree over whether or not the right to live can ever trump the right of another person to what they want with their body. They disagree about the points in development where person hood is aquired. There is no objective measure to test what is right. Each person can legitimately come up with a different conclusion.
Posted by: Mike | February 4, 2008 2:11 PM
financial support is not equivalent to giving over your body to a highly specialised and invasive parasite for 9 months.
Wow, talk about misogynistic. Do you really consider pregnant women to simply be hosts for invasive parasites? What kind of a sick thinking leads to such an absurd charaterization? I mean, I've heard some bat-shit crazy rhetoric from both sides in these debates, but wow! Placental mammals don't really go through fetal development, they simply pass through a parasitic larval stage!
Posted by: tonyl | February 4, 2008 2:12 PM
I had to bow out of the previous thread because I found myself getting a lot more ticked off than I wanted to be or should have been, but let me just say this: any pro-life position that would result in or support government action to prevent women from seeking medical services is in my opinion inherently discriminatory, if not outright mysogenistic.
I'm not sure that there is a meaningful distinction between those two words in this case. Basically, if you think women are legally equivalent to fetuses, then you are a mysogenist in my opinion. It simply isn't relevant if they think such a thing is the moral position, it isn't important if it results in discrimminatory law. I don't care why people think gays shouldn't be able to get married either. If they think it, they're going to get an unkind label and they probably deserve it.
As an aside, for those of us who think there may be limits at the end of pregnancy but not an outright ban, I don't think the term "pro-life" really applies. So no, that or just not wanting to do it yourself would not get me to label you either pro-life or mysogenistic (unless no exception for mother's health or life were made, in which case all bets are off).
As such, to me this is the equivalent of arguing that some people who support bans on gay marriage don't hate gay people. Of course they don't hate them, they just think discrimminatory legislation is acceptable. It seems a bit tomayto tomahto.
Posted by: Leni | February 4, 2008 2:21 PM
Cali -
I do not deny that such a slippery slope could exist. (Most people would agree that an anencephalic could be aborted, morally, but what about others? Down's Syndrome, for instance? It's a gray area.
Just had a baby on December thirteenth. Mid-summer, we were called into an appointment with the maternal fetal medicine people, to discuss further DS tests and their implications. The nurse who called, talked to me and implied that there was a fairly significant risk of DS, which is why we needed to come in (turned out to be a one in forty chance, based on the previous results). Before we even went in, there was little discussion and no question. If the tests were postive, we were going to terminate the pregnancy. This would have been very hard and very painful for our whole family, but with a son who has fairly extreme ADHD, there is no way we could begin to justify bringing an exceptionally special needs child into our ranks. Even that aside, neither my partner, nor I, have the patience and fortitude to deal with a severely retarded child.
(but wish to see the rate of abortion go down considerably; abortion of a healthy fetus is a very sad thing to me)
I would like to see the rate of abortion go down, because with very few exceptions, the situation that led to the abortion, was unsafe sex. Being a condom nut (I usually have some on me and happily pass them out when given the opportunity) and sometimes HIV/AIDS activist, I am a very strong proponent of educating people out of dangerous sexual habits.
nicole -
Except even a completely real, fully grown person could not coopt someone else's body to use for life support. So they obviously think there's something about women that gives them less right to their own body than we would normally give to a human.
But their attitude is, that the women made the bad choices that led to her getting pregnant. Thus they would argue that if she didn't want her body co-opted, she should have either worn a condom or not had the sex.
Pierce Butler -
More to the point: if there is a thoughtful, non-misogynistic component to the anti-choice movement, it remains deep in the rear echelons, unrepresented by that movement's rhetoric, leadership, or street activists.
The shrill extremists, always get the podium. Moderates are underrepresented in virtually every movement you could list. Of course it's buried in the rear escholon, as it were. Such moderates are sometimes even denounced by the more extreme anti-choicers, as not really serious about the problem. Kind of like Phelps protesting Jerry Falwell's funeral.
Gods know that as a staunch political moderate, many of my orientations on a host of issues are almost entirely unrepresented. Is that my fault? I do everything I can to get those views out there. I find quite often that my moderate views are in line, or close to those of a whole lot of people, yet no matter how much little old me tries to get them out there, it's the extremists who get the most press.
The closest any of them come to "supporting women" (that I've observed, in about eighteen years of pro-choice work) is advocating the sorts of programs that Ed Brayton would instantly denounce as coercive nanny-state-ism.
Ed isn't exactly supporting their position here, any more than I am. This is all about sorting out the rhetoric to fit the argument. The only claim being made, is that not all anti-choicers are misogynists. This is not to be taken as an endorsement of their positions. I daresay that anything relating to abortion that they could come up with, would be denounced by Ed, regardless of nannystateism.
Posted by: DuWayne | February 4, 2008 2:32 PM
A quote from a previous comment:
"I'm not sure that there is a meaningful distinction between those two words in this case. Basically, if you think women are legally equivalent to fetuses, then you are a mysogenist in my opinion."
How is it misogynistic to think that a female fetus' right to life might trump a woman's right to do what she wants with her body? It is not hatred of females to think that one female's right may trump another female's right.
Posted by: Mike | February 4, 2008 2:57 PM
Wow, talk about misogynistic. Do you really consider pregnant women to simply be hosts for invasive parasites? [My emphasis]
No - I consider pregnant women to be full human beings. Why should the choice of a pejorative term for the foetus reflect anything about my ideas about women? They are not defined by pregnancy.
From a purely functional perspective, the developing zygote / blastocyst / foetus is a parasite. And every pregnant woman I've ever talked to about the subject has agreed on that - especially towards the end of the third trimester.
Posted by: Dunc | February 4, 2008 3:00 PM
Exactly. The plural implies that disagreement is acceptable, while we all know that there is one and only one answer that is both easy and unassailably correct - mine!
Posted by: MattXIV | February 4, 2008 3:09 PM
Bad:
Yes, intentional harm is targeted differently by the legal system. But even natural diseases are targeted by other efforts. There have been huge efforts to reduce and treat childhood diseases such as measles and polio. Practically every Christian church is eager to participate in various charity efforts aimed at other childhood diseases. But this one form of natural death they ignore, which if they are consistent to their claimed principles is the single largest cause of human death ever.
Now, I think it quite rational to ignore the failure to implant as a problem. Zygotes are neither conscious nor hard to produce, and at the point they fail to implant, no one has much invested in them. But by their own rhetoric, those opposed to abortion should view this as catastrophic as malaria, measles, and all other diseases combined.
Posted by: Russell | February 4, 2008 3:26 PM
I rather like the "convenient cognitive shortcuts". From where else does one even begin to make sense of things without them?
It seems to me that it's reasonable to have shortcuts for the majority held positions of each group as a conceptual starting point and have the individual exceptions follow afterward.
While it may be true that you could find a Nazi who doesn't claim to hate Jews, the platform they subscribe to justifies, in my mind, my convenient cognitive shortcuts about how i label Nazis.
How else can we even talk about things without having some cognitive shortcut when discussing any group?
It is probably true that not all fundamentalists are homophobic, but does it really matter if someone who supports an official government policy of discrimination towards gays then paradoxically claims not to hate them?
Posted by: Caliban | February 4, 2008 3:32 PM
"While it may be true that you could find a Nazi who doesn't . . ."
Goodwins Law strikes again, and as always I'm sure it will elevate the discussion.
Posted by: Sweating Through Fog | February 4, 2008 3:51 PM
Mike: you evidently think that a mass of immature cells with absolutely no capacity for higher thought and (only possibly) minimal capacity for physical sensation is equal to a conscious adult woman in terms of personhood. Explain to me please, how does this not make you misogynistic?
Ed: I don't think your word choice of "sincere" is a particularly good one. People can very sincerely, and with the best will in the world, hold some quite vile attitudes. My own grandmother was entirely sincere in her belief that the worst thing niggers (her word, NOT mine) ever did was sue for civil rights, because that brought about the downfall of American civilisation. She was quite sincere in her belief that niggers would have been better off if they had just let whites make the decisions for them. She wasn't being "evil" -- she didn't think or feel this way because she had a personal emnity against blacks -- she just had a very sincere concern about society going to hell in a handbasket and thought that society had taken a wrong turn and ought to go back in order to stabilise and make everyone's life better. Wasn't that caring of her?
And aside from that:
Here is the simple reality -- there are countries in the world (El Salvador, Chile and Colombia, amongst others -- see http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/09/magazine/09abortion.html for more) where abortion is completely forbidden. The result -- that illegal abortions are the number 1 cause of death for women of childbearing age. Anyone who fails to take this into account, or who posits that "it's worth it", is demonstrating to the world precisely the value that they put on the life of a woman. It's hard to see how that is not just a teensy bit misogynistic.
I'm willing to accept that not all "pro-life"/anti-choice people think that grown women don't have full value as human beings, but by putting the value of a not-yet-fully-a-person potential human over their lives...well, it's a hard inference not to draw.
Posted by: Luna_the_cat | February 4, 2008 4:07 PM
Caliban -
It is probably true that not all fundamentalists are homophobic, but does it really matter if someone who supports an official government policy of discrimination towards gays then paradoxically claims not to hate them?
Absolutely it does. Indeed, it is a very important distinction. A homophobe cannot and will not be turned. The fear and hatred involved make any kind of rational, intelligent discourse impossible. OTOH, someone who is coming from a position based only in ignorance, without the hate and fear, can be reasoned with. While it may be more trouble than you find it worth, to try to reason with such a person, it is not the futile effort that debating true bigotry would be.
This is exactly the point of this post. When we just lump everyone who carries some belief, with everyone who's position is similar, we are engaging in intellectual dishonesty and intellectual laziness. We are in effect, saying that it is futile and pointless to talk to any of these folks, because they are all the same and none of them will listen.
Yet history shows the lie in this. If that was true, people could still be shut into mental institutions for being gay. People could still be prosecuted for having an abortion. People could still be imprisoned for having the audacity to marry someone with different colored skin. The only way to actually forward the goals of any movement, is the recognize that one's opponents are most certainly not all the same. To recognize that it is possible to turn some of them and thus the movement grows and change happens.
Because this is the ultimate "sin" in this intellectually lazy attitude; it hampers the very goals one espouses. Sure it might feel good, the way that being a martyr filled with righteous indignation, can give one a sense of superiority. But it is a hollow place, because all that you're really doing in ceding the battle to the enemy.
Unless of course, you honestly believe that gay rights can wait, or that it is such a sure thing, that changing minds doesn't matter. And the same can be said of abortion rights. While I don't see a huge step back on the horizon, abortion rights are not an absolute certainty. Activism is about changing hearts and minds. Calling someone a misogynist Neanderthal, is not conducive to that effort. Neither is calling someone a homophobic bigot. (which isn't to say that I've never done just that)
Posted by: DuWayne | February 4, 2008 4:16 PM
Why can't a simple measure be used, such as 'if a "baby" can live with X probability (60%? 90%?) out side the womb then it's murder, if it can't then it's not'? Don't we really have to define the 'murder' point, and make it consistent, before we can have any other discussion? I mean if a teen can give birth prematurely and then 'kill' the baby and go to jail, but not go to jail if she had just gone to the doctor at the very same point in the pregnancy aren't we being dishonest with ourselves?
Posted by: naive | February 4, 2008 5:17 PM
DuWayne,
If someone online (as this is the only likely circumstance under which such a discussion will occur with me)states that they are a religous fundamentalist (of whatever Abrahamic religon) it seems reasonable to assume certain things about that person.
Namely, the nature of certain beliefs they are likely to hold and their scriptual justifications for them. In such a case, i would assume thier beliefs would have something to do with the Old Testament. The OT is not ambiguous about how gays should be treated. If I should then learn that said Fundamentalist does not abide by what the OT says about gays, then fine, my assumption is proved wrong in this instance. (At this point one might ask how someone could identify as a Fundamentalist and yet reject what it has to say about gays.)
However, my initial assumption is still warranted given what most fundamentalist believe. That is why such self-identifying vocabulary exists in the first place. Fundamentalists want to differentuate themselves from other groups. Just as every self-labeled group does.
Posted by: Caliban | February 4, 2008 5:23 PM
no, they don't need to be misogynists. they could be also genuinely deluded, or indoctrinated into mindlessly parroting the party line. Whether it is better, is up to you.
Posted by: T_U_T | February 4, 2008 5:36 PM
Excellent post.
I think it would be fun to include ID-related hypotheses in a xenobiology course. I mean, as long as you're speculating about whether an aquatic species could ever develop advanced technology, what life would be like with three sexes, how to detect life not-as-we-know-it, and so on, why not include questions like:
"If life were designed and then allowed to evolve naturally, how long would evidence of design persist?"
"How would we detect (past or current) intervention in evolution by some external entity?"
Of course, the students would have to know a lot about evolution to understand the material, but (in line with the theme of your essay) surely there must be some people interested in intelligent design that would meet this criterion. Right?
Posted by: Ford | February 4, 2008 6:04 PM
Caliban -
I think it is entirely obvious that you have a very limited experience with fundies. I do not. My mom, Ed's step-mom is one. And she is a shining example of a very non-bigoted person, who does not support marriage equality, for example. Who, indeed, believes that homosexuality is a sin.
This same women, also spent years helping my uncle, who had AIDS. She welcomed him into our home, when he was first diagnosed and spent a considerable amount of her time helping out with the store he opened to help support the house he opened for persons with HIV/AIDS. She has always been very loving of every gay friend of mine, whom she has come into contact with, the same is true of the friends of other family members.
There are plenty of people in the church I often attend, who believe that homosexuality is a sin. At the same time, they have been just as loving towards the two gay couples who have at times attended, as they are with anyone else. Hell, they even accept me and at times have put me into temporary leadership positions in the church, in spite of the fact that I quite openly disavow a large portion of the churches dogma.
As for the old testament attitudes about homosexuality, they justify it the same way they justify not stoning adulterers and unruly children, by accepting that while these commandments are still valid, Christ died to be the sacrifice for those sins. They don't see homosexuality as any different than any other sin. Agree with them or not (I don't) but they are not being hypocritical about it. They honestly believe it is their absolute duty to love everyone, accept everyone and help those who live in sin to find salvation in Christ. After that, they see it as the work of the Holy Spirit to make the changes in the person.
I don't buy any of it. While I am not an atheist by any stretch, I absolutely reject revealed religious pretense. It is strange that I ended up in a rather theologically conservative congregation, but it was the underlying consistency and the strings free love that they had to offer, that kept me coming back. They would, by most definitions, be considered fundamentalists. Yet there is only one person in the whole congregation that is homophobic and bigoted.
Posted by: DuWayne | February 4, 2008 6:04 PM
naive:
When medical technology advances to the point that every frozen embryo can be brought to term in an artificial womb, is it then a legal obligation to do so? We, in the 21st century, shouldn't be discussing these issues as if technology won't advance in this area.
Posted by: Russell | February 4, 2008 6:10 PM
DuWaune,
For the record, i used to be a fundamentalist myself. So, i think i have at least some idea of what being a fundamentalist means.
It doesn't matter if one thinks you they are "nice" to gays and vote for a candidate running on keeping gays as second class citizens, which, in fact, they are.
This makes me think of slave owners saying: "they don't hate negos at all, in fact, my Dad is very nice and kindly towards his slaves. He just dosn't believe that they're equal to us in God's scheme." What's the difference?
Being "nice" is no substitue for equality and voting for government sancitioned descrimination is not defensible, no matter how "nice" one thinks they are to the descriminated group in question.
Posted by: Caliban | February 4, 2008 6:15 PM
Re: Russell
Miscarriage is not a wholly natural phenomenon. A great deal of the miscarriage rate depends on the age and lifestyle of the parents. The older the woman (and the man - most spontaneous abortions are caused by chromosomal abnormalities, which occur in the sperm just as often as the egg), the higher the rate of miscarriage. And things like smoking cigarettes, etc.
So what we have here with sex leading to conception is an activity that's about 25% likely to end an innocent life. That may be an acceptable risk - after all, we do have to have children. However, if you're talking about a 45 year male smoker having sex, the miscarriage rate from any conceptions are probably going to be around 50%. What I would liken this scenario to is driving. Driving is an activity that we know is going to kill thousands of people this year, but we need to be able to drive. However, this 45 year old male smoker having sex is the equivalent of somebody driving 100 mph on the highway. You go to jail for that. A 45 year old male smoker having unprotected sex with his 45 year old diabetic wife during her fertile period - I wouldn't be surprised if the miscarriage rate approaches 95% for that. But this exact scenario will probably happen a thousand times in the course of today.
The obvious solution here is to outlaw sex for smokers, people with diabetes, people over the age of 30, etc, etc. There were 1 million miscarriages in the US in 1999 (vastly underreported as most spontaneous abortions occur before 6 weeks and many are not even noticed by the woman, much less reported). These types of rules would probably wind up saving hundreds of thousands of lives. Of course, these rules are ridiculous, and nobody is advocating them. But the thing is, if you engaged in any other activity besides sex that had a 50% chance of killing somebody, you'd find yourself in jail very quickly. Sex is not an unregulatable activity - HIV positive people that have indiscriminate sex without informing their partner can be sent to jail. But nobody is going to even think about bringing up the fact that middle-aged married people having sex kills hundreds of thousands of 'people' a year.
Nobody thinks that a fetus is a person. Nobody. They might place a fetus on the status of a dog or a cat. But given the choice between saving 1,000 embryos and a human child, I have yet to meet one prolife person that would not save the child. And anybody that would save one person while letting 1000 people die is monstrous. Pro-life people that want abortion outlawed are either stupid, ignorant, or misogynists.
Posted by: Brian | February 4, 2008 6:21 PM
Caliban -
I am not trying to say they are right or justify where they throw their votes, I am merely arguing that they are not in fact homophobic bigots. Many people don't see this as an important distinction, but it is. Especially so in regards to the discussion of abortion, where it is even less futile to attempt to move someone. People who are inherently homophobic and bigoted, like people who are inherently misogynists (oft the two go hand in hand) are never likely to change. They have a firm grounding in the hate and nothings likely to change that. Efforts to do so are nearly always futile. OTOH, people who are not those things, are far more likely to change.
You say you used to be a fundy. Then I would assume that you carried all the anti-gay, anti-choice baggage that often accompanies that. Were you actually homophobic? Were you actually a misogynist? I am guessing, that like me, you were not. I am also assuming that like me, your attitudes changed. So in effect, you and I (Ed too, BTW) are all proof of my assertion.
Even my mom is, to a degree. Before my uncle was diagnosed with AIDS, which put her in far greater contact with homosexuals, she was far worse about gay rights. I daresay she was never homophobic, always believed in love the sinner, hate the sin, above all else. Even the process of dealing with my uncle and the Rainbow House, she still held back. But over the years and I think as a result of interaction with my sibs and our gay friends, she has fallen back to the last hold out, marriage equality. Now this is to me, not enough. And I go the rounds with her about it fairly regularly. But she has come a long ways in changes, largely due to the fact that she has never been homophobic, never been bigoted.
So yes, this is a very important distinction to make and one that is equally important to make in regards to the abortion issue. Please, do not take what I am saying as a defense or justification for the positions these people take. I absolutely do not agree with them. I am absolutely five hundred percent for gay rights and personal autonomy. Probably more so than a lot of folks here. But I do think that there are important distinctions to be made, because the only way to foment change, is to recognize those distinctions, in regards to who it will be possible to influence and with whom it really is just an exercise in futility.
Posted by: DuWayne | February 4, 2008 6:33 PM
There are some pretty mysogynist people wrapped in the prochoice mantle. There are plenty of them that support abortion because they want to push eugenics, or because they are interested in population control, or because of racism. I have to actively remind myself that they're in the minority statistically, because so many of them rise to the surface in the shouting matches.
I'd say that the dividing line isn't "Which side cares about women?" But "Which side thinks abortion is actually beneficial?"
Frederica Matthews-Green put it succinctly: "Anything that proposes to help women by killing their children has got a lot of explaining to do."
A lot of prolife women (of whom I am one) have as much of a knee-jerk "You must HATE women!" response to a prochoice stand as prochoice women have to a prolife stand. Many of us get the feeling that prochoicers see women as just life support systems for vaginas, exiting purely as sex toys to get vacuumed out like rental cars so we're clean and servicable for the next user. It seems to us that in the prochoice image, women belong on their backs with their knees in the air getting something, be it a penis or a canula, shoved into them by some man who doesn't care any more about them than he cares about the burger flipper who grilled his Big Mac.
I'm not saying that this is STANDARD among prochoicers, just that many of us often get that impression, particularly from a lot of men who self-identify as prochoice.
Posted by: Christina | February 4, 2008 6:53 PM
Russell:
How do we as a society support (justify) the same act being treated differently just because of who does it and where they do it? I've never gotten this. In my mind it's got to be either legal or illegal for both. Personally I'm fine with it being legal to abort at 7 months or for a teen mom to kill a baby born to her at 7 months. they both result in the same thing.
If there's a difference help me see it. thanks. and thanks for a great blog with lots of comments from people way smarter than me.
Posted by: Niave | February 4, 2008 6:57 PM
DuWayne,
Things like bigotry, racism, sexism etc. are not simply black and white issues. It's not as if people are either 100% bigoted or 100% free of bigotry. Certain idealogies reinfoce bigotry while others do not. I feel i don't need to point out examples.
Consider: You have to choose between two options:
Option A: You are an unofficial second class without all of the rights and privledges of everyone else. However, the people most responsible for maintaining your lower status are "nice" to you.
Option B: You are a full citizen and have the same rights as everyone else, however, a certain subset of the population hates "your kind" and is very vocal about it.
Which would you rather have? I don't know about you, but my status as a ciitzen far outweighs weather or not certain groups hate or like me.
This is why it's bigoted to vote for people who run campaigns specificly against gay rights.
Posted by: Caliban | February 4, 2008 6:59 PM
Ed, you're right that there is a coherent philosophical position in which being anti-abortion doesn't entail being mysogynistic -- but no actual person seems to take that position.
I agree with Russell and Brian.
Posted by: Trinifar | February 4, 2008 7:00 PM
Mike wrote:
Because it makes women and fetuses moral and legal equivalents. I don't see how the gender of the fetus, if it could be known, would change that.
********************************
I forgot to mention this in my earlier post.
Ed Wrote:
I'm sorry for sniping at you the other day, but I think these are bad analogies. None of these positions are advocating denying anything, much less medical services or medication, to a specific segment of the population.
Again, this is about a position that advocates legislation barring one group from accessing certain medical procedures specific to their needs. Which is why I think that saying the anti-choice/pro-life position is inherently misogynistic is a lot more like saying that the anti-gay marriage position is inherently homophobic.
***************************************
DuWayne wrote:
Says who? Homophobes can and do change. Still, whether or not they might change in the future has nothing to do with what they advocate in the present. Perhaps you can tell the difference between a person who is simply advocating for legal discrimination against gay people because they think being gay is morally repugnant and those who just generally hate gays.
I can't tell the difference. I think the two things are functionally equivalent. Some people are more vehement then others, to be sure. But they both look like homophobes to me.
Posted by: Leni | February 4, 2008 7:05 PM
Man, there's a lot of negative talk here about cognitive shortcuts. I think C.H. Dalton oughta set y'all straight.
...yeah, I got nothing useful to add.
Posted by: Skemono | February 4, 2008 7:06 PM
I'm not Mike, but I want to point out the error in this statement. Once again we see an overstatement (just as this whole debate began with the overstatement that all anti-choice folks are misogynists). It need not be that the fetus is equal to the mother, but that its interests are not wholly absent.
The pragmatic result would be that the mother's interests may or may not trump the fetus' interests, depending on the situation. Rape or incest give the mother's interests more weight for most Americans. Others also see other factors, such as income and health giving the mother's interests more weight.
Just as very few people would assign no value at all to the fetus's interests, very few people would assign no value at all to the mother's interests. I would be inclined toward agreeing that anyone who assigns no weight to the mother's interest is likely motivated by misogyny. Then we can reasonably debate where the misogyny line is drawn. If someone opposes abortion in the third trimester except for serious health concerns, are they misogynist or not? If someone says the mother's interest trump the fetus's only until the heartbeat begins, is that misogynist?
There's lots of room for intelligent and reasoned debate. But the claim that everyone who opposes abortion is a misogynist is neither intelligent nor reasonable. If the claim means everyone who opposes all abortions, and would never allow any, no matter what the circumstances, then, OK, I think that's reasonably called misogynist because it wholly dismisses the interests of the mother (although that would still leave the female fetus problem another commenter mentioned) . But in that case the claim is much smaller and less sweeping than I have inferred it to be.
What a thread, though! I'm amazed and impressed by it's longevity. Kudos to Ed for supporting its continuation.
Posted by: James Hanley | February 4, 2008 7:08 PM
I don't get it. Are you saying abortion shouldn't be considered beneficial?
Yeah, "children" is much more succinct than "non-sentient beings smaller than your finger yet able to make you physically ill and then take over your entire life." I hate this kind of quote--it's like all women everywhere must just want and love children or else there's something wrong with them.
You know, if you're not pregnant all the time and don't have a million babies, you can actually do something with your life. I'm not pro-choice because it's unsexy to have babies, I'm pro-choice because I don't think women should have to throw away an education or a career for something that doesn't even have a functioning brain.
Posted by: nicole | February 4, 2008 7:22 PM
Naive, one thing to keep in mind is that birth is a biologically significant event. An infant born at 7 months is not the same as a 7 month fetus. When a new infant starts to breathe, the increased serum oxygen levels start the brain working in ways it could not, for the fetus in the womb. If you were to reduce an infant's serum oxygen to what it was for the fetus in the womb, the infant would suffer unconsciousness. And likely worse. (It wouldn't return to the state of a fetus. Biological development is path dependent, and rarely reversible.) To put it simply, an infant breathing outside the womb has started a phase of biological development that was impossible for the fetus. Regardless of when birth occurs. A premature infant might not make it through that phase. But a fetus, no matter what month, hasn't yet reached that phase.
That said, I understand the argument for drawing a legal line not at birth, but at some stage of development prior to birth. And I think that is a perfectly reasonable argument to have, so long as it is based on neurological development, not on the variety of nonsense issues that usually lie behind anti-abortion views.
Posted by: Russell | February 4, 2008 7:31 PM
Re: DuWayne
"Unless of course, you honestly believe that gay rights can wait, or that it is such a sure thing, that changing minds doesn't matter. And the same can be said of abortion rights. While I don't see a huge step back on the horizon, abortion rights are not an absolute ce