On Feb. 6, when William Donohue, leader of the conservative Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, attacked John Edwards’ campaign for hiring two feminist bloggers who had been sharply critical of church doctrine, Frances Kissling declared that Donohue did not speak for all Catholics. It wasn’t the first time Kissling and Donohue squared off, but it would be their last… return to article
-
subscribe to print magazine
-
email this article to a friend
-
Reader Comments (27)Page 1 of 1 pagesThe threats to legal abortion are numerous. Thanks to Kissling for her heroic struggles to preserve safe and legal abortion.
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Mar 23, 2007 at 1:14 PM Wow ! What profound comments by Shitcago’s favorite colostomy bag cabbie above ! Now if we can only get yo’ mama to have a retroactive abortion…........................................................
Posted by blondemike on Mar 23, 2007 at 8:49 PM Surely you don’t oppose safe and legal abortion. According to two well respected University of Chicago economists Roe vs. Wade was responsible for the drastically reduced crime rate throughout the 1990s. This was a positive effect of abortion. Don’t you agree?
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Mar 24, 2007 at 5:24 AM I would have been more content if the article had given a bit more detail regarding the specifics of Kissling’s philosophical points in favor of legal abortion rights. Maybe the article’s scope didn’t include what I would’ve liked to read, but if she’s “the philosopher of the pro-choice movement”, I’d expect to get more than just an admission that that the status of fetal life is rightfully part of the debate. When, actually, it’s the heart of the debate.
I raised a point a few months ago about this topic, in response to another article in which abortion rights was the focus. It was a long-winded question, and got zero response, so I’ll be briefer in hopes of getting something this time.
And so my question: From a humanistic point of view, and particularly a socialistic perspective (which ITT apparently has, as well as many of its readers), can it not be argued that refusing to abort is actually more harmonious with those philosophical orientations than would be the choice to abort? Doesn’t socialism uphold a central value of protecting people, because the value of people is seen to take precedence over claims of rights (e.g. property rights), the unfettered exercise of which might actually result in harm to humans?
I hope someone with that perspective will respond.
Posted by Kuya on Mar 26, 2007 at 5:17 AM As a socialist I can tell you that abortion is considered to be a human right of all women. Reproductive rights are human rights and democratic socialists of all tendencies strongly support human rights. The unborn fetus is NOT considered a human being. Civil and criminal law does not proceed from the assumption that unborn fetus’s are fully human beings with their own legal rights as would be a fully born person who is out in the world. To repress the right to an abortion is to deprive a women of reproductive choice and thus her human and civil rights.
Socialists do not view issues out of context or in absolute terms. In the case of abortion they tend to put everything in context. They tend recognize that most abortions take place very early in the first trimester when the fetus is least developed and thus more a barely differentiated agglomeration of human cell tissue. They further recognize that abortion can be made ever more rare by, (a) giving women more control over their lives through political and economic empowerment, (b) raising the living standards of women and of most people in general by pursuing policies that boost incomes and access to basic needs like education and health care, (c) promoting sex education, and (d) promoting family planning. Proof of this claim can be found in the fact that during the Clinton years in the 1990s, when these ideals came closer to being realized than they are today, the national rate of abortion declined by about 20% from the previous decades since Roe vs. Wade in 1973. Improved social conditions are the key to resolving many of these questions. The Bush Administration’s incessant moralizing has only worsened the very problems it claims to want to resolve in the abortion and other areas.
An historic look at the abortion issues also contextualizes it in the history of gender relations. Socialists “historicize” social issues in order to understand them as epochally specific phenomenon at various times in history rather than a transcendental absolute divorced form the changing power relations which framed the issue politically in terms of how it was seen and dealt with in society. Apparently, abortion is a century old practice which took place on a regular basis until modern times. Even the Roman Catholic Church didn’t issue a Papal condemnation of the practice until 1869. It was in the 1860s that a number of Western Democracies, such as the US and the UK, passed legislation outlawing abortion. Abortion’s recent opposition is most probably tied to, (a) a growing male dominated medical profession wishing to disempower midwifery which often used the practice, and (b) the need to emphasize male power within the long emerging institution of the nuclear family which privaleged male labor over female labor now placed back in home with the rise of industrial capitalism. Thus, reproductive rights becomes genderized in history at a particular stage of capitalist development.
In considering these issues, socialists see abortion as a human right for women which must be defended. It is a question of pursuing a struggle for basic rights which is tied to the overall fight for social and gender equality.
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Mar 26, 2007 at 4:51 PM Kuya, thanks for your typically thoughtful remarks here. I happen to be pro-abortion choice and in fact it is based on personal property rights best delineated by Murray Rothbard in The Ethics of Liberty. It has nothing to do with the mindless left party line posted above by our ever predictable Chicago Cabbie. There is no such thing as equality, gender or social or racial or individual or of any kind. It’s not only impossible physically and mentally but undesirable in the extreme. If the Commie Party Line was anti-abortion as it was at various times in Rumania, USSR, etc., Chicago Cabbie would be endorsing that and yelling “Lyaah” “rayshist” “narzi” “auntey-seamite” as his ugly ilk always does. People whose faces’ resemble David Irving’s hemorrhoids do not have any credibilty with me. Abortion IS the taking of a human life but it is justifiable homicide. Every person has the right of self-ownership. So if a woman decides to abort a fetus her rights supercede those of the fetus that resides within her body. If you take the opposite position you are claiming the right of the fetus supercedes the right of the woman carrying it and then you are a positing a right to be born. But that is a wholly involuntary choice made by our parents and ultimately the woman since only she can become pregnant. As Earl Butz once told the Pope You don’t playa the game, you don’t maka the rules. It was our last wop Pope back in 1976 he was addesssing. So in the end no one right has a right to reside in the body of another person against that person’s will. This is an absolute right like all real rights and not dependent on the retarded “proletraiat” or other goons to evaluate according to their stages of history crap. This way we can avoid the endless trivia about first semester versus second, etc. or so called late term abortions. Also it doesn’t equate into another male bashing a la Chicago and the whole PC crowd. That lowering of crime rate is true but not a popular argument to advance in the black community because people can pretty quickly figure who is being aborted in the context of a declining rate. Of course the reintroduction of the death penalty and three strikes laws may have played a part in the crime reduction. I am opposed to both I
should add, three strikes is barbaric as is the death penalty.
Posted by blondemike on Mar 26, 2007 at 5:39 PM BM, I’m kind of suprised a racist and fascist like yourself opposes the dealth penalty. Politics is a strange thing after all.
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Mar 26, 2007 at 8:04 PM Since I’m not a racist and fascist like your slimey racist, fascist Zionist ass there’s no reason to be surprised.
Posted by blondemike on Mar 26, 2007 at 8:16 PM I’m SHOCKED to see a right-winger like BM opposing the death penalty and three strikes laws. Maybe there’s hope for us all. Of course, BM’s typically rambling blather of falsehoods shows otherwise.
As far as this Catholic vs. Catholic stuff, I admire Frances Kissling’s fighting the fascist tendencies of her religion (I used to be a Catholic back in the day) over the years. The church in general, and its right-wing more specifically, is rife with hypocrisy. Hopefully the day will come when it ends up in the dustbin of history (like EVERYTHING considered “right-wing”).
Posted by lams712 on Mar 26, 2007 at 8:21 PM The rightist label is strictly your own. Libertarian-Objectivists do not in fit your phony neocons versus pwogwessive statists dichotomy. As far as dustbins of history goes that is where communism and socialism ended up and that is where liberal semi-socialism and all forms of statism/collectivism will wind up. As usual you are unable to demonstrate any “falsehoods” any more than your mentor Doctor Dicklicking was…......so sad.
Posted by blondemike on Mar 26, 2007 at 8:45 PM It is difficult to debunk someone who leans on others to argue for him. It is fine to quote other arguments but all you do is name drop and expect that to be taken seriously as an argument. If you want to join the debate than do so by making your own arguments rather than just name dropping someone you agree with politically. It would be as if I merely wrote “read Marx, Sweezy, Baran, Magdoff, Joan Robinson, Gramsci, and C. Wright Mills without presenting and explaining their arguments and relating them to the specifics of the issues at hand.
Also, Libertarian-Objectivism is an absolutist dogma whose rigidity does not address reality as it actually exists. Hegel believed in the primacy of the Human Subject as the engine of history and the dialectical change that occured through the synthesis of elements from one epoch as it led to another. This takes place through the meaning humans give to their lives, societies, and activities through their own creative endeavors. Man creates his own meaning in this manner. There is no objective essence forcing or predisposing human society in this or that direction. We don’t need to accomidate reality by a rigid set of imposed objective criteria. There is always change and human agency and thought will define its meaning, not “objective reality.”
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Mar 26, 2007 at 9:29 PM I make arguments but it’s impossible to do justice to a full scale argument so I give references. 90% of these debates here are either off topic or extended ad hominem wordsalads. Actually we do have an objective nature and essense, we can’t just do anything. See many books but Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand is a great place to start. We do need to accomodate ourselves to objective or external reality, I can see where this is very difficult for you. I do present briefly the essense of the arguments at hand and some times not so briefly. Reality as it really exists is a redundancy, only one reality. My refs are merely a guide to help you to correctly understand that one objective reality.
Posted by blondemike on Mar 26, 2007 at 10:18 PM What is this objective reality? Everything that has been claimed by some to be objective reality has been eclipsed by one thing or another. The only thing permanent is change. There seems to be no essential meaning to the world or life itself. I thought you were all down with Nietzsche and the existentialists with this one. In any case, man shapes his world more than the other way around (though as Marx says “he doesn’t so as he chooses”).
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Mar 26, 2007 at 10:29 PM Not true. You need to learn the meanings of words and concepts. Your Heraclitean dimestore knownothingism was exploded during his lifetime by Parmenides. Only ENTITIES change and they change in accordance with objective laws of nature. Read Aristotle, our first naturalist philosopher. No such thing as “change” per se exists, it is only a lawful change from one state to another and the change is always a carrying out of the nature of the entity, not a random, haphazard change for its sake, which doesn’t exist. I don’t think the concept of essential meaning to the universe itself makes any sense since the universe is the totality of what exists. But as sentient beings we operate within certain laws of nature, nature is objective reality, the physical, external world. To us and to the lower animals life does have a meaning, we all are entities that develop in accordance with the objective laws of our nature. Nietzsche and the Existentialists were simply cashing on the epistemological nihilism of Hume and Kant, the destroyers of the modern world who divorced from reason from reality.Rand was as usual correct in characterizing Kant as the most evil person who ever lived. His damage to epistemology, metaphysics and ethics has been incredible. Probably aesthetics too since he displaced reason to make room for faith. His politics were unimportant.
Posted by blondemike on Mar 26, 2007 at 10:47 PM cabdriver:
You are the man!!! blonde"blowhard” mike is getting ANOTHER bitch-slapping and I LOVE IT!!! Thanks for doing the heavy lifting on this thread, just like when you and I took him down in the Health Care thread.
It’s all for naught though, unfortunately. Blowhards like BM are like that obnoxious guy at the bar who thinks they know EVERYTHING, but really knows NOTHING. Nothing can shut him up. He must have taken too many drugs in the 60s or something, because this “objective reality” bullsh*# is nothing but a trip to LA-LA LAND!!! Luckily, as the pendulum swings away from his largely discredited ideology, we can get down to the nitty gritty of addressing REAL problems without denying their existence.As to the falsehoods, I addressed them in the healthcare thread repeatedly. I will also repeat my question that YOU FAILED TO ANSWER. (of course, that’s because you have NO ANSWER):
Why is it that when the issue of corporate power is put forth, the answer given is something to the effect of “...corporations are just individuals”, but when it comes to the government, it’s some kind of great EVIL??? Isn’t the government nothing more than a set of individuals when you get right down to it??? Why is it that one set of individuals (corproations) is okay, while another set of individuals (government) is some EVIL, VILE creation???
Go for it BM, don’t choke on it!!
Posted by lams712 on Mar 26, 2007 at 10:48 PM Hume was a total skeptic about the possibility of epistomological truth. Kant was the most important rationalist thinker in Western thought and said that knowledge of reality was possible. He believed it was important to use reason to have a construct with which to understand empirical data. Rationalists like Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn agreed with Kant. Kuhn coined the term paradigm to refer to the totality of universal knowledge in any given period which itself could be overturned by another paradigm since knowledge does not grow by accretion but revolutionary trial and error.
There is meaning but not essential meaning. That is to say meaning doesn’t exist apart from human thought and its attribution of meaning to things. Change does occur mostly with entities. What is not an entity? There are certain natural laws but they only apply to nature. As did Levy-Strauss, we must separate Nature from Culture. Applying laws of nature to culture is unwise and will yield misleading results. You never give an example of a natural law that can be applied to society. There are said to be laws of economics. But since an economy is something that changes over time as it develops the laws that supposedly govern it also change along with it. This whole process seems dialectical. The economy changes the laws as it develops and the new laws lead the economy toward historic change as development progresses from one stage to another.
Human beings are only physically products of nature. Human beings do something that lower animals don’t and that is create culture. People act out of culture more than nature. We do what we are taught to do not what we are instinctively fated to do by nature. There is no transcendental linkage from one historic epoch to the next via an essential meaning or tendency in the world or via absolute truths or laws. All we really have is history. Each new epoch is linked dialectically to the former through the sythesis of important common elements of each into a new reality. Thus people DO make meaning and history but they do so within the confines and constraints of the prevailing social conditions around them.
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Mar 26, 2007 at 11:26 PM Thanks cabdriver and mike, both for your responses and also for the surprising convergence of your views. It’s very interesting and even a bit entertaining to find two people with such fundamentally different philosophical orientations (and who also smack heads routinely) coming to a similar conclusion, at least in this one specific instance. Oh yes, and in regards to capital punishment as well.
As you implied, cabdriver, it is an intriguing aspect of politics that a Libertarian-Objectivist and a Democratic Socialist can both nod “yes” to the same question.
It seems your points of agreement emphasize the primacy of the woman’s right to determine how her body shall be used, and I also find that to be a compelling position since I presume to say that I “own” my body as well. However, I can’t say that I feel as secure in moral terms with the practical consequences of that stance as others appear to feel. It’s because I find it very difficult to think of a pregnancy as representing “something” as opposed to “someone”, especially once organ development and neural interconnection reach a plateau at which the major structures and systems of the body are pretty well formed, and for the rest of the pregnancy are only growing and making it possible for the baby to live out in the air. Or, for the fetus to become a baby once it draws breath, if you prefer.
You can see I find these distinctions troublesome.
I do have a concern over the ability of the fetus to feel pain, and to experience suffering during its termination. I find it much more difficult to feel complacent about this, the further along the pregnancy has gone. Honestly, it does seem to be a bit of an artificial distinction to say that terminating a well-developed fetus is morally neutral, when that same fetus, if it emerged in the form of a premature birth, could survive out in the air just fine (maybe with some medical help). What’s the qualitative distinction, after all?
Also, even for early-term abortions, I wonder about the effects of easy disposal of pregnancies upon the valuation of people in general, i.e. its effects upon society. To paraphrase Robert Heinlein (who was just a storyteller, I know), “life is already cheap, and abortion just makes it cheaper”. I suppose if a fetus isn’t classified as a person, then there’s no conundrum, but again, where’s the line? I do also come up against a barrier with the “justifiable homicide” approach, which perhaps is a feasible understanding if the fetus is in fact regarded as a person instead of an object. But then, what justifies the homicide?
I can think of a few scenarios in which I’d kill and figure I was justified (although I don’t trust the state with that power, refs death penalty). But it would have to be intensely personal, coming out a hate or a perceived danger so vivid that I’d have decided that the mf’r had it coming. I don’t gather that decisions to abort have that character at all.
Of course, I also know about the suffering linked to illegal, unhygienic abortions. I also know, much more directly, about the “quality of life” of babies who are unwanted, that no one wants to take care of (I work regularly with an orphanage for handicapped kids, all of whom are abandoned; no one wants them but I can’t imagine any of them being aborted… check it out, one kid is literally a survived attempted abortion!).
That was the chain of thinking that led me to my original question, the “taking care” aspect I mentioned when asking about humanistic/socialistic values. It seemed that taking care of people is what they promote, therefore my questions.
I see so many refusals to take care of each other out in the world, to no good end I can identify.
(To my female friends, thanks for your patience, if patience it was, as I have mulled this question over in public. It’s not my agenda to coerce you or trouble you, I just have a number of unresolved feelings about this topic, which were triggered by the article, and so I bring the subject up in this forum so as to read and further mull over the responses)
Posted by Kuya on Mar 27, 2007 at 8:12 AM Kuya, again you raise very good questions and I appreciate the thought that you have given here. I was fundamentally stating why abortion should not be criminalized and on a deeper level disputing the unasserted underlying premise that there is a right to be born. But I can see why people would have objections to many of the things that you list on a deep moral level. The feminist repetition of “choice” is not in itself a convincing argument particularly since most people who use it are far from consistent in advocacy of choice. Think of public accomodations and gun laws as just two examples. You do have to argue as to why the choice is justified. Similarly most of the pro-life people aren’t when it comes to war and the death penalty to give just two examples here.
Posted by blondemike on Mar 27, 2007 at 5:47 PM Maybe one factor that comes up in all this is my own penchant for focusing on ways that people think about things, their “philosophy” for lack of a better word, as opposed to focusing primarily on social institutions like law, which I think of as being downstream from values and philosophies. It’s not that law is trivial, just that I tend to think that the way people behave and the decisions they make on a day-to-day basis come more directly from their own understandings, rather than on how the law reads, even if in the end they decide to go along with the law. When I ask questions like the ones above, it is generally in the form of inquiring about what’s in people’s heads, why they think that way, how they respond to my thinking about the topic in hand. Those sorts of things have more immediacy for me than the policies they advocate, unless of course I get responses that include both their policy preferences as well as the thinking that led up to them. That’s the kind of response that is most interesting for me, more central to my understanding of the questions that come up on these discussion threads.
I re-read all of the comments above, my own as well, and I’m reminded of how distant and irrelevant they would seem to a woman who is wrestling with such a decision, or even one who has already made the choice and is comfortable with it. My wife has said more than a few times, and very forthrightly (very!), how arrogant men sound when we argue this issue. My mother said much the same, when she was living, and the two of them had pretty strikingly different attitudes about most sociopolitical issues while definitely agreeing upon this one, i.e. pro-legal. My daughter says the same, she’s just less blunt (maybe the Asian influences of her upbringing).
Posted by Kuya on Mar 28, 2007 at 6:24 AM As the Feminist Movement often says, “If men became pregnant, Abortion would be a Sacrement.”
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Mar 28, 2007 at 6:27 AM And as Jacobo Timmerman has often said, “There’s no business like Shoah business.” Time to change your colostomy bag, Chicago.
Posted by blondemike on Mar 28, 2007 at 5:51 PM Even on an abortion thread you must push your racist holocaust denial. Most women btw, would think you’re a moron. They’re turned off by fascism because fascists are typically sexist bullies. I lived in the State of Wisconsin a long time mostly all through the 80s and I’ve seen real evidence of this fact. It’s great to watch some naive macho Wisnurd putz trying to convince his attractive blond date(she obviously has increased his testosterone levels) in some dive of a pub that we must invade this or that country and that such and such a Republican is the man to do it because he alone “has the balls that the girly liberals don’t have”. Wrong approach in Madison!! The reaction of these ladys ranges from shy demuring to angrily jumping up, dumping a beer on his head, and storming out of the pub. Nobody warned these guys that even the All American Wisconsin girls don’t share dad’s penchant for war and racist genocide. And by the way, my friend Portnoy has been with all these ladies. He’s a refreshing change from the drunken bully routine.
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Mar 29, 2007 at 6:41 PM Chicago “argument”—-“Lyaaahhh ! Raaayyyyyssshhhhiisssttt ! Faaayyyshist ! Auntey-Semenite ! Naaaarrrrzzziii ! Women love me even though I live with deranged males BECAUSE they love the smell of my colostomy bag ! No one wants you BECAUSE I say so ! Those Nordic chicks up at Madison like to lick my balls BECAUSE I say ! BUT I prefer guys ! And my guys MUST have at least 12 DSM diagnoses. I LOVE Alex Portnoy ! We have a Zionist Circle Jerk ! No one from Noontide Press gets admitted ! And YOU can’t cum ! No wonder you had to marry a Jewish gal, these Nords prefer us ! BECAUSE I say so ! And I’m anti-rrraaaayyyssshhhiissttt but I won’t disavow TexASS beaner’s extreme anti-A-Rab statements because he has stood up for LLLEEEETTTTTTlllee Israel, a real shabbas goy, he ! BECAUSE I say so.”
WWWWWWWWWOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWW !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Impressive reasoning, dude !Now the Chicago Taxi Commission wants you to change your colostomy bag now BECAUSE they say so and well, because you STINK.
Posted by blondemike on Mar 30, 2007 at 4:32 PM The Chicago Taxi Commission has been the Dept. of Consumer Services for some time and colostomy bags are referred immediately to the Proctology Specialists at either Northwestern Memorial Hospital or, for those with no health insurance the Stroger Center at Cook County Hospital near Union Park not far from where the Bulls play.
I must say that the above post is BM’s very best so far. The ad hominem attacks are based on realistic suppositions and is actually amusing. Tex has stood up for Israel but also for the Jews as well. I do not share his animosity toward Arabs but I will not attack him. This I will leave to the scumbag right-wing holocaust denying fascist populist morons. Tell me something, don’t you really want to divorce your Jewish wife to pursue your one true love…Wendy Campbell?
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Mar 31, 2007 at 4:50 AM Your wordsalad above makes no sense, cabbie. Of course, you will not condemn TexASS’s extreme anti-Arab racism since it was not directed at Jews but only Israel’s enemies. MORE PROOF OF YOUR RACISM. The comment on TexASS was the only coherent thing in your posting though totally racist. As we have come to expect from you.
Posted by blondemike on Apr 2, 2007 at 7:13 PM It was no “word salad” but I guess anything above the level of Nazi apologia is hard for you to grasp. You are a sick moron. By the Way, isn’t Wendy about your age? She might just throw over Mark Green for you. This way you can coauthor articles for the Nation Alliance Website together. As the pure blonde senior couple you could be a real inspiration to America’s Aryan youth. And an abject lesson in family values!!
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Apr 5, 2007 at 7:00 AM Bottom line is that you flatly refuse to condemn TexASS’s flagrant anti-Arab racism. Your excuses are your own. Your wholeassed analogies and argumentums ad hominems impress no one.
Posted by blondemike on Apr 9, 2007 at 7:27 PM Page 1 of 1 pages -
register a new account »Posting Security
Also by Ann Friedman
- A Pain, and Proud of It
Frances Kissling retires after 25 years at CFFC
Popular Discussions
- The 9/11 Faith Movement
Many Americans believe 9/11 was a conspiracy by the U.S. government
1979 posts since Jul 11 06 - What’s the 411 on 9/11?
891 posts since Dec 21 05 - Democrats: It’s the War
659 posts since Nov 1 05 - Was the Presidential Election Stolen?
462 posts since Jun 19 06 - A Fundamental History Lesson
The rise of National Socialism proved politics and religion don't mix
427 posts since Oct 10 05
© 2007 In These Times | Reprint Policy | Privacy Policy | Powered by Expression Engine | RSS Feeds
