Earlier this week, Unnamed Law Firm LLP (not my own) hosted a “women’s forum” event at Saks Fifth Avenue, where female attorneys were given cocktails, free reign of the “shoes” floor of the prestigious fashion venue, and one-day-only 15% discount cards.
While I don’t see eye-to-eye with Catharine MacKinnon, I consider myself an enlightened, feminist, pro-equality man. So, when I first heard about this event from an Unnamed Friend, my immediate reaction was, “how patronizing and anti-feminist for Unnamed Firm to pigeonhole all women as shoe-addicted fashionistas! Who do they think they are, billing this as an ‘equality’ and ‘feminist’ event?!?”
I’ve since changed my tune. Putting this argument and male outrage at a perceived stereotyping event to my female friends, I couldn’t even get through the word “anti” in that short little speech before receiving the following reactions:
I guess some stereotypes are fine if they’re applied to bring near-uniform happiness. Equally, I for one wouldn’t object to a similar event at Best Buy or the Apple Store, so my gender might be just as easily pigeonholed. In fact, if I were a male associate at Unnamed Law Firm LLP…
If you’ve ever argued with someone on the far right, the type that drinks daily from the cup of Human Events and WorldNetDaily, you’ve likely heard and become familiar with the argument that Darwin and Margaret Sanger were racist eugenecists; ergo evolution, abortion, and family planning are racist and evil. Sadly, these bits of spin have become “mainstream,” through such breathtaking works of staggering genius as Expelled, and bear commentary.
Let’s pretend this is a motion for summary judgment, and accept all of “plaintiff’s” allegations of fact as true, just for the sake of argument. So, let’s assume that Sanger and Darwin were both monsters who wanted to “select” or “engineer” away other racists. What of it?
The answer is, nothing. Especially in the case of science, where the idea evolves exponentially beyond its original conception, a “founder’s” personal beliefs are practically meaningless. More generally, there’s no concept “original sin” in philosophy; provided a belief system does not retain the bigoted beliefs of its adherents, it retains none of the guilt for the same. If a philosophy, like a snowball rolling down the incline of history, gathered all the scum of its adherents, no idea would be innocent. All of Christianity would be counted a murderer (the Crusades), all of Islam the same (the wars of expansion), and even democracy and America would be irredeemable (the Indian wars). The mere fact of the continuance of history requires us to forgive the sins of our ideological fathers, and focus on the present. Since conservatives so readily agree that historical revisionism is a flawed way of looking at the world, it’s odd (or, unsurprising) that fundamentalist conservatives forget that simple truth when it comes to ideas they don’t like.
Abortion is a complicated issue with no easy answer. Just ask Kang (impersonating Bob Dole).
Just like any issue, there are principled stances on both sides. While I disagree vehemently with the position that abortion should be illegal in all instances, it is intellectually consistent, and draws its strength from a deep (and indisputable) belief that human life begins at the very second of conception, and is sacrosanct. I can’t debate that. I can’t debate away someone’s religion. I have to respect it.
Oddly, though, this position commands a bare 13% of Americans. In fact, polls like this suggest that reproductive choice is becoming a valence issue – but let’s set that aside for a minute. I’m interested in the 24% who oppose abortion in “most” cases.
Those who believe that abortion should be illegal in most cases get to that position by starting with a categorical ban – like the above 13% – and then carving out exceptions. However, carving out exceptions, under the “sanctity of life” reasoning, is carving out lives from the protective umbrella of the law: granting any exception to a categorical ban, besides an exception for the health of the mother, literally vitiates the “sanctity of life” justification for opposing abortion. If these moderate pro-lifers can no longer (logically) rely upon the “sanctity of life” argument, why do they oppose abortion at all?
Here, the exceptions carved out by moderate pro-lifers are illuminating. At the risk of mixing polls, 81% of Americans believe that abortion should be legal in cases of rape. Thus, for some Americans, rape is on a short list of very few cases under which abortion should be legal. Why? If every fetus is a sacred human life, ergo illegal to terminate, why would it matter if its mother isn’t complicit in the sexual act?
Because, for many pro-lifers, the abortion issue isn’t about defending life, it’s about punishing fault. The difference between rape and consensual sex is a difference in culpability. If recreational sex is a sin, both members of the couple who engage in it are sinners. But in the case of rape, only the man is a sinner; the woman is innocent. In a philosophy where sex is immoral, rape removes the cloud of fault from the woman.
By making a legal distinction based on rape, then, provided that abortion is otherwise illegal, we let the concept of culpability determine whether or not abortion is an option. In short, a notion that women are “at fault” for sex, and ought to be punished, lurks nastily behind the “sanctity of life” rhetoric spouted by moderate pro-lifers.
This betrays the true injustice of banning abortion. If we ban abortion only because we believe women ought to be punished for sex, we force upon her punishment that, if justly leveraged against anyone, ought to be leveraged against both members of a consensual sexual couple. The law becomes a tool by which women are punished for their humanity, while men get away free; it becomes a tool of enforcing a caste system.
I don’t mean to suggest that the choice is between banning all abortions, and legalizing all abortions. Dole/Kang was wrong at least the first two times. I merely suggest that where “the sanctity of life” is the only reason to ban abortion, and where “life” begins at conception, exceptions to a categorical ban vitiate that reasoning and expose the true malignant thought process behind the pro-life movement: namely, anti-feminism.
Starting from a different point, though, allows one to honestly and morally come to a middle ground. I believe that every life is sacred, but I draw the line for what constitutes “life” at the end of the second trimester (possibly first – I haven’t worked that out yet), and would categorically ban all abortions after that point except those necessary for the mother’s health. Unlike Justice Kennedy, I don’t think we can dispose of that exception.
