Misogyny’s last hideout
It’s hard not to suspect that the real reason abortion is such a hot issue in some places is that it offers what looks like a respectable or decent pretext or excuse for pushing women around and telling them what to do, when none of the other pretexts for doing that retain a shred of respectability. Abortion is the one ‘reason’ for bossing and controlling and confining women; for, in short, taking away their autonomy. It’s the last resort – it’s what’s left when all the old ‘traditional’ unreasonable ones have been shown up and knocked down and got rid of. When they can’t be defended any more, there is one last way: abortion. Hooray hooray, there is still one way we can tell women, forcibly, with the full power of the law: No you are not equal, no you may not decide your own fate, no your life is not in your hands, no you are not a person like other persons (you are a vehicle for other people, instead), no you do not belong to yourself, no you may not make the most basic decisions about your own life, no you do not have autonomy, no you are not free. No. You are subordinate; you are an instrument; you belong to everyone; you are in our power; we can control you; we can tell you what to do; and we damn well will.
And as a delightful fun bonus, we can express contempt for you, we can scorn you and hate you, we can talk about prom dresses and dirty weekends, we can pretend you are of your nature stupid and childish and trivial. And we can do it all in the glow of self-righteousness and moral superiority and tender caring concern for tiny helpless creatures. We can talk contemptuously about women who get abortions so that they can wear a bikini, a new dress, tight jeans, Jimmy Choo shoes; or so that they can go away for the weekend, so that they can go to the prom, so that they won’t miss that hot date, so that they won’t be feeling queasy for the company picnic, so that they won’t get zits. In short, we can mine a rich vein of misogynist sexist contemptuous trivialization of women and women’s autonomy and women’s right to autonomy. We can do an anti-thought experiment. Don’t even think about having any claim to your own life, your own right to make decisions about your own life, your independence, your freedom, your room to breathe, your adulthood, honey, because if you try it we’ll all get together and point out what stupid shallow trivial childish girly frivolous things you want it for, which is to say, we’ll all get together and point out what stupid shallow trivial childish girly frivolous kinds of human beings you all fundamentally are, thus convincing everyone that you have no right to autonomy and to make your own decisions, because you’re too stupid and too weak and too shallow and too likely to murder the baby just because you feel like going to the movies.
That kind of thing is frowned on in most polite discourse, but the fatwa against abortion makes it acceptable. It’s not misogyny, it’s concern for the baby, whose ruthless frivolous heartless mother wants to kill it because it might mess up her hairdo.
To the extent that that’s true, opposition to abortion is pure whited sepulcher. Something very nasty dressed up as something very nice.
Yeah, all dressed up in a mothercare outfit and no where in Ireland to go except to take the Ferry from Dun Laoghaire to Hollyhead. As the government does not see fit to pay the Air fare.
The responsibility aint there’s.
Let neighbouring advanced Britain mop up the bleeding awful mess. The proms dress – be damned, can also bloody wait. no time for partying, till the parting has come.
Stream of abortion consciousness – Irish style -just rolling by. A chara!
should read > “theirs” – not “there’s”.
“To the extent that that’s true, opposition to abortion is pure whited sepulcher.”
To that extent, yes.
Give me a break. I’m pro-choice but recognize that abortion is an animal rights issue. Aborting early-term fetuses is comparable to killing the slugs in your garden; aborting later term fetuses is more along the lines of slaughtering cows or pigs for food or having a dog put down.
What I find sexist is the unexamined assumption that if women have babies they’ll be psychologically compelled to keep them and care for them, and that giving them up will necessarily be traumatic. Women can, legally, leave their babies at hospitals or police stations, give them up for adoption or sell them for profit. If they balk at these solutions they get so sympathy from me: men regularly abandon their kids and if women aren’t prepared to behave like men they get no sympathy from me.
The legitimate goal of feminism is to enable women to live the same lives that men live. If they want something different they can eat shit.
LogicGuru, What the…?
Well, this post is a bit like the curate’s egg. I agree with: “we can do it all in the glow of self-righteousness and moral superiority and tender caring concern for tiny helpless creatures”. I think that is the real motivation. It has a powerful reward system, and its the same reward system that drives most ‘good cause’ anti-freedom politics – gun control, for instance.
The rest is at best, an identity-politics-type rant. THese poeple don’ think the way you do; big deal.
Olivia, let me ask: are you perhaps a teensy bit bitter over stuff that is just how people are? Over the unfairness of a woman’s body being inflicted on a person, and afflicting their choices in life? Because some of it is truly unfair, I agree.
Given that you daily demonstrate how a woman can overcome that oppression by using her brains and hard work, I am a bit puzzled as to why you are so exercised over the story of a girl who was allowed to exercise her autonomy in spite of the barriers, indeed a public defeat of the thinking you despise.
Who’s Olivia?
LogicGuru, Emmanuel, ChrisPer well done on proving Ophelia’s (or Olivia’s) point!
Personally, I am all in favour of mandatory vasectomies for men over the age of 25. If the state wants to interfere with our medical choices, let them do it on an equal opportunities basis.
Chrisper, I am devastated by your biting wit; A second Oscar Wilde, right here on B&W!
“The actions of a HSE social worker in telling gardai that Miss D must be prevented from travelling were without foundation in law, the judge said”.
I FIND THE NEXT BIT RATHER STRANGE.
“Furthermore, the HSE never sought to establish what course of action was in her best interests”.
WAIT FOR IT.
“
Instead, IT SOUGHT TO “SHOEHORN” THE GIRL INTO AN X CASE – TYPE (see: Irrelevant in last entry,) although there was no suicidal”.
QUOTED FROM: THE IRISH TIMES
I talked to a young ban garda about this very issue. She told me that there are always test cases being sought.
Could this have some bearing?
I still believe that this WAS A SET-UP.
I wonder how it would have panned out had the cailin said – she was suicidal?
The ruling has averted a fresh political or constitutional crisis over abortion.
Today’s Irish times headlines:
Court rules Miss D can travel to UK for ABORTION.
Why did it not just say Court rules Miss D can travel to UK?
If she does decide, whilst in England, to have an abortion, it should be of no concern to the Irish Authorities.
As she will be under English/British Jurisdiction.
Heaven help Ireland’s children
Nothing whatsoever has changed in Celtic tiger Ireland 2007.
Still the same old putting -down of its supposed “cherishes the Nation’s children”.
150,000 children/teenagers from the industrial schools/reformatories in the past took the boat to England and far off distant lands to get away from the suppressive regime which was in place in Ireland.
Pregnant girls also have been taking the same route that is being imposed on the teenager
since time immemorial.
This poor girl in 2007 will be travelling to England, because nobody in authority in Ireland gives a god darn hoots.
The young ban Garda said;
“Why can’t the Cailin not have the abortion in Ireland?
What is the matter at all with us?
Surely to goodness she will be among her own and in her own surroundings?
Why put her through this entire trauma?
This country has thus so far never gotten it right with minors.
We are still living in the dark ages.
We have not only chased our writers out of our country – we have chased our children as well.
This case -which was apparently supposed to have been initially about a care order, has blown out of all proportion.
I wonder has it done exactly what it says on the tin. Or very nearly.
Anyway!
The timing of this case still leaves me to think that there are underlying reasons that will never come to the fore.
I am paranoid at the best of times, but concerning this abortion case I am so doubly paranoid. You know, there is an election on the way.
It could be a dirty tricks campaign?…It could be whatever, whatever.
Who knows?
Maybe, Miss Marple, or Agatha Christie Irish wannabe’s might tell us.
“Over the unfairness of a woman’s body being inflicted on a person, and afflicting their choices in life?”
Oh yes, how terrible to be a woman. The shame. If only there were a way of hiding this shamefulness.
The comma is not a logical connective and it certainly doesn’t indicate induction. Yours is an ethical world where there is nothing we can do about testicular cancer because, after all, the afflicted is afllicted with a male body.
If bodies are deontological predicates then men really do need to be a lot more careful about the pregnancies that they are the root cause of. If sesire for abortion is a great evil then clearly men are responsible for creating that evil desire. I assume they should be punished.
dirigible, succinct. Thanks.
Well spotted, ChrisPer, I’m bitter and warped and twisted, in fact I’m mad as a hatter. Thanks for the exegesis.
Mark Hadfield,
“To that extent, yes.”
Well that’s why I said it. I realize it may not be true always and everywhere, but there is in fact some very misogynist contemptuous rhetoric on the subject, and I don’t think that’s just kind of arbitrary.
Succinct? Maybe. But unfair, too – rhetoric rather than reasoned argument. In the first place, the (designate) ‘great evil’ was abortion, not the desire for abortion. In the second, that was Goldstein’s phrase, not ChrisPer’s. And in the third place, ChrisPer is clearly not suggesting that the fact that a woman must carry a child is a matter for shame or punishment, but responsibility (hence his comments regarding contraception). You’re making ChrisPer (and Richard, for that matter) into gigantic Straw Monsters… Note that both have explicitly said that abortion should be legal, even if neither thinks it is a good default choice (or a moral choice in many cases).
can a foetus of less than 15 weeks feel anything at all
Nice goalpost shifting, GT! If you want the debate to be solely about early-term abortions, fine; but it has not been so to date. (Indeed, G seemed to be arguing on the earlier thread that abortion should be permissible right up to the end of pregnancy.)
That said, Goldstein’s analogy is weak since it involves the intentional causing of pain on the one hand (which is not a good analogy for abortion) and an unpreventable death on the other (which is thus not a good analogy for possibly preventable spontaneous abortions).
Repeating what I posted in the thread below, since the action appears to be here now:
While applauding with all my heart the right to choose, it is worth bearing in mind that after c.28 weeks [and some would argue 24], a foetus is generally viable outside the mother [in the current state of medical technology]. That does rather complicate things.
From a viewpoint of practical ethics, knowing what we know, the ‘life begins at birth’ position is as difficult to sustain as the ‘every sperm is sacred’ one.
Which is why contraception should be available on demand, children should be properly educated in its use, and first-trimester terminations should be available in a timely fashion.
Whatever we think of it as a matter of philosophy, as a matter of policy we should strive to make abortion legal, safe, and rare.
Should have read > oppressed as opposed to repressive. 13 posts up.
“the catholic church in America some years ago. threatened to ban “”communion”” to those Politicans who supported PRO-CHOICE and FREEDOM
“Get your rosary beads off my ovaries” is a caption on a placard in Today’s Irish Times.
I note that Kevin Myers of the Irish Indo is silent on the abortion matter.
He was the journalist who not so very long ago referred to women as people.
with ovaries. What does that make a person with no ovaries, eh?
If women are people with ovaries that makes men – people with no ovaries. So people who are women who have no ovaries are the same as men.
“Misogyny’s last hideout” indeed.
“Fianna Fail, who promised they would legislate in the wake of the X ruling, said that it…[w]as opposed to legislation calling for abortion”
“It’s hard not to suspect that the real reason abortion is such a hot issue in some places is that it offers what looks like a respectable or decent pretext or excuse for pushing women around and telling them what to do, when none of the other pretexts for doing that retain a shred of respectability”.
The Catholic Church/Irish Government are VERY POWERFUL MISOGYNISTS.
Marie, as an aside I had the great fortune to attend a wedding recently in the Galty Mountains. Ireland has truly enormous appeal as somewhere to relocate to (from UK midlands), and I would recommend everyone who hasn’t should visit, but I don’t think I could handle the continuing reactionary religious control in public life – t’would drive me nuts. Beautiful place in every other respect though… ho hum…
Nick, I bet the craic was ninety and the wedding party got sloshed/stotious/jarred? Dd the band serenade ye all with the the lovely Irish song
Sliabh na mban
Alone, all alone, by the wave-washed strand
All alone in the crowded hall
The hall it is gay and the waves they are grand
But my heart is not there at all,
It flies far away, by night and by day
To the times and the joys that are gone
But I never can forget the sweet maiden I met
In the valley of Slievenamon.
It was not the grace of her queenly air
Nor the cheeks of the roses glow
Her soft dark eyes or her curly hair,
Nor was it her lily white brow.
`Twas the soul of truth and of melting ruth,
And a smile like the summer´s day.
That stole my heart away on that bright summer´s day
In the valley of sweet Slievenamon.
In the festive ball and the wave-washed shore
My restless spirit cries –
`My land, oh my land, shall I never see you more,
My country will you never uprise.
By night and by day I will ever, ever pray,
As darkly my life it rolls on,
To see our flag unrolled and my true love unfold
In the valley near Slievenamon
Also spelled Galtee Mountains, mountain range, extending across the border between southwestern County Tipperary and southeastern County Limerick, southern Ireland. The range has the east–west trend characteristic of the extreme south of the country. The highest peaks are formed of sandstone, the highest point being Galtymore (3,018 feet [920 m]). The mountains bear strong evidence of glaciation, notably…
ievenamon.
The mountains are commonly known here as the Galtee Mountains. Galtee cheese is also delicious.
80% of the Emerald Isle citizens are ROMAN CATHOLIC.
Oops, am off topic! Got carried away!
Yes, I understood your point. However, it begs the question of the moral status of inaction in assuming that nonintervention is by default blameless.
From some religious perspectives this may be true – God’s Will etc – but generally this is a very vexed question. It’s not unlike one form of that old thought experiment: is the man who fails to throw a switch to divert the train that will otherwise hit someone truly guiltless of that person’s death? This is a closer analogy than your forest fire, since GT was raising the issue of possible intervention to prevent the preventable.
If one assumes that the death of a foetus is ‘an evil’, then it is not at all obvious that causing that death through a deliberate action is any more morally blamewqorthy than failing to prevent that death. Actually, in some instances ‘pro-lifers’ tend to hold that view – such as in cases where life support is witheld (see Terry Schiavo, for instance).
emmanuel- Yes, of course you can custom design your moral claim to dodge a moral conundrum. Its the philosophical form of legal engineering. That doesn’t mean it makes sense. The philosophically engineered claim might not actually line up with the moral precepts that supposedly undergird it, for example. I think that’s the case here.
If one’s argument is
1) a fetus is an “unborn human being,”
2) being born or not is not morally relevant, what’s relevant is whether a subject is a human being
3) therefore we should treat a fetus, ie, an “unborn human being,” like a “born human being”
4) and its wrong to intentionally kill a “born human being,”
5) therefore its wrong to intentionally kill an “unborn human being.”
Then there’s no reason to restrict the reason to only intentional killing. It should logically apply to all forms of killing and permitting death that are wrong when they are done to a “born human being.”
There’s no such thing as an unborn human being
An ideological position rather than a statement of fact. I think there is considerable room for uncertainty in defining what constitutes a ‘human being’ – especially since ‘human being’ is a matter of species rather than personhood. (Terry Schiavo was incontrovertably a ‘human being’, though there was certainly room for debate over the extent to which she could be described as a ‘person’). It’s true, though, that ‘unborn human being’ is also question-begging to the same extent. How about we stick with ‘human foetus’?
“An ideological position rather than a statement of fact.”
I don’t think so. I think it was a factual statement about standard meaning.
“especially since ‘human being’ is a matter of species rather than personhood.”
I don’t think that’s right, actually. “Human being” is not the technical term for the species, and it is an emotive way of referring to humans; I think an exaggerated attribution of personhood is exactly what is intended by the oxymoronic “unborn human being.”
I have no problem at all with human foetus and would be happy to stick with it; the question is what Mr Goldstein will stick with.
What I am curious about, sincerely, is how we come to the conclusion that the fetus has no rights prior to its being born. It is because it is literally, physically, totally dependent on the mother for its survival? I’m pro-choice, so I’m not trying to be snarky here. I’ve just never heard anyone pro-choice explain why the fetus should not be given further protections, or considered equally with the mother. I don’t think it is responsible to avoid asking ourselves whether and how it is ethical to have abortions. The fetus is alive, it is human (if only roughly and basically human), and it is important to talk about why it is acceptable to end that life. You don’t have to be a religious wingnut to worry about that. Despite my pro-choice-dom, to be frank, the answer of how to deal ethically with the lives of fetuses remains a little cloudy to me.
outeast,
Yes, I understood your point. However, it begs the question of the moral status of inaction in assuming that nonintervention is by default blameless.
Consider
(!) Blame cannot attach to omissions or preventions.
All that’s required to distinguish GT’s cases, I maintain, is an asymmetry in moral evaluation between intentional acts and non-intentional ones. It’s not obvious that I need some further claim about which way the asymmetry should go. (Actually, maybe even less is needed: the bare distinction between intentional acts and non-intentional ones might do the trick?) That there is an asymmetry is a plausible enough claim. So, I don’t need to assert (!), and I intend to abstain from doing so.
Asserting an asymmetry in moral evaluation between intentional acts and non-intentional acts isn’t sufficient. That’s not making an explanation, that’s asserting that the possibility of an explanation exists. See my above post.
“What I am curious about, sincerely, is how we come to the conclusion that the fetus has no rights prior to its being born.”
Me too. Consider this thought experiment/absurd analogy: You have a pair of adult conjoined twins, one of whom is almost completely normally developed except for being attached to their twin and who wishes to be surgically separated from their twin, knowing that the other would certainly die if the procedure were to be carried out. What rights does the other twin have not to be separated? If the second twin has a perfectly well formed head and brain and is equally developed intellectually and emotionally, but doesn’t have its own body to speak of, is it a human being? If the second twin only has the intellectual and emotional development of a 5 year old child does this make a difference? A 1 year old, 1 day old, a 30 week old foetus, a 1 week old feotus?
Aha – so that’s who eg is. Very droll, as always.
Abortion issue will not be revisited says Mary Harney. See: Irrelevant? Really entry below. She is Minister for Health. The Irish Government does not want to know and neither will the new Government entertain it when it takes over at the end of May.
The Pope is threatening to excommunicate those who support
abortion.
They have no future in the church – he says.
So, I will soon be getting a letter in the post telling me I cannot receive holy communion, and to clear myself out of the church – is that it? Well, Well, well, – where is the bucket?
See: B&W for full article.
I guess I’m in broad agreement with Dave and Outeast on this issue.
In that I support legality of abortion until the “viability” limit of – what was it, 22-24 weeks? Which is broadly the policy current in the Netherlands, and in Sweden. And the more easy the availability of abortion, the earlier it can take place.
I’m not sure if the question whether a fetus is a “human” or an “unborn child” is totally relevant here. I’m not sure if I would consider prelinguistic infants as quite “human”. Potentially human to be sure. Which does not mean I do not believe prelinguistic infants do not have a “right to life”. Any borderline you draw – from conception to actual birth to the beginnings of sensory experience in between – is going to be somewhat arbitrary; it’s imposing discrete categories “human”, “person”, upon processes which don’t really allow for them. “Viability” is a compromise which seems to do nicely.
What, am I banned now? Posts gone?
Well, not banned apparently. OB, have I Transgressed the Unwritten Code, eh? Unprofitable line of discussion removed by you? Accident?
Ok Constable, I’ll come quietly… mind that, its on a hair trigger, and the piranha does bite…
Hard cases make bad law, even if interesting philosophy.
Yep, Merlijn has his finger on the nub of the issue. Re. viability, though, my feeling is that there needs to be some kind of qualifier here – ‘developmentally sustainable viability’, or something – in that ‘viability’ must be tied to a reasonable chance of growing to become a healthy human being: the boundary for ‘viability’ keeps getting earlier thanks to the efforts of doctors with an eye to making history, but at the earliest ages now possible survival tends to be accompanied by truly crippling disability and retardation.
outeast and Merlijn, don’t you feel its a bit of spin-doctoring to deny the term ‘human’ to homo sapiens at the sub-sentient stages of development? Surely its better to honestly and scientifically name the meat, and yet distinguish a person from a not-person?
OB
OK, you see ‘human being’ as referring to personhood rather than (as I do) as a common-language species referent (the OED suggests both definitions, unsurprisingly indicating some imprecision here). Like Merlijn, though, I am uncomfortable with birth as the definitive line of personhood, so either way dislike the idea that humanbeingness commences with birth (though I realize that was not precisely what you said).
ChrisPer
See my exchange with OB. We seem to have two uses of ‘human being’ here: Merlijn and OB seem to be using the term to denote personhood; I, like you, see it as a species referent. For this reason the term ‘unborn human being’ does not bother me overmuch (at least as applied to late-term foetuses) but it rubs OB the wrong way. Unfortunately this leaves wiggle room for rhetorical equivocation, so I would agree with OB that the term may be best avoided. (PS – I like the brutalism of your expression ‘name the meat’!)
“Hard cases make bad law, even if interesting philosophy.”
also unfortunetely, dumbest religion…
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6645555.stm
“Up to one million people are set to gather in Brazil to watch Pope Benedict XVI canonise the country’s first home-born saint, Friar Galvao.
The open-air mass at an airfield in Sao Paulo marks the highlight of the Pope’s first visit to Brazil, the world’s most populous Catholic nation.
On Thursday, the Pope told thousands of young Catholics at a rally to avoid the “evil” of abortion and to stay chaste. “
Go Pope !
Alas, the other pope is gone to Heaven – but he left this in his wake.
Evangelium vitae
Ioannes Paulus PP. II
1995 03 25
IntraText SC – Text
CHAPTER I – THE VOICE OF YOUR BROTHER’S BLOOD CRIES TO ME FROM THE GROUND
“What have you done?” (Gen 4:10): the eclipse of the value of life
10. The Lord said to Cain: “What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground” (Gen 4:10).
The voice of the blood shed by men continues to cry out, from generation to generation, in ever new and different ways.
The Lord’s question: “What have you done?”, which Cain cannot escape, is addressed also to the people of today, to make them realize the extent and gravity of the attacks against life which continue to mark human history; to make them discover what causes these attacks and feeds them; and to make them ponder seriously the consequences which derive from these attacks for the existence of individuals and peoples.
Some threats come from nature itself, but they are made worse by the culpable indifference and negligence of those who could in some cases remedy them. Others are the result of situations of violence, hatred and conflicting interests, which lead people to attack others through murder, war, slaughter and genocide.
And how can we fail to consider the violence against life done to millions of human beings, especially children, who are forced into poverty, malnutrition and hunger because of an unjust distribution of resources between peoples and between social classes? And what of the violence inherent not only in wars as such but in the scandalous arms trade, which spawns the many armed conflicts which stain our world with blood? What of the spreading of death caused by reckless tampering with the world’s ecological balance, by the criminal spread of drugs, or by the promotion of certain kinds of sexual activity which, besides being morally unacceptable, also involve grave risks to life? It is impossible to catalogue completely the vast array of threats to human life, so many are the forms, whether explicit or hidden, in which they appear today!
“Up to one million people are set to gather in Brazil”
But then, that many Brazillians went to see Guns & Roses…