By the standard set by the early marches against the Trump administration, the June 22 demonstration for reproductive rights in Albany was a small-time affair. That may be because there's little sense of urgency about abortion rights here. Today's march was mainly a protest against anti-abortion measures taken in other states, but even if those result, after legal challenges, in a Supreme Court overturn of Roe v. Wade, New York State seems unlikely to ban abortions. It's nice to feel compassionate about women elsewhere, but maybe it was just too nice out on the first Saturday of the summer.
This group started outside the State Museum at the Empire State Plaza and marched around the Center Square area until I caught them on Lark Street. You're not seeing the whole lot here, though you do get to see Rep. Tonko, the local congressman, tagging along. You aren't seeing the woman who showed up in a Handmaid's Tale costume to signify that denying women reproductive sovereignty was tantamount to reducing them to patriarchal servitude. That line of argument still impresses many people, at least in these parts, but it arguably reduces all opposition to abortion to one obnoxious impulse. It's been effective in the past to pose a stark abortion vs. fundamentalist tyranny dichotomy, but I wonder whether changes in the national mood recently have altered that dynamic. I also wonder whether any rational resolution to the long debate is possible, when there are moral absolutes impervious to reason on either side.
I tend toward the view that consistency requires the "pro-life" camp to prove its regard for life by providing for the living, on the premise that if the state has an interest in anyone being born, it should have an equal interest in keeping everyone born alive. But that doesn't necessarily follow for anti-abortion people, who may believe instead that people are entitled only to a "chance" and are obliged eventually to rise or fall on their own. They may see abortion as intolerable cruelty, but their opposition may not mitigate their endorsement of rules of life that seem cruel to many others. It's also inconsistent, I suppose, for a movement driven so much by hedonism to relegate the ultimate helpless entities to the mercy (or simply the prerogative) of their biological landlords, but like other forms of populism the pro-choice movement is "here and now" oriented and resistant to more theoretical appeals to solidarity -- especially if they compromise the movement's sense of sovereignty. You will look for seamless garments in vain in this debate. The one thing you can be sure of is that whatever the states or the courts say, abortions will continue as they always have. Whether people will continue to care once the procedure no longer enjoys an offensive official sanction, only time can tell.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
I am not a woman. I will never be pregnant, therefore the abortion issue is not important to me. That being said, what thoroughly disgusts me about the left is just HOW important they make the issue. Considering the plethora of other, more "humane" methods of birth control, I don't understand why they seem to insist that abortion should be the number one form. The only thing I can deduce from their stance is that liberals do NOT want to have to act in a responsible manner.
In real terms, an abortion is a procedure wherein a woman allows a (relative) stranger to push a mechanical device into her vagina to scrape out tissue that would not be there in the first place if she practiced some responsible form of birth control. To be sure, I will concede that there are cases wherein abortion could be seen as necessary, but in those cases, it should be very evident that the woman is pregnant early enough to have the procedure done BEFORE the embryo has become viable.
I'm not against abortion, but I think that sex education and all other forms of birth control should be at the forefront of the reproduction argument, not the most traumatic (physically and emotionally) form of birth control - abortion. In my mind, the fact that so many on the left push abortion only makes them inhumane monsters.
"I tend toward the view that consistency requires the "pro-life" camp to prove its regard for life by providing for the living, "
Here is the paradox, as I see it:
The right calls itself the "party of life" because of its anti-abortion stance, while (for the most part) supporting the death penalty. The left, on the other hand, calls itself "humane" because it does NOT support the death penalty - except, of course, for the death penalty against the unborn whose only "crime" is to have been conceived.
Personally, I think, given the population of this planet and its unchecked growth, we should be killing more people. I have no problem with the idea of ending the existence of someone whose existence depends on preying upon the population at large. I have no problem with wars - but only if those who clamor for war are put at the front line in the first wave. My view on abortion, I've already stated.
In nature, any species which cannot adapt to a changing environment is slated for extinction. We should see cultures in the same light. Those which cannot adapt should be allowed to go extinct.
What I find really disturbing is that these hypocrites call it "reproductive rights" while supporting abortion which is anti-reproduction. Maybe someone should take them to court and force some truth in their advertising. What they should be calling it, if they were honest, is non-reproductive rights. It irritates me when these hypocrites argue that laws against abortion are laws forcing women to give birth. The fact is, if those women were practicing reasonable birth control, they wouldn't get pregnant, so wouldn't need abortions.
Post a Comment