Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: > Michael Keaney wrote: <snip> > > The USA has gone in a direction of punishing with imprisonement what you > call "'irresponsible' behaviors of pregnant mothers,'" and this policy > trend is likely to continue. As applied to the "left" broadly defined, it is clear that Butler's strictures on this issue (as quoted recently by Doug) are richly justified. For the record, however, be it noted that the enemies of women in this recent debate have *not* included those who are most openly marxist. This debate erupts on various lists about twice a year, there are never any new arguments (though at least until now in the present debate no one had babbled about irresponsible women), and no one ever changes his/her mind. I think that as is the case in the discussion of U.S. aggressions abroad (e.g., Serbia) the interesting question in fact is a question of how, not whether. How to oppose the aggression. How to fight the battle for abortion rights. The arguments against those rights simply are not serious. I suggest that as a general strategic principle our goal should be not to persuade more people that abortion is legitimate but to generate an atmosphere in which abortion is simply taken for granted. We need to isolate rather than convert right-to-lifers. And if one is not blinded by parliamentary cretinism -- i.e., if one does not see issues merely in terms of how they generate votes -- this task is not so difficult as it might seen. In electoral terms "single mothers" still seem to be a big issue -- but that is so only as a code word for racism. So we need to fight racism rather than wage an independent battle for single mothers. In daily life single motherhood is now a moot issue. The battle is over. And at this level, the battle for abortion is being won also. When the issue gets posed in national (i.e., electoral) debate the superior access of right-to-lifers to the media will always (seemingly) carry the day in that the issue will be pre-defined in their favor. (See Ellen's posts in this debate.) So our task -- as in almost all the key issues for the left -- is simply (!) to find ways to shift the locus of struggle. That is a subject of two or three years (or decades) of discussion. Carrol
