Blog for Choice day has come and gone, and there’s a lot of great posts. I’m very excited that a lot of feminists have taken this opportunity to interogate and question the usefulnes of ‘choice’ as a slogan, goal, or analysis. I have lots of ideas about this, and hopefully I’ll get round to writing about some of them soon, but in the meantime, I wanted to write about one tiny corner of those issues.
When abortion battles were fought and won (or lost, in New Zealand’s case – but we won the wore), they weren’t fought using the term ‘pro-choice’.
The feminist slogan was: “A woman’s right to choose.”
The most obvious thing we’ve lost in the compacting of the slogan to a label is the woman. The feminist slogan put women at the centre of our argument.
The term pro-choice, also steps back from demanding our rights, and phrasing those rights as anything which interferes with making the choices we wish to make. I believe that charging women fees for abortion interferes with her right to choose, just as surely as making her get her abortion signed off by two doctors.
The phrase pro-choice is too wishy-washy, too vague, and too open to the idea that it’s the ability to choose that matters, rather than the quality of the options. The choice between continuing and unwanted pregnancy or working as a prostitute to pay for an abortion is a choice some women have to make, in places where abortion isn’t funded by the state. That doesn’t mean I’m for that choice. Other women have to have abortions because they can’t afford the time off work that would come with pregnancy. Again I’m not pro-that choice. As a feminist part of what I want is to ensure that women don’t have to spend their lives choosing between two shitty options.* In the meantime I will fight to ensure that women themselves are able to decide which shitty option they think is better, but that’s not my end-goal.
So maybe I’m not pro-choice after-all – I think I’ll ditch the short-hand – waste the extra syllables and make sure I always say that I believe in a woman’s right to choose.
* I’m not saying (and don’t believe) that abortion is always a shitty option, but that it can be, for some women under some circumstances.
The choice between continuing and unwanted pregnancy or working as a prostitute to pay for an abortion is a choice some women have to make, in places where abortion isn’t funded by the state.
You mean, funded by the taxpayers of the State. This proposes that a woman should be able to force the taxpayers of the State to fund something that a great many of them think is murder. Not due to any choice they made, mind you, nor due to any outside force (invasion, criminal activity, etc.), but due to choices that this woman herself made.
I also think that the concept of “either get an abortion or work as a prostitute” is ridiculous. There are other options, chief among them having the baby and either keeping it or putting it up for adoption. Then there’s getting a McJob. Not to mention all the different choices that occur prior to getting pregnant with limited options for supporting the resultant child.
“A woman’s right to choice” — I wish we would start saying this again. I remember it distinctly. However, even that saying was not technically correct from a purely legal perspective (I apologize that my only understanding is U.S. law). Here in the U.S., the law has always understood it to be the *doctor’s* (typically a man’s) choice.
Ron, it’s the nature of taxation that it forces some percentage of citizens to help finance what they consider to be murder.
After all, I’m not too wild about the death penalty or the war in Iraq or the School of the Americas or . . .
And I agree wth you, Maia. I like the phrase “a woman’s right to choose,” because it puts the stakes out there in no uncertain terms. We need more of that.
I’m not in favor of the State funding abortions as it’s just another step in reinforcing harmful heteronormative practices, but Ron I wanted to point out that, in the US, taxpayers can register as concientious objectors for moral reasons if they wish not to support such tax driven efforts. It doesn’t mean that they are free from IRS sanction, but if someone’s moral objections are that strong, there are options available to them. I, myself, am registered as a war tax resister.
Q Grrl, I don’t understand. How does funding abortion reinforce heteronormativity? How would not funding abortion be less harmful?
Yeah, there’s a lot of things that people of all beliefs (including me) are forced to pay for even though they oppose them. That in and of itself is no argument for a failure to pay taxes. But it seems to me that in this particular case, we are being asked to pay for the consequences of a series of bad choices made by someone else with no obvious benefit to the people being asked to pay.
For something like the war in Iraq, it can be argued (although many disagree) that by overthrowing a despot like Saddam Hussein and engaging his wannabe successors, it helps overall security in the long run. Yes, I know that there are arguments against as well, but that’s at least the argument in favor. I fail to see the argument in favor of how it’s a benefit to society overall for the State to fund abortion, especially considering that there are numerous other alternatives.
I fail to see the argument in favor of how it’s a benefit to society overall for the State to fund abortion, especially considering that there are numerous other alternatives.
State funded abortion benefits society overall by improving women’s health and allowing for more stable families (financially, emotionally, etc.) would be two of the more obvious arguments.
Do you not see numerous other alternatives to the invasion of Iraq vis a vis the national security aspect?
Supporting a woman’s right to choose abortion is not the same as supporting the path that led to her pregnancy, or it’s aftermath. I don’t think the State has a responsibility to the individual on this level (especially in light of our lack of universal health care). The majority of unwanted pregnancies are due to heterosexual normative practices that harm women (i.e, the unwanted pregnancy). Where a pregnancy takes both a man and a woman, why would the abortion take the woman and the State? Where is the man’s responsibility?
Because it reaffirms the humanity of women and protects the bodily sovereignty and inherent human rights of roughly 1/2 of our citizenry.
Yes, I know that there are arguments against as well, but that’s at least the argument in favor.
Dude, I’ve been paying (and paying, and paying, and paying . . .) for the consequences of a series of bad choices made by George W. Bush with no obvious benefit to me for years now.
I’d also like to add that there’s a matter of scale. We could pay for 100% of every single abortion performed in the United States without even coming close to the cost of the war.
And that’s just the war. That’s not even counting the cost of capital punishment, the cost of torture, the cost of sponsoring dictatorships, the cost of paying the police to beat down peaceful protesters, the cost of paying for a racially and sexually discriminatory court system, the cost of corporate subsidies, etc, etc, etc.
I mean, I’m just saying that if we’re going to play the ‘not with my tax dollars’ game, I have no doubt that we can go blow for blow.
I’ve always read that as the choice, not to have an abortion, but whether to endure a risk of death (a natural consequence of pregnancy and childbirth). That’s the real choice: am I willing to take away another woman’s right to defend herself against a death threat? Because every pregnancy is a death threat.
Because every pregnancy is a death threat.
So is every abortion. For the fetus, at least, and the mother too.
Because it reaffirms the humanity of women and protects the bodily sovereignty and inherent human rights of roughly 1/2 of our citizenry.
O.K. We could argue the concept of whether State support for abortion has anything to do with “reaffirming the humanity of women”, but set that aside and let me ask this; where in the Constitution does it say that it is a function of the Federal government to “reaffirm the humanity of women”? And where does it say that abortion is a human right? Roe vs. Wade claims to have found a “right to privacy” in it and stated that the State on that basis therefore had no right to interfere with a woman’s decision to have an abortion. But that’s not nearly the same as saying that abortion itself is a human right, and further that the State therefore has an obligation to fund it.
A woman’s right to choose comes as part of comprehensive catalog of family planning options that have consequences on a societal scale. Access to family planning options increases the physical and financial health and stability of women and families by decreasing the number of teen births and the number of children per family, and increasing the earning power of women. That access is what Maia is talking about. It’s not enough to say that women have the right to family planning, that won’t help if the options aren’t available, and limits the impact of family planning across a community.
As a side note, I think it’s really insulting and presumptive to assume that every abortion is the result of someone’s mistake or bad choices. That edges really close to the notion that dealing with an unwanted pregnancy is the woman’s punishment for having sex. There are all kinds of reasons to seek an abortion, and all kinds of situations that create those reasons. By couching the argument in terms of bad choices, it presumes that there are good choices that make it ok for the state to pay for an abortion. So we’ll support women who have a medical (doctor sanctioned) need for an abortion, we won’t disallow women who can afford to pay for an abortion, but that we don’t want poor women thinking that they can have sex and not suffer the consequences.
Ron, you argued that it’s wrong for your taxes support something you find morally reprehensible.
I pointed out that mine do too.
You argued that “Well, yeah, but at least my stuff has a benefit to society (although some might argue).”
I pointed out that mine do too, and yeah, I don’t think yours do.
Now you’re arguing constitutional mandate? Seriously? The constitution explicitly defines freedom of speech . . . and yet my taxes pay for ‘free speech zones’. The constitution explicitly defines the process of declaring war . . . and yet we’re engaged in an unjustified, undeclared war that a majority of the populace opposes.
Look, we can keep going back and forth all day. I don’t think that that’s productive.
The stuff I don’t want my tax dollars supporting, you think is perfectly reasonable stuff. Lots of people agree with you.
The stuff you don’t want your tax dollars supporting, I think is perfectly reasonable stuff. Lots of people agree with me.
What this says to me is that “My tax dollars shouldn’t support that because I don’t like it” probably isn’t a very good argument. It certainly isn’t a good argument when it’s only applied to one side of the equation.
—Myca
I broadly agree, Myca. The only reason to take into account “but people don’t want to pay for that” is as a political question.
When it comes to abortion, it’s a lot more politically practical to preserve abortion rights if one doesn’t also insist on public financing – in much the same way that it’s a lot easier to get public support for a war that will be fought by volunteers.
Oh, as a broadly tactical/political question, I agree, Robert.
RonF,
I just want to point out that you are changing the target. You started with:
I fail to see the argument in favor of how it’s a benefit to society overall for the State to fund abortion, especially considering that there are numerous other alternatives.
Several people pointed out the arguments in favor of how it’s a benefit to society. Rather than acknowledging that those are (some of) the arguments, you have decided to argue against the merits of several of the arguments. We all know that you disagree, but do you see that there are valid arguments (even if you disagree with them) for the societal benefits of state funded abortion? You know, where this segment of the thread began.
QGrrrl, how do you sign up for that? I wish there were such a thing for the death penalty, but I guess living in a state that doesn’t have (or use) it is close enough.
A wording that would more closely fit the way I think of what we’ve all gotten into the habit of shorthanding into “choice” is autonomy. Yeah, it’s clunkier, so “pro-autonomy” might not catch on, but what we’re really talking about is a woman’s right to autonomy over her own life and body – basically, a woman’s right to be a thinking human being. Roe v. Wade was about a woman’s right to privacy, that the government couldn’t interfere with what was implicitly assumed to be her choice.
Maybe “choice” is wishy-washy, as Maia says, partly because it doesn’t seem like the fundies have so much of a problem with all the harlots choosing in their little brains to have an abortion, it’s the being allowed to act on that decision as though their body belonged to them.
“As a side note, I think it’s really insulting and presumptive to assume that every abortion is the result of someone’s mistake or bad choices.”
But I suspect you wouldn’t be ok with only outlawing the cases where the abortion is the result of bad choices. If that is the case, you are really just distracting from whatever you think the core argument is.
That wasn’t my point. People often state that abortions are the result of bad choices and that they oppose funding abortions because they don’t want to reward bad choices. I just wanted to point out that that type of statement implies a classist prejudice against poor women and their ability to attain an abortion. In a sense it reinforces the notion that access to cheap/free abortion is a reward for promiscuity and that if a woman can’t afford an abortion, she shouldn’t be having sex in the first place. It doesn’t seem to me to be in the spirit of a woman’s right to choose if the first hurdle she faces is whether or not she made all the “right” choices.
O.K. I admit I got a little off track. What I had meant to make the point was that it’s one thing to support access to abortion, but it’s quite another to argue that the State (and therefore the taxpayers) has an obligation to pay for it. Yes, we all pay for stuff we don’t support. The fact that numerous people think abortion is murder explains the depth and intensity of opposition to abortion, but is not a unique circumstance.
Consider this, then; you have a right to freely practice your religion, but the State has no obligation to pay for the building of a church for your denomination if you can’t afford to. You have a right to freedom of the press, but the State has no obligation to buy you a printing press if you can’t afford one. The fact that you have a right guaranteed to you in the Constitution or in any law dependent on it doesn’t mean that the State has an obligation to pay for it if you can’t. That’s not the law this country was founded on, and it’s not the philosophy it was founded on either.
The next question, it then seems to me, is whether it’s Constitutional to write a law that requires you to pay for someone else to exercise a right or a privilege. As an example, you may not favor war, but the Constitution grants the Congress the ability to declare war and the President the ability to commit troops into the field in his capacity as Commander in Chief. You may not favor using the National Guard on a border to enforce immigration law and send illegal aliens back to their country of origin, but the law requiring the Federal government to secure the borders and granting the President or Governors of the several States to do just that exist. Where is the law that requires the State to provide abortions, as opposed to not preventing people from getting them? On what Constitutional provisions would such a law be based?
bradana, it seems to me to be rather broadly true that people with money can use it to overcome the consequences of bad choices, whereas people without money can’t. If a person with a certain level of income is inattentive while driving and gets in a collision, they can pay for the damage they caused and buy a new car. A person with inadequate income may have problems paying for the damage and may have to end up driving a damaged car or having to find alternate means of transportation.
So; should the State take money from me and buy a new car for the latter person? I think they made a bad choice to be inattentive to their driving, but so what? The real issue, it seems to me, is that they made a choice, and people are supposed to deal with the consequences of their own choices using their own resources; they have no right to call upon mine without my consent. It’s not an issue of punishing that person. Requiring these drivers to pay for the damages they caused is not a punishment, it’s making them take responsibility for the consequences of their actions. Making people take responsibility for their choices and deal with the consequences thereof using their own resources is not “classist” (whatever that means). The obligation applies to everyone, equally, regardless of their race, income, religion, etc. It’s something that people are supposed to be taught (although with some difficulty, to be sure) at a young age.
The fact is that your income level affects your ability to pay for the consequences of your actions. That does not mean that it’s discrimination to refuse to give money to people who are less able to pay for the consequences of their actions than other people are.
Sounds like you’re tossing adult responsibility right out the window.
I support women’s legal right to access an abortion she chooses. I don’t think that abortions should be specifically funded by the State. In fact, I would like to see the State back away from getting its grubby little fingers all over abortions. It’s not a state/legal issue. It’s a healthcare issue. Well, in my perfect world it would be.
[and as a side note: lower income wage earners pay a greater percentage of their wages towards taxes than higher income wage earners. Until that is rectified, I am not in support of taxing the poor to pay the poor.]
Trillian: Google “war tax resisters” and then read as many sources as possible. Make sure you know what your rights are and where they end, etc.
There’s an abortion issue brewing in Illinois. A parental notification law was passed years ago in Illinois. It required parents of a minor child seeking an abortion to be notified, but did not require their approval. It has exceptions to the requirement that are subject to judicial review. It’s enforcement was held up (due to ACLU lawsuits, IIRC) until the Illinois Supreme Court issued guidelines for conduct of the judicial reviews. That body never issued the guidelines, so the law languished unenforced.
Recently Illinois State Attorney General Lisa Madigan asked the Court to issue the guidelines. The Court, whose membership has almost completely turned over since the law was passed, did so. Ms. Madigan has now announced that the law will be enforced. The ACLU and other groups have raised the usual objections, but Ms. Madigan has stated that she has compared the law to the laws of the other 44 states that have such laws and she sees no Constitutional issues.
What’s interesting to me is that the ACLU’s objections are theoretically based; seeking judicial review is too hard for minors to do, and thus this restriction is likely to unconstitutionally restrict minors from obtaining abortions. But it seems to me that we ought to be past theory at this point; if there are 44 other states with such laws, there ought to be actual data available on this issue. I wonder what actual evidence the ACLU has to buttress their assertion? It also seems to me that the ACLU is wasting it’s resources in political advocacy rather than actually defending Constitutional rights; there do not seem to be any Constitutional questions here that have not already been raised and resolved in the courts.
BTW: I say “Ms. Madigan” and not “Madigan” because her father is Michael Madigan, Speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives and one of the best known and most powerful politicians in this state. He’s also my State Representative as it happens. When you refer to “Madigan” in this state, people usually think of him, not her. When his daughter ran for States Attorney he did a fair amount of arm twisting to raise funds, etc. I did not vote for her, fearing nepotism and favoritism, but the general consensus now seems to be that she’s doing a professional and non-partisan job.
…people are supposed to deal with the consequences of their own choices using their own resources…
That’s true only if you want to live without a sense of community and social responsibility.
You may as well say the same for emergency services, for example. Why do I have to pay when the consequence of your choices was that your house caught fire? If you can’t pay to put it out, it will just have to burn to the ground. I, your neighbor, can afford to pay Fire Extinguishers Inc to come to my house and protect it from being ignited by your fire.
I don’t know about you, but that isn’t the community that I want to live in.
OK. So go off and found or find a community that wants to subsidize your firebug ways and take care of consequences jointly, and we’ll go off and found or find communities where we’re responsible for our own shit. Then everyone will be happy.
Even the best of anarchists knows that this is a two-way street. There is similarly a social responsibility to not place an undue burden on the community.
At what point is an unwanted pregnancy an emergency? When does that line get crossed, and when does it become a State responsibility, rather than a family responsibility? Where are the fathers? Why aren’t *they* paying for the abortions? Women don’t get pregnant in a vaccuum.
Even the best of anarchists knows that this is a two-way street. There is similarly a social responsibility to not place an undue burden on the community.
I don’t disagree with this at all. There is certainly room to discuss and debate what is social responsibility and what is personal responsibility. I was responding to RonF’s flat statement that, “…people are supposed to deal with the consequences of their own choices using their own resources…” and bringing up the absurdity of that as a bottom line social philosophy.
When discussing abortion, I feel that it falls under the umbrella of Health Care and I feel that Health Care is a social responsibility. Nobody should be without. If you want to discuss that, great. But I cannot agree for a moment that everybody is responsible for their own stuff only and owes nothing to their community.
Myca,
Complaining about the costs incurred by an elected government is quite different from complaining about the costs incurred by a private citizen.
Mind you, I hate GWB. But I had a say in the war: I participated in the democratic process; I spent as much time as I chose to help the election, etc etc. And because I support the system, and I like use it to my advantage when i can, I acknowledge the painful reality that the results of the system are currently not to my liking.
If I ask the government to pay for my surgery to cure injuries from a frat party, do you see how that’s somewhat different? GWB’s actions create costs because the country voted him as president. My actions create costs because I got drunk at a frat party.
Like Q Grrl, I think it’s pretty much obvious taht poor people will bear costs of choices to a larger degree than rich people. Sometimes I think of one of my defense clinic clients: She had to drive to work, had few friends with a car; lived in cheaper housing outside of the city.
So when she was pulled over for driving drunk (this happens to rich folk too) her life changed in way that rich people’s lives didn’t:
She didn’t have a spouse with a car to drive her to work.
She couldn’t take a cab.
She didn’t work in a big firm where she could call on coworkers to help her.
She couldn’t hire an attorney immediately to settle her case.
She couldn’t offer to pay a gazillion dollars to the “victim’s fund” as a way of settlement.
She couldn’t even buy a bicycle.
In fact, she could hardly make it to court (sometimes I had to go and get her) which would result in a default judgment, which NOBODY has happen to them if they’re rich.
so…. what should society do? I don’t know the answer myself. It sure does seem pretty impossible to live “perfectly” for any length of time without making any mistakes at all. Should we really hold people responsible for consequences no matter how bad, just because it was “their mistake?”
Oh, sure, I see the difference, Sailorman. It’s not an exact analogy, and I brought it up primarily in response to the ‘I think this is murder, so I shouldn’t have to subsidize it” argument.
I’ve got three points.
First, if you honestly think that something is murder, whether the cost is incurred by a private individual or a government official, it’s equally distasteful. I mean, I don’t think that the right-to-lifers would stop protesting if we amended the constitution to guarantee everyone access to state-funded abortion . . . I think that they’d probably protest more.
Second, if we want to shift analogies, we can talk about the government’s corporate subsidies or foreign aid. After all, if Israel makes the ‘bad choice’ to be located amongst a sea of their enemies, why should I have to pay for it? If some bank or airline or defense firm goes belly up due to their bad choices why should I pay for it?
Last, asking the government to finance abortion isn’t somehow a ‘less legitimate’ process than electing a president. We propose bills, the houses ratify, etc, etc. There’s a legal process. And speaking of legal process, Congress hasn’t actually declared war since WWII . . . so yeah, although there’s a system, it gets twisted enough in ways I don’t like that I’m not going to be too upset about advocating for the system to do things I do like.
Q Grrl, my guess is that if there was a father in the picture, there would be fewer abortions. I would think that one reason women get abortions is that they are facing raising a child alone.
A woman indeed does not get pregnant in a vacumn, and I heartily endorse bringing the force of law to bear on any male who has fathered a child but seeks to evade the responsibility of helping deal with the consequences.
You may as well say the same for emergency services, for example. Why do I have to pay when the consequence of your choices was that your house caught fire? If you can’t pay to put it out, it will just have to burn to the ground. I, your neighbor, can afford to pay Fire Extinguishers Inc to come to my house and protect it from being ignited by your fire.
Well, for one thing, there are reasons that a house may catch fire besides the choices of the inhabitants. Arson and lightning come immediately to mind. Also, you may not own the building and may have no way to evaluate the condition of the electrical or heating systems or other sources of the fire; or, the homeowner may have hired a union and legally bonded workman who unbeknownst to the homeowner decided to cut corners when they installed his heating sytem. The consequences of that were due to the workman’s choice, not the homeowner, and on that basis the workman’s company’s insurance will end up having to pay off when the arson investigators find out what happened.
Finally, don’t forget that a building owner pays taxes that are used to support the fire department. I don’t know about your state, but my property tax bill specificially lists the amount of money I pay to support the fire department for my community. So I therefore HAVE paid to have any fire at my house put out, as has any property owner.
“…people are supposed to deal with the consequences of their own choices using their own resources…” and bringing up the absurdity of that as a bottom line social philosophy.”
It’s not an absurdity, it’s a reality. Now, what happens when the resources of the individual who made the choices are inadequate to cover the consequences is another issue. For example, a couple builds a campfire in a national forest, sit around a while, and then leave without putting the fire out adequately. The forest catches fire, and 10,000 acres burn costing millions of countable dollars in lost timber and fire department labor and materials, and uncountable dollars in lost environmental habitat, destruction of animals, etc. They can’t pay for that. What to do then is a question of public policy, but I don’t see how you can question that it is the responsibility of people to pay for the consequences of their actions.
When discussing abortion, I feel that it falls under the umbrella of Health Care and I feel that Health Care is a social responsibility. Nobody should be without.
Feel all you want, but the fact is that there’s a lot of disagreement that an abortion is an example of health care – generally, it’s evidence that the reproductive systems of both of the people involved are working perfectly. When it comes to “feeling” that health care is a social responsibility, the current state of that in the U.S. seems to be that some medical procedures (say, heart surgery) are reasonable for the public to support if the person needing it can’t afford them, whereas other medical procedures (e.g., breast augmentation) are generally not. Right now, you’re going to have to work pretty hard to convince the public that overall, abortion belongs in the former category rather than the latter.
If you want to discuss that, great. But I cannot agree for a moment that everybody is responsible for their own stuff only and owes nothing to their community.
I never said that. Please quote where I did.
In fact, I’m arguing that people owe a great deal to their community. They owe it their best effort to ensure that they do not become a burden to it, but a contributor. They owe it to take care of their own actions themselves as much as possible before they try to get the community’s money. And they owe it to consider which of a group of choices will be least burdensome on the community, instead of making their judgement solely on the basis of their own desires and convenience.
I do think that everyone is responsible for their own stuff, though. Who do you think is responsible for your stuff. Me? Why?
After all, if Israel makes the ‘bad choice’ to be located amongst a sea of their enemies, why should I have to pay for it?
Because a lot of people thought that it was a good choice, not a bad one. And a lot of people think that it’s a good choice to support a democracy in the Middle East, and to protect a sovereign state against being destroyed by theocracies and despots. How Constitutional that is isn’t something I’ve seen a good analysis of, I’ll grant.
If some bank or airline or defense firm goes belly up due to their bad choices why should I pay for it?
I don’t think you should. Nor should I. I’m not real big on that kind of thing at all. When some rich SOB wants public money so that he or she can stay rich I pretty much see red.
Last, asking the government to finance abortion isn’t somehow a ‘less legitimate’ process than electing a president.
No, you can go ahead and ask. You can even get a bill passed. But the difference is that the election of a President is mandated in the Constitution, as is the process for doing so. Public financing of abortion is not mandated in the Constitution. Just because the legislature votes up a bill and the President signs off on it doesn’t mean that it’s Constitutional and enforceable, as abortion opponents have found to their sorrow.
And speaking of legal process, Congress hasn’t actually declared war since WWII .
Myca, I do believe you are wrong on this. IIRC, the first Gulf War, to oppose the invasion of Kuwait, was in fact declared by Congress. It wasn’t unanimous, for the first time in history, but if you check I believe it was declared.
If you want to discuss that, great. But I cannot agree for a moment that everybody is responsible for their own stuff only and owes nothing to their community.
I never said that. Please quote where I did.
…people are supposed to deal with the consequences of their own choices using their own resources…
Perhaps I misinterpreted, but that’s where I got it.
They owe it their best effort to ensure that they do not become a burden to it, but a contributor.
And what if, despite their best efforts, they become a burden on their community anyway? How do we determine if they really did submit their best effort or not?
I do think that everyone is responsible for their own stuff, though. Who do you think is responsible for your stuff. Me? Why?
I think that I’m responsible for myself. However, I think that my community has a responsibility to help me out should the worst case scenario hit. Why do I need to go into debt if my spouse becomes ill? What bad choices led to that? And, to bring it back around to abortion as part of health care, why do I need to go into debt (or forego the procedure) if my spouse needs an abortion?
Very tangentially, why is it okay to inflict the consequences of my actions on a putative child for whom I may not have the resources to lift them out of poverty? Especially when there is little substantive economic support for that situation? Must a child suffer the consequences of my actions without any community responsibility for that child who didn’t make any of the choices that resulted in their situation?
If you are diagnosed with leukemia tomorrow, I believe that the responsibility for getting you the best medical care possible falls to the community (which includes me). That is to say that the community should provide the best care it can for your condition. I would say the same if you were to suffer a serious head injury as the result of a motorcycle accident even though I believe that riding a motorcycle is a bad choice.
I might feel differently if I thought that people making bad choices was an exception to the rule. However, everybody makes bad choices throughout their lives. When your children make bad choices, do you help them out or tell them to figure it out on their own?
Feel all you want, but the fact is that there’s a lot of disagreement that an abortion is an example of health care – generally, it’s evidence that the reproductive systems of both of the people involved are working perfectly.
Yes, there is a lot of disagreement about nearly all facets of abortion.
Right now, you’re going to have to work pretty hard to convince the public that overall, abortion belongs in the former category rather than the latter.
Did you think that I wasn’t aware of that? Just because I believe something strongly, that doesn’t mean that I’m unaware that many people believe otherwise.
When it comes to “feeling” that health care is a social responsibility…
BTW, what’s with the implied inferiority of the word “feel”? Why the need to put it in scare quotes? Am I all wimplike for using the word “feel” as a synonym for “believe”. I can’t believe that you aren’t aware that “feel” is often used in place of “believe” or “think.” “Feel all you want,” seems like a shitty way of responding to me. But perhaps I’ve misread you there as well.
do you see that there are valid arguments (even if you disagree with them) for the societal benefits of state funded abortion?
Yes, there are benefits, but if they’d kept their pants zipped we would have them already; without the expense, the invasive surgery, the medical risks or this fascinating ethical controversy about the difference between human and non-human, murder and ‘health care option’.
Thank you for giving us the most common anti-choice platitude. But, to be fair, you at least acknowledged that there are benefits – that’s going a lot farther than most anti-choice folks.
And if rock climbers would just stay off the rocks, then we would never need to pay for brain surgery or for evacuation by helicopter for injured climbers. If we would all just stop driving cars, think of the medical expenses (and the emotional trauma) that could be saved. If we would all just live tightly circumscribed safe little lives, in which we never make any mistakes (mostly by always avoiding situations where mistakes could possibly be made), then yes, we could spend a lot less on health care as a society. And yes, if no one ever engaged in potentially reproductive het-sex when they weren’t actively trying to reproduce, then we would never need to consider abortion as an option (except for cases of wanted pregnancies that develop problems, or where someone chooses to become pregnant based on a situation that then changes radically, etc, etc).
But no, no, those nasty fornicators are a separate issue completely.
Common yes, also true and you didn’t deny it. I’m actually pro-choice Jake, I just don’t particularly love the segment of society that forces me to be one, to allow the termination of fetuses and pay for the priviledge in order to support their fantasy of consequence-free sex. Consequence-free, what a laugh!
Yes Charles, I see the parallels between rock climbing and abortion, I just thought it was so obvious there was no need to mention it. Those helmet-wearing, piton-hammering, cliff-diving bastards. They’re next!
if no one ever engaged in potentially reproductive het-sex when they weren’t actively trying to reproduce, then we would never need to consider abortion as an option
Well, we wouldn’t. This argument wouldn’t have been ripping our society a new asshole for forty years. Victories on either side makes me feel dirty. Yay. We killed a fetus. Yay. We forced a living, breathing baby into the arms of a woman who’s been wishing she could kill it for nine months.
Safe sex, surgical contraception. A gram of prevention equals a ton of cure, man. All this shit was avoidable.
Certainly agreed that never having to choose whether or not to have an abortion is better than ever having to choose, I just don’t think that hets never having sex that isn’t intentionally repro-sex (“just kept their pants zipped”) is a relevant solution.
Also, there’s lots of forms of sex that even hets can have that never lead to pregnancy. If only they hadn’t succumbed to the p-v sex fetish! Lots of anguish saved.
Also, you snipped the parenthetical that refuted the part of my statement you agreed with:
(except for cases of wanted pregnancies that develop problems, or where someone chooses to become pregnant based on a situation that then changes radically, etc, etc).
I said that people are responsible for the consequences of their own actions. I never said that they owed nothing to their community. That’s what I’m asking you to provide the quote for, and I don’t see where you found that.
And what if, despite their best efforts, they become a burden on their community anyway? How do we determine if they really did submit their best effort or not?
Depends on the particular issue at hand. When it comes to an ability to pay taxes, or whether or not you will get unemployment or welfare money we have all kinds of laws and agencies and regulations to determine whether or not you are doing your part and what the community will give you. It’s pretty well established that the State has the power and the obligation to make sure that you have exhausted all your other alternatives before it supports you.
Why do I need to go into debt if my spouse becomes ill?
Because you can’t pay for it. Why shouldn’t you go into debt? What legal obligation do I have to ensure that you don’t go into debt; i.e., why should the State have the power to take money from me that I would use to prevent myself from going into debt against my will to ensure that you don’t go into debt?
Do I want to see your spouse die? No. But then I support private charities that help with this kind of thing. Why should the State with it’s power of coercion be the guarantor of such things? Where in the Constitution is it stated that the Federal Government has the power to do this kind of thing?
What bad choices led to that?
I didn’t say they had to be bad choices. I just said that they were your choices not mine, and that you have to be responsible for them. People do make choices that just don’t work out. Just because they weren’t demonstrably bad choices doesn’t mean that they are not responsible for them.
And, to bring it back around to abortion as part of health care, why do I need to go into debt (or forego the procedure) if my spouse needs an abortion
Why does your spouse NEED an abortion? Because she’ll die if she doesn’t get one? Because you’re at poverty level income and can’t support another child? Because you’re middle class or of a certain age and just don’t feel like raising another child? In the first case I can see where there would be a justification for considering the public funding of an abortion if you didn’t have the money. In the last two cases, at least, there are other alternatives to abortion.
BTW, what’s with the implied inferiority of the word “feel”?
Because public policy should be based on facts, not emotions.
Because public policy should be based on facts, not emotions.
Let me know when that day comes.
But, of course, you knew that “feel” was synonymous for “believe.” And the discussion we are having is, in large part, about moral values. It is about what the socially moral and responsible thing to do is. It just so happens that, from what I’ve seen, community provided healthcare provides great benefit. But that great benefit (or not) is subjective. I think what it provides is a benefit, you don’t. We can both cite facts to support our beliefs on this. But when it comes to the decision, which is based on moral values, where are the facts?
I just said that they were your choices not mine, and that you have to be responsible for them.
It was my choice to marry somebody who later became ill? That’s the choice that I made? And I suppose that my spouse made the choice to become ill?
Okay, let’s make it simpler. Why should I go into debt if I become ill? I didn’t choose to become ill, so why should I, alone, pay the consequences? I know, I know, “Because space is a rough place and wimps eat fiery hot death!”
But then I support private charities that help with this kind of thing.
Unfortunately, not enough is donated to private charities for them to be able to meet the need. Many private charities place religious requirements on those they serve, which rules them out for many.
Just because they weren’t demonstrably bad choices doesn’t mean that they are not responsible for them.
See, this is where I am sensing that you don’t feel, sorry – believe – the individual owes their community. They weren’t demonstrably bad choices, but you’re responsible for yourself and we’re not going to lend aid. Tough luck. Sorry. Better luck in your next life. Have a nice day.
I , OTOH, believe that we owe all members of our community food, shelter & healthcare – at a minimum. No matter what horrendous choices or unbelievably bad luck they have had.
It was my choice to marry somebody who later became ill? That’s the choice that I made? And I suppose that my spouse made the choice to become ill?
We were talking about abortion, not illness. I assume if your wife got pregnant it would have been by choice.
I assume if your wife got pregnant it would have been by choice.
That would be an odd assumption as we have done everything possible, short of celibacy and/or refraining from p-v intercourse to prevent such an occurrence.
We were talking about abortion, not illness.
Actually, RonF & I had expanded the scope of the conversation. See comments 27, 28, 30, 34, 35, 36, 37, 39, 40, 43 and 44.
CJ,
That really is a bizarre assumption. While it is certainly the case that many married couples choose to have children, it is also certainly the case that many married women have unplanned pregnancies, and that many married women choose to have abortions to end their unplanned pregnancies.
Bean got to it before me, but I’ve been thinking about the parallels and how to give analagous answers, so…
Well, for one thing, there are reasons that a house may catch fire besides the choices of the inhabitants. Arson and lightning come immediately to mind.
Why didn’t you have a lightning rod? You are just going to have to suffer the consequences of your actions. I’m willing to give you a pass on arson, but my more fundamentalist brethren disagree with me on that.
Also, you may not own the building and may have no way to evaluate the condition of the electrical or heating systems or other sources of the fire; or, the homeowner may have hired a union and legally bonded workman who unbeknownst to the homeowner decided to cut corners when they installed his heating sytem.
Well, that’s the risk you take and you’ll have to deal with the possible consequences or your actions (or inactions). Why didn’t you hire an inspector to check out the electrical and heating systems? If an inspector had found dangerous conditions, you could have reported it to your landlord so that it could be repaired. An inspector isn’t unreasonably expensive.
The consequences of that were due to the workman’s choice, not the homeowner, and on that basis the workman’s company’s insurance will end up having to pay off when the arson investigators find out what happened.
I don’t believe that if my house burns down due to faulty wiring that the insurance for the workman’s company (who did the wiring a decade ago) will pay a thing. My insurance company (if I have homeowners insurance) may pay.
Finally, don’t forget that a building owner pays taxes that are used to support the fire department. I don’t know about your state, but my property tax bill specificially lists the amount of money I pay to support the fire department for my community. So I therefore HAVE paid to have any fire at my house put out, as has any property owner.
No, you have shared the risk, not paid to put out a fire at your house. An insurance pool has been created. Since I have a house that is up to code and perfectly safe from risk of fire (other than arson), why should I be required to pay to protect your unsafe house? If I so choose, I should be able to contract with a local firefighting company. Also, what bean said in her last paragraph.
But when it comes to the decision, which is based on moral values, where are the facts?
The facts are that there is no provision in the Constitution that grants the State the power to take my money to pay for someone else’s abortion. The Federal government is granted a number of powers in the Constitution. Those that it is not granted are explictly reserved to the individual States (which have their own Constitutions limiting their powers) and to the people. I don’t see anywhere in the Federal Constitution or in my own State’s Constitution that grants it the power to take my money and give it to someone else for an abortion. Or, for that matter, universal healthcare in general.
Unfortunately, not enough is donated to private charities for them to be able to meet the need.
Maybe if taxes were lower people would. And who determines need, anyway?
Many private charities place religious requirements on those they serve, which rules them out for many.
Many private charities are supported by religious organizations, but none of the ones I am familar with place a religious requirement on those who they support. Could you name a few?
See, this is where I am sensing that you don’t feel, sorry – believe – the individual owes their community.
I’ve stated quite clearly what the individual owes the community, in post #34.
That would be an odd assumption as we have done everything possible, short of celibacy and/or refraining from p-v intercourse to prevent such an occurrence.
Then you made a choice to engage in behavior that could result in your wife’s getting pregnant. It may not have been your specific choice for her to get pregnant as a result, but it was your choice to take that chance. It then becomes your responsibility, not mine, to deal with any of the consequences that ensue. Whether or not you desired the particular consequence that actually happened out of the many consequences that were possible is immaterial.
Well, there are reasons a woman may become pregnant that are “besides” the choices of the woman.
True. Things happen to people all the time that were not their choice and didn’t result as a forseeable consequence of any such choice. That still doesn’t of itself justify the State taking my money and giving it to you to pay for it. You may have to just suck it up and deal with it yourself. Life is not fair, and it is not the business of the State to make it so. That’s also why insurance companies are in business.
She may have been raped. She may have been using birth control, but it failed. Perhaps the man promised to use a condom, but removed it at the last minute. Maybe she had her tubes tied, but that method failed, too.
None of which I am responsible for. Tell me how any of these justifies the State coercing money from me and giving it to you.
Finally, don’t forget that the woman has, most likely, been paying taxes that would result in supporting the tax-sponsored abortion she receives (as per Q Grrl’s and Sailorman’s arguments).
You pay taxes to the State so that the State can exercise it’s legal powers. The Supreme Court has ruled that the State cannot prevent you from getting an abortion, but I haven’t seen anyone here show that the State has the legal power and obligation to provide them free of charge to people who cannot pay for them.
No, you have shared the risk, not paid to put out a fire at your house. An insurance pool has been created. Since I have a house that is up to code and perfectly safe from risk of fire (other than arson), why should I be required to pay to protect your unsafe house? If I so choose, I should be able to contract with a local firefighting company. Also, what bean said in her last paragraph.
It’s not an insurance pool. An insurance pool compensates you for your losses after they occur. It does not pay for an agency to try to prevent them.
My taxes specifically go to the fire protection district to hire and train and equip firefighters so that they can come roaring down the road and put out a fire at my house or any house or other property in the fire protection district. Every year the fire protection district publishes a financial statement that includes taxes that come in from the district, taxes that come in from the State and Federal government (called “grants” in those cases), and all their expenses. If they want to raise taxes, they justify it by listing what equipment they have to add or replace, additional training they need to take, additional people they want to hire, etc., and then it goes to a vote.
I pay fire insurance. It comes out of the money I earn (after I pay all my taxes), and even if I was crazy enough not to want to pay it the bank holding my mortgage requires me to have it. It is a voluntary association, unsupported by the State, that people join accepting that the risk that some people in the pool might be more likely to have a fire is worth the money they are paying to have their own losses compensated after they have a fire and the local fire department does what it can to save their lives and minimize their losses (and those of their neighbors). It’s private money and the State does not and cannot impel me to pay it for myself or for you.
And where in the Constitution does it say that The State can steal my money and use it to pay for a fire department to defend your home? Just another example of big government nanny-state liberalism.
Ooh! Ooh! Also, show me where in the constitution it talks about the police (The government agency, not the band. I’m pretty sure the band is in there.) or the interstate highway system.
I don’t drive, and I haven’t been a victim of any crimes, nor has my house ever caught fire, and yet they take my tax money as welfare (WELFARE, I tell you!) for those hooligans who make bad choices like driving on the highway, getting robbed (shouldn’t have been in that part of town, doncha know?), and living in flammable homes.
But you’re applying your philosophy unevenly. I, and a lot of other women like me, noteably single, middle aged, lesbian, low to moderate income, are expected to fully deal with the consequences of our own choices. We aren’t given a buy-out. Plus we get the added benefit of having *more* of our income taxed then that of our wealthier (or vastly poorer) heterosexual sisters. So, not only am I expected to live up to a certain socially approved sexual more (say, like the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy), you’re suggesting that I be taxed for someone else’s reckless sexual morality. Now, before you think I’m blaming women, let me repeat that pregnancy takes two, and even if the woman was coerced, raped, whatever, one party to that sexual activity had a reckless sexual morality. Yes, there are times when birth control fails, but somehow I’m not thinking that’s the majority of needed abortions – if they were, we’d be inventing better birth control. From my perspective, State financed abortions are part and parcel of a heteronormative sexuality that is, and has been, weakly ethical. *If* the greater percentage of needed abortions stemmed from failed birth control, or if the majority of sexually active women were penetrated out of coercion, then we could revisit the “it takes a village to abort” issue.
Someone upthread made a snarky comment about nasty fornicators, and I hate that objections to abortion (or financially supporting them) get framed as sexual repression on the part of the objectors. I have lived too long under heterosexist homophobia to want any part in a woman’s abortion, especially financial. Yes, I support her right to choose what is best for her, but leave me out of it.
Hell, queers still don’t have full protection of their civil liberties and rights. And you want me to fund sloppy het sex? Heterosexual and bisexual women are perfectly capable of demanding a higher standard of sexual ethics/mores/behavior from their male partners. Do it.
the reason we have public fire services is because that is what government is for: to make decisions which hugely benefit the public (the overall cost of fire protection is less than the overall benefit) even if the individuals in question would not make the decisions on their own. Hell, that’s the whole POINT: if we could be trusted to make collectively beneficial decisions based on individual priorities then we wouldn’t need government to do much.
As a matter of fact, we didn’t used to have public fire services. It was all privately contracted. But then enough people realized that fires burning out of control could do a lot of damage. They realized that the risks existing from the uninsured (whose houses would burn, and possibly ignite others) exceeded the costs of just providing fire to everyone. not incidentally, the various huge city fires were the impetus for this. And as a matter of fact, in some areas of the U.S. (mostly rural) there still are no fire services. but all cities have them.
RonF, I don’t buy your constitutional argument at all. There doesn’t need to be a specific provision in the constitution justifying spending for that purpose, so long as it’s covered in one of the other catchall provisions–which it probably is under the “general welfare” clause.
But you’re applying your philosophy unevenly.
How so? I think that I understand the rest of your comment, but I don’t get this. Is it because I’m taxing you for somebody else’s reckless sexual morality? If so, I’m also taxing myself for the same thing. Just as I’m taxing myself for the emergency services and healthcare required by somebody injured in a motorcycle accident (reckless transportation morality). But, perhaps, I’m just illustrating how much I don’t understand your statement.
…I hate that objections to abortion (or financially supporting them) get framed as sexual repression on the part of the objectors.
I tend to frame it in terms of bodily autonomy, in the case of the former. Is that the same thing? I also frame it in terms of benefit to individuals and community as well as my sense of ethics and morals, in the case of the paranthetical. I think.
Also, in the case of the former, I frame it as absurd to think that people will stop having p-v intercourse. Which, as we’ve seen in this thread (yet again), is one of the most common arguments against – don’t have p-v intercourse.
From my perspective, State financed abortions are part and parcel of a heteronormative sexuality that is, and has been, weakly ethical.
My initial thought is that, yes, that is quite possibly true, but that I’m not sure that that outweighs the societal benefits. I need to think about this more.
Hell, queers still don’t have full protection of their civil liberties and rights. And you want me to fund sloppy het sex?
Yes I do, although I would phrase it differently. Just as you want me to fight for full protection of civil liberties and rights for queers. I think that both of those are the right things to do.
I, and a lot of other women like me, noteably single, middle aged, lesbian, low to moderate income, are expected to fully deal with the consequences of our own choices.
That is what I am arguing against and trying to change. I believe that the community owes what aid it can give to all of its members. I don’t believe in the Libertarian ideal of sink or swim on your own. If you, or any member of my community, suffers the consequences of unprotected het p-v sex, or motorcycle riding or smoking or inbreeding or carelessness or foolishness, the community should help out as best it can. All of us can and will make poor choices that lead to terrible consequences. All of us will fare better if we help mitigate the damage caused by those choices. Unfortunately for me (and you, and everybody else, IMV), most people disagree with that philosophy.
I pretty much agree with everything Jake Squid says, especially in regards to the responsibility of the community towards the individual, the responsibility of the individual towards the community, and the responsibility we all have towards each other.
Right, exactly. I mean, not to be crude, but I have no vagina, so abortion rights aren’t somethign I’ll ever be able to directly exercise. I believe in abortion rights because I believe that the bodily autonomy of women is important, whether it directly affects me or not. I’m not in an at-risk group for HIV, but I believe in government funded AIDS research.
We’re all in this together, or at least we should be.
If the guy down the street has less liberty, I take that personally.
All of us will fare better if we help mitigate the damage caused by those choices.
I find your ideas intriguing, and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Once I move into Jaketown, I look forward to maintaining a comfortable standard of living, although I plan to choose never to work again. I expect that you’ll make sure my children are educated and fed, although I won’t be worrying about that any more. I hope that first-class medical facility is built soon, as well, because I’ll be taking up smoking again.
I am sure that nobody in Jaketown will mind paying for my sloth, stupidity and bad choices. After all, you’re better off mitigating the damage caused by my decisions! And with you mitigating the effects, I’m free to stop worrying about it! Hooray!
Charles wrote: That really is a bizarre assumption. While it is certainly the case that many married couples choose to have children, it is also certainly the case that many married women have unplanned pregnancies, and that many married women choose to have abortions to end their unplanned pregnancies.
I certainly believe they didn’t want to get pregnant, but pregnancy is a known risk of intercourse and they chose to have intercourse anyway. You name the tune, you dance the dance, you pay the piper. Or the abortionist, as the case may be. Slipping it in under health care would be a slick move if you can pull it off, but it relies upon the assumption that terminating a fetus is more in the spirit of health care than keeping it alive is. Why not stick euthanasia and suicide under health care? We can subsidize those too and if it bothers you, don’t worry, you won’t know.
Jake Squid wrote: RonF & I had expanded the scope of the conversation. See comments 27, 28, 30, 34, 35, 36, 37, 39, 40, 43 and 44.
Carry on. I just thought that starting a debate on the ethics of fire and medical coverage is interesting, but what does it have to do with abortion?
Why not stick euthanasia and suicide under health care?
I do include euthanasia and assisted suicide under healthcare.
I do include euthanasia and assisted suicide under healthcare.
As do I.
Once I move into Jaketown, I look forward to maintaining a comfortable standard of living, although I plan to choose never to work again. I expect that you’ll make sure my children are educated and fed, although I won’t be worrying about that any more. I hope that first-class medical facility is built soon, as well, because I’ll be taking up smoking again.
Yeah, we’ll provide your children with food and housing and medical care. Why should they suffer for your choices?
I am sure that nobody in Jaketown will mind paying for my sloth, stupidity and bad choices. After all, you’re better off mitigating the damage caused by my decisions! And with you mitigating the effects, I’m free to stop worrying about it! Hooray!
Because, you know, the nations that provide their citizens with these things have already descended into anarchy caused by their economic collapse proving it a failed policy.
Most people have morals, ethics and a sense of responsibility to their community. This sense of responsibility is what makes your attempted mockery wholly inaccurate. We deal with the exceptions like you because it is the right thing to do and we are able to deal because it does not cripple our community to do so.
I’ll stop arguing about it, as I don’t mind paying for abortions. Or actually I do mind, but the alternative is a worse idea.
Freedom without accountability, and health care that kills… well now. Aren’t we enlightened.
…and health care that kills…
Well, if you want to debate end of life care and right to die, I’m all for it.
We deal with the exceptions like you because it is the right thing to do and we are able to deal because it does not cripple our community to do so.
And when it starts crippling your community as every bum and grifter on earth discovers the glory of dupetown, will it still be the right thing to do?
People respond to incentives. The responsibility and self-motivation you are relying on were forged in a context of individual responsibility. Your system will undermine the formation of the very values on which it relies, by making them counterproductive. I call it an “honesty tax” in other contexts; if you penalize the people who are honest and hard-working, fewer people will be honest and hard-working.
Because, you know, the nations that provide their citizens with these things have already descended into anarchy caused by their economic collapse proving it a failed policy.
No, thuggish authoritarianism seems to be the natural consequence, rather than anarchy; cf. Cuba. The dreamers like you get forced out, and more ruthless people take the helm.
So how do you have a decent society that doesn’t let people starve in the street? (Relatively) easy: don’t mitigate bad choices. Instead, set a floor below which people aren’t allowed to fall without considerable effort on their part, and set that floor low enough that it isn’t a particularly comfortable place to be. Sure, lazy slacker man, you don’t have to work. Of course, you’ll live in a shithole, eat bad food, and wear clothes that would make Mr. Blackwell cry. You can also, as societal wealth permits, construct a higher and more comfortable floor for people whose bad outcomes aren’t the result of bad choices, and put conditions on that status.
That way, there are still consequences from bad choices, so the incentive mechanism in the human brain will continue to work, but we also don’t abandon humanity.
Robert,
I don’t disagree with comment #66. At all. I never said that you get to have a big house on 3 acres, luxury cars, the finest gourmet food and servants. I said that food, housing and health care will be provided. No, it won’t be the nicest home around and you won’t be dining on caviar, but you will have a warm, safe place to live, adequate nutrition and the best medical care we can afford to give you.
Unfortunately, we do not do this. We have homeless people, starving people and people without even basic health care. I hardly ever see people in positions of power advocating this sort of policy and I don’t see all that many people, overall, advocating for it. Collectively, we’d rather punish what we see as bad or immoral choices (addiction, for example) than provide that basic aid. Even if, economically, it costs us more to do so.
Sure, it would be nice if everybody got equally luxurious amenities, but I don’t know how this could ever work in a group too large for everybody to know each other personally.
So you’ll advocate for the State to start picking up my bar tabs?
:)
My nasty fornicators comment was specifically in response to CJ’s comment about how abortions wouldn’t be necessary if (het) people could just keep their pants zipped, I didn’t intend it to apply to your reasons. Your reasons I would respond to with Dworkin’s response to “men get raped too.” Does the fact that you get fucked over mean that other people should get fucked over too? Is your mistreatment okay as long as het pregnant women can’t get state assistance for abortions (which they don’t (certainly not at the federal level), so it can’t really be a demonstration of anything wrong with our society that they do)? I don’t see anything wrong with you (or anyone) failing to take any particular interest in a particular struggle for justice, but there seems to me something deeply wrong with a response of “society treats people like me like shit, so I don’t want any part in someone not like me not getting treated like shit.”
That’s the snarky version.
The less snarky version is: does denying state support to women who need abortions for whatever reason do anything to help change the system of hetero-normativity, or in any way help to decrease heterosexist homophobia?
Also, I’m willing to bet that sub-optimal birth control use is responsible for a large number of unplanned pregnancies (and therefore abortions). 90% effective birth control (some low dose forms of the pill, condoms without supplemental contraceptives) is still a very large number of unplanned pregnancies. So if state funding for abortions of pregnancies caused by failed birth control is acceptable to you, unless you would prefer to see those cases not funded in order to be protected from accidentally funding abortions of pregnancies caused by failure to use any birth control, then I think state funding of abortions has to be acceptable to you.
No, but if you blow your income at the bar, we’ll advocate that you should still be able to get basic food, housing and medical care, even though you are now completely broke.
Unfortunately, not enough is donated to private charities for them to be able to meet the need.
Maybe if taxes were lower people would. And who determines need, anyway?
Taxes were much higher in the 1950’s than they are now. You would expect charitable donations to have increased proportionally, no? Yet that hasn’t happened. I hear this line so often, yet the answer is an unequivocal, “NO!”
No, but if you blow your income at the bar, we’ll advocate that you should still be able to get basic food, housing and medical care, even though you are now completely broke.
Which, experientially for me as a young decisionmaker facing a budget, means that you’ll cover my bar tab. Or at least, that you’ll be picking up the tab at the ongoing party that is my life.
“And when it starts crippling your community as every bum and grifter on earth discovers the glory of dupetown, will it still be the right thing to do?”
Yeah I heard about this problem. Impoverished people pack their cans and ponchos onto their cars – well, man-drawn rickshaws a la Seinfeld, more like – and move to whichever one of those self-contained People’s Republics known as American cities offers a 500 dollar a month TANF check. Then they just tend to sort of stand there when a big wall of water breaks through and kills them. I really don’t understand these people.
“Once I move into Jaketown, I look forward to maintaining a comfortable standard of living, although I plan to choose never to work again. I expect that you’ll make sure my children are educated and fed, although I won’t be worrying about that any more. I hope that first-class medical facility is built soon, as well, because I’ll be taking up smoking again.”
Cult leaders from David Koresh to Ayn Rand are remarkable in how much their hermetically sealed ideologies, self-consistent in their own twisted way, completely fail to describe the real world. State assistance and income received complement one another because people want to have as much money as possible – which is the whole reason why greed is good and American wage earners are ungrateful and we should say ‘personal’ instead of ‘private’. It’s interesting, just in terms of psychological projection, how Right wingers automatically assume that giving handouts to the proles enables them to play footsie with the maximum ceiling of economic position of which they have any reason to expect. A single mother makes 15000, state gives her 4000, so she works only as many hours as it takes to make 11000 so she can be back to 15000 again – rather than, say, add the two to get 19000. It’s unlikely that she thinks 15000 is ‘enough’ for her (and her child), but clearly some other people in the country do.
“People respond to incentives. The responsibility and self-motivation you are relying on were forged in a context of individual responsibility. Your system will undermine the formation of the very values on which it relies, by making them counterproductive. I call it an “honesty tax” in other contexts; if you penalize the people who are honest and hard-working, fewer people will be honest and hard-working.”
What people are we talking about here? The poor – who are predominantly either children, the mentally disabled, or mentally disabled children? Okay.
Yes, people respond to incentives – but of course a certain class of people deserve positive incentives – it violates Natural Law when they don’t – while other class of people should only ever expect negative incentives. Corporations become more productive when given tax breaks. Workers become more productive when the threat of starvation is stark enough. Could it possibly be that workers too respond to positive incentives? Say a corporation makes a million dollars. Because of taxes, it’s cut down to three quarters of a million. Now, they’d have more REASON to be productive if, say, they got nine hundred thousand instead of seven-fifty. Say a worker makes 7.50 an hour. Wouldn’t (s)he have more reason to be productive – and thus will be more productive – if (s)he made 9.00 dollars a hour instead? Positive incentives. Of course, thinking in this way has already violated negative rights and classical liberalism and made John Locke crap his frilly pantaloons.
But what irritates me most about the way the Right wing sees this issue is, ironically, the way the economy itself is dehumanized. This makes for a very convenient position. If an impoverished guy screws up, his pad, his job, his insulin, gets revoked – as if through a force of nature. It never occurs to wingnuts that the very fallible, human agents doing the revoking – landlords, employers, HMO’s – may on some level PREDATE people in as desperate a situation as our unfortunate little fellow here, even though it is clearly in their self-interest to do so. I guess to neoliberals, communism didn’t fail because it assumed people were perfect, it failed because it merely assumed perfection of the wrong subset of people.
Honesty tax? Maybe we could try that with the real world example of Enron. But of course Enron is a tired real world example. That nicely differentiates it from tired Right wing examples, such as the welfare queen driving a cadillac, that are wholly fictitious.
“And who determines need, anyway?”
Ehhh… we have gridlock. No one can agree on anything. Tiebreaker goes to upper class media pundits.
There’s something I’ve been wondering about. This isn’t a setup—I won’t respond critically, though I may ask follow-up questions for clarification.
How do those of you who believe in rights of recipience quantify them? Under the liberal conception of rights, quantification isn’t an issue. A right not to be murdered is pretty cut-and-dry. Ditto property rights.
But rights of recipience aren’t so clear. If you believe that everyone has a right to a decent standard of living, how do you decide how decent it has to be? When you say people have a right to health care, how much health care are you talking about? Can we set a standard now and leave it there forever, or do we incur new moral obligations simply by becoming wealthier or improving the state of medical technology?
I am one of those people that supports a woman’s right to choose, but I want her to also respect my right to not have to pay for her abortion ( if that is what she so chooses). I don’t think devout Catholics should be forced to fund abortions and I don’t think secular progressives should be forced to give money to crisis pregnancy centers if they don’t want to.
There is no right to be able to avoid having to make hard choices in life, and that includes the choice of when and if to have a baby.
From a high-level view…
Housing: Calculate a number of square feet per person dependant on household size, number of appliances, bathrooms etc. Include utilities & the means to keep the temp within a specified range & that is what is provided.
Food: The food stamp program was moderately good before we put absurd limits on it.
Medical care: Provide what standard insurance plans cover. Pretty much anything that isn’t elective. Yes, that means that as time goes on we cover more stuff. But it’s still more cost effective than having the uninsured show up at the ER for urgent care. Although I believe that health insurance should cover vision, dental and mental as well as medical. But since we don’t have that (mostly) for those w/ health insurance, that will have to be worked out later.
We can debate the details forever, but that is an overview of how I think it could work.
“A right not to be murdered is pretty cut-and-dry.”
Perhaps because you’re carefully picking terms whose very label is an after-the-fact, legal distinction. A more accurate comparison would be with the right not to be killed, which is far less cut and dry than simply the procurement of basic provisions. Pollution, negligence, assisted suicide, euthanasia, self-defense that crosses into that nebulous area of ‘excessive force’, capital punishment, not to mention good old war. If we thought it through more, we could think of many more ways that either it’s okay for someone to kill you, or where the enforcement of the right is problematic enough that the right may as well not exist.
Also, since we’re dealing with quantification, how do we quantify how bad an unlawful homicide – i.e. murder, in its strictest term – is? Because you bet your ass we do, what with our first and second degrees and our parole and that grotesque sounding thing, ‘manslaughter’, which apparently is better than just plain old murder.
Property is also not cut and dry. If it were, I’d be able to run my stereo full blast from my house with my windows open all night, and buy the land behind your backyard, cut all the hedges, and open up an all male nudist colony.
Property is ultimately a potpourri of legal rights that have to be compromised with the interests of the community – no civilized country allows for absolute property right, which would be the only thing that would really be ‘cut and dry’. Property can also be pretty arbitrary in its own right; nothing illustrates this better than intellectual property, where the details and quantifications of patents, copyrights, and trade secrets are pulled straight from some lawmaker’s ass and the only thing we can agree on is the general principle. Sort of like giving welfare to starving single mothers, no? Let’s not even get into the issues of joint property, contracting rights, and inheritance laws which are often based on the vagaries of social convention more than anything else. Primogeniture was at least as self evident to the classical liberals as negative rights are to their self-proclaimed descendents, who use the means of the classical liberals for the opposite ends.
The nature of rights and the social contract are extremely complex and are not ever going to be resolved or ameliorated to everyone’s satisfaction. If you can only see entanglements and arbitrariness in that one area, it’s probably because you’ve been told to look there.
What bean says about the housing first model is true, from everything that I’ve read. It also seems that the main objection to it is that we are not punishing people who’ve “made bad decisions” enough if we provide housing, etc. Even though it saves us (the taxpayers) millions of dollars a year.
Via antiprincess’s blog – an excerpt from a piece written by Lauren Sabina at
http://www.barf.org
I also share Jake Squid’s views on social policy, and agree with Maia that the message should be ‘a woman’s right to choose’ meaning ‘have access to’ as well as to make the decision.
I applaud the efforts of those people in Sweden who are currently trying to find a way to provide illegal immigrant women with the free and safe abortion services available to Swedish women without compromising the tasks of police, customs and immigration authorities. How or whether they’ll succeed I don’t know, but clearly they regard access to free and safe abortion as a fundamental human right as, imo, would any whole society which truly valued women and womens lives.
Just remember – the only moral abortion is my abortion.
So you’ll advocate for the State to start picking up my bar tabs?
Hear, hear. My bar tab certainly comes under “mental healthcare”.
Ciceley:
I also share Jake Squid’s views on social policy, and agree with Maia that the message should be ‘a woman’s right to choose’ meaning ‘have access to’ as well as to make the decision.
What do you mean by “have access to”? That no one should be prevented from getting to an abortion clinic? That if no private company sees fit to open up an abortion clinic in a given geographic area, the government should?
Or is “access” being used here not to mean just actual access, but also to meant that if they can’t afford one, I should have to pay for it?
Well, that’s sure how I’d mean it, assuming that by “I” you mean “the government,” and not you directly. A woman’s right to choose is more important than my “right” to have an annual tax bill that’s a cent or two lower.
Absolutely.
A portion of the tax everyone pays should fund abortions, imo, abortion being a common medical procedure (see my previous comment) that could/should be done in public hospitals, and no doubt would be if it weren’t for religously informed objections to it. I believe in government (tax-payer) funded healthcare for all *and* the seperation of church and state.
RonF, try “have the same access at to other medical care”. One can argue whether or not the government should fund medical care, and if so, to what extent; but you’ll notice that people do not get quite so agitated about suggesting that people should “have access to” dental care.
From the perspective of prevention of unwanted pregnancies, I’ve just read an article about the percentage of New Zealand men having vasectomies being among the highest in the world. 18% overall, and more than half of NZ men in their 40’s. 25% of married men. The report stated that only 7% of men in the U.S. have had the procedure. I don’t know whether this is reversable or not, but anyay, those are the figures. Here’s a quote from The New Zealander – a paper for kiwis living abroad.
“What bean says about the housing first model is true, from everything that I’ve read. It also seems that the main objection to it is that we are not punishing people who’ve “made bad decisions” enough if we provide housing, etc. Even though it saves us (the taxpayers) millions of dollars a year.”
A bit more on that last point: would there ever be a situation, for Right wingers, where the punishment of people who’ve made bad decisions is ever important enough to justify paying a premium for it? (Take healthcare, for example. Nothing could quite be so inefficient as the Rube Goldberg contraption of HMO’s and hot-buck-passing insurance companies that make up American health care.) Not much point in asking it here, but it would be interesting to add it as food for thought.
“assuming that by “I” you mean “the government,” and not you directly.”
That’s an important distinction that seems to be too fine for some people in my experience. So let me spell out the short version.
‘I’, the taxpayer, am a customer of the government. As a customer I am entitled to transparency and accountability, especially since the government is just about the only business that makes consumer democracy the operational procedure, but that’s not the same thing as the tax money, once sent in, literally still being ‘my money’. I pay my money to the government, which spends it as it sees fit. Sure, when the ‘fee’ goes unilaterally up to pay for a specific program, it is like I am being billed to pay for the indiscretions, if you’d like to call them that, of other people. But that’s no different than with a private company. If someone else out there drinks and drives, my private insurance fees will go up; bonus points if my age group and race happen to coincide. If a company decides to compensate someone or other, legally or otherwise (though I’m sure you Right-wingers are hard at work to make sure that the former doesn’t ever happen again), it will do so by raising prices on everyone else, i.e. me. I’M paying for the treatment for that kid who got pumped full of enough DDT to wipe out a few endangered species.
It’s true that with government, you can’t switch to a competiting firm – unless you move away, which is rarely practical. But what can I say – such is the case with any natural monopoly. Your utility company may pull shit on you that it’d never get away with if it faced some real competition. Them’s the breaks. That doesn’t mean anything the government (or private companies) can charge you with anything it feels like; just because it can, doesn’t necessarily mean it should, in an ethical sense, and we all know all that the government (or private companies) should not above base ethical requirements. But that does mean it had at least has a precedent for taxation, and that no, taxes aren’t theft, especially if it’s a frickin’ nickel-and-dime case (such as it usually is) for the benefit of those in society without the luxury to pay for their own basic services, own anything made in the past decade, or indoctrinate themselves in the self-serving economic ideology du jour.
Access to abortion? Damn straight.
The vast majority of the money the government gets does not come from sale of a product that I have a choice whether or not to buy. The government also has the power to compel me by force – Warner Bros. may not be pleased if I copy a movie, but I don’t recall that they can send their own armed guards into my house to stop me. I reject the concept that the relationship between me and the government is that of vendor/customer. I am not a customer of the government.
So when I say “I”, I’m referring to the fact that the government has not earned my money though some productive enterprise. It takes it. There are very good reasons why it has the power to do so, certainly, and quite legal ones. But it’s my money, that and the money of every taxpayer. The government takes it and spends it on our behalf, but that doesn’t make it the government’s money; it’s the taxpayers’ money, spent at the direction of people representing us.
A woman’s right to choose is more important than my “right” to have an annual tax bill that’s a cent or two lower.
A woman has the right to choose, by law, whether or not to have an abortion. That’s the law. The fact that she may not have the money necessary to exercise that right doesn’t mean that she doesn’t have the right to choose. So I don’t see where your statement makes any sense. Now, if you want to say “A woman’s ability to exercise her right to choose is more important ….”, then the statement at least makes sense to me, even if I don’t agree with it.
The First Amendment guarantees my right to freedom of the press. Obviously, my ability to exercise it depends on whether or not I can afford a printing press. Do you mean to say that if I cannot afford a printing press, I do not in fact have the right to freedom of the press? The ability to exercise a right is not the same as having that right. The fact that someone does not have the ability to exercise a particular right due a lack of money does not in and of itself justify using tax money to provide that ability.
I’m curious why you would put the word ‘right’ in the phrase “… my “right” to have an annual tax bill that’s a cent or two lower.” in quotes?
The fact that she may not have the money necessary to exercise that right doesn’t mean that she doesn’t have the right to choose.
It does mean, however, she does not have a “right to an abortion” or “abortion on demand”.
As for the government and tax money, if you’re earning that money relying on things the government provides you for free (I have yet to receive a bill from the USDA for meat inspection) I don’t get the complaint about OMFG IT IS MY MONEY!!!11!!!
I believe in government (tax-payer) funded healthcare for all
You are certainly entitled to your opinion. As stated upthread, outside of certain limited cases it’s a lively debate whether or not abortion is considered health care.
*and* the seperation of church and state.
As quoted in the various Supreme Court decisions referencing this, the phrase comes from a letter written by Thomas Jefferson (it’s nowhere in the Constitution). He was answering a group of Baptists in Danbury, Connecticut who were not happy that Connecticut was providing funds to the (IIRC) Congregational Church, which was the established church in Connecticut. The Baptists wanted to stop having to pay to support the Congregational church with their money. The First Amendment only applied to the Federal Government at the time, and it was state (not Federal) tax money that was being used. Again IIRC, Thomas Jefferson reply used that phrase to assure them that he didn’t think that any government in America should have an established church; i.e, that no one particular sect or denomination should receive state funding denied to others.
But whether or not people’s opposition to abortion is based on their faith has nothing to do with that; there is no established church in the United States at all (as guaranteed by the First Amendment). No church enjoys any public funding that other churches are denied, no law requiring church attendance exists, and no clergy participate in our government based on their status as clergy. What the First Amendment does guarantee is the free expression of religion, which includes the freedom to vote against the legality of abortion and against the public funding of such on the basis of one’s faith. There is no guarantee in the Constitution that religious faith will have no influence or expression in the civic sphere, which I would think is one reason why the freedom to exercise one’s religion was guaranteed. The concept that religion would not influence how this country was governed was viewed as a threat to democracy by the founders of this country.
Legally speaking, a woman doesn’t have a “right to an abortion.”
Instead, she has a “right to not be prevented from obtaining an abortion through force of law.” (Sorry about the double negative, there’s really not an easier way.)
That is a NEGATIVE right. Most of our legal rights are. They don’t list things that the government must do, they generally list things that the government can’t do.
Perhaps we can use the qualifiers “legal right” or “____ right” to avoid the semantics arguments?
Because it’s not a “right” in the way you have been using the word. From your responses, you appear to discuss abortion as a legal right (e.g. you’re not a fan of the access issue.) And from a legal standpoint, there’s almost NO support for a general “right” to affect the tax-and-spend provisions passed by Congress, other than through the election process.
You may claim it’s some sort of moral obligation, but you don’t like that as applied to abortion. So the quotes are appropriate.
It does mean, however, she does not have a “right to an abortion” or “abortion on demand”.
Ah, I don’t understand this. The right to have or do something is not equivalent to the ability to have or do something. For an example of one way to look at this, see my comment about a printing press. For an example of the other way, consider all the things that you can do illegally and get away with; you have the ability to do them, but you do not have the right. Rights and abilities, rights and powers are two different things. They can be related but are not equivalent. You are owed your rights. You are not owed the financial ability to exercise them.
Sailorman, I’m more interested in Amp’s comment on why he put that word in quotes than in your interpretation of why he put it in quotes.
The right to have or do something is not equivalent to the ability to have or do something.
Yes, that was my point. Faux-lifers like to pretend that it’s all about the “right” to have free abortions whenever they’re wanted, even as the baby’s head is crowning in labor, whereas (as Sailorman correctly notes) it’s merely a right to make certain reproductive decisions without the government having the authority to prevent one from making them.
“The vast majority of the money the government gets does not come from sale of a product that I have a choice whether or not to buy.”
Again, you do have a choice. You can either vote for a change in leadership – an exercise of direct control by the consumer that has no real equivalent with private companies, except perhaps those customer satisfaction polls next to the saltshaker at Wendy’s – or you can choose to live under a different government.
Right-libertarians always say that workers, tenants, and consumers should always go look someplace else if they’re not satisfied with their conditions, after all – practical, real life barriers be damned. This is, of course, the blunt version. There has to be finer point.
Libertarians can get a surprising amount of mileage by baldly comparing the intricate network of relationships between sectors that the government has to uphold – with a cost – with some distilled dollars-for-widgets scenario. (Note, for instance, RonF’s use of the word ‘products’, when ‘services’ would have sufficed and better describes the actual functions of government. There are plenty of private sector equivalents to the argument I’m making about the government providing a bundle of services. Excuse the analogy, but take membership into a private club. Or gate fees at privately hosted events. Situations where the ‘product’ is an abstract bundle of smaller services, where if anything the ‘service’ rendered is allowing your bodily presence, are common and can be easily analogized to a government taxing its citizens. But of course it’s easier for libertarians to imply the crudest, most ham-handed interpretation when they say that the government isn’t offering anything ‘productive’, and Right-leaning saps go for it because, hey, anything that works to justify not feeding street children.) The vast majority of the government’s services goes toward public goods that suffer from the free rider problem (or else private goods that have a large enough externality that suffers from the same problem, such as public education with the economy, or inoculation of schoolchildren with herd immunity) so quibbling over choice is missing the forest for the twigs. Libertarian solutions to the free rider problem usually involve bundling the offer with different services, but that leaves with the same problem they say they find with government – that they use our money for stuff we want, as well for stuff we don’t want.
“The government also has the power to compel me by force – Warner Bros. may not be pleased if I copy a movie, but I don’t recall that they can send their own armed guards into my house to stop me.”
Saving the worst for first, I’ll get a detail out of the way. The whole ‘men with guns can burst down your door’ type argument only works when you already assume one key premise – that the government has no authority on its own land. The government has the power to compel you ‘in your own home’, including the sort with Old Glory on the windowsill and golden fields of windswept grain, the same a mall security guard has the power to compel you when you’re loafing around on the bench making catcalls to mall-grubbing jailbait. Chances are, mall security guards are jackasses. But it is within their jurisdiction.
Libertarian arguments usually work by lumping government together as a single, monolithic entity. People outside the narrow experiences of a libertarian understand that it’s not; it’s separated into different branches. Different groups within the government have to answer to different people, and some may work against each other. If the libertarian equating ‘men with guns’ (i.e. the police) with a monolithic government had any basis in fact, the police and the entire legal system wouldn’t be able to touch the politicians above them. In reality, the ‘armed guards’ of the state act as the intermediaries of everyone in the economy, both public and private. Even if welfare were abolished, taxes made regressive, and Murray Rothbard’s anarcho-capitalist scare show established, contracts and transactions between people would still need to be enforced with armed guards. Armed guards are employed by the state to avoid a scenario where everyone has to field his/her own security force to enforce agreements.
Not to mention that it’s not at all true that there’s something uniquely wrong with one side of a transactional agreement being the enforcer of that transaction. It makes me wonder if libertarians have ever leased anything in their lives. It sucks, but hey, it’s not unique to government. But why let detailed analyses get you down. Not impugning any single libertarian-leaner here, but you can see the problem for the Right in general: the rich are outnumbered. That’s why they must misrepresent the government, oversimplify and distort it, and be blind to clear parallels with their hallowed market, so that everyone will accept that democracy, while well and good, should only ever decide the border design and the font size in the upper class’ propertarian notion of ‘natural law’.
But this is a discussion about abortion, so I’ll splice my ranting on a pet topic right here. I’ll make this more relevant.
“I believe in government (tax-payer) funded healthcare for all *and* the seperation of church and state.”
Separation of church and state demands that institutional government and institutional religion not intertwine their respective powers. It’s not against the law for religious people to vote according to their religion. (In some cases such as these, it may be unethical, but not everything that’s unethical can be illegal.)
I do see your larger point, though. If braces count under health care, abortion should as well.
Your point on the printing press is well made, RonF, but also remember that a case could be made that government has an obligation to not allow the ability to exercise that right in question to become unduly difficult. Say a private company comes in with the intention of quashing a few muckraking newspapers in the area, and drives out all printing-press makers out of business before taking them all off on the market. If, say, there’s only one or two abortion clinics in a whole state, and lawmakers put as many barriers to prevent people from being able to reach those clinics – which is what parental and spousal consent/notificationn dealies are basically about – I’d say that women in fact do not have a right to procure abortion.
My other comment is awaiting moderation for some reason. Odd… I thought I was far less cantankerous there than I usually am.
sylphhead – the software that pulls posts into the moderation queue doesn’t grok the cantankerousness or lack thereof in your writing. It just follows some relatively stupid algorithms; something about the word order, linkiness, or other characteristic of your comment bore enough of a resemblance to a known spam template or type that it got yanked. It’s nothing personal ;)
I think your argument about limiting access has some validity. For a right to be meaningful, it must be possible for it to be exercised. On the other hand, abortion is a pretty significant act. I’d be hard pressed to say that having to take two days to travel to another state via bus (or whatever) is making a right unavailable. It’s not trivially available, perhaps, but it doesn’t say “the right to free speech without having to take some trouble” – it just says “free speech”.
That said, I can certainly conceive of a cultural and/or legal environment which put so many restrictions and hedges on the abortion right as to make it de facto unusable. I don’t think we’re anywhere close to that, but I certainly recognize the theoretical possibility.
Separation of church and state demands that institutional government and institutional religion not intertwine their respective powers.
I’m not quite sure what you mean by that. My point was that whether or not abortion is illegal or publicly funded has nothing to do with the separation of church and state.
Again, you do have a choice. You can either vote for a change in leadership – an exercise of direct control by the consumer that has no real equivalent with private companies,
Maybe not with a private company, but you have limited the example. There is an equivalent with a public company, wherein if I buy stock I get to do exactly this. In fact, if I buy enough stock I can vote myself in as part of the leadership despite the opinion of anyone else in the company, something I cannot do in government.
except perhaps those customer satisfaction polls next to the saltshaker at Wendy’s
IIRC Wendy’s is (or is part of) a public company. So I could buy a share and vote for it’s leadership.
But the paucity of your example is perhaps beside the point. In the non-governmental sector, I have not only a choice of whether or not I buy a given product (or service – it’s irrelevant), I have a choice of buying them from one of a group of competitors. I even have the choice of starting my own company and using my own product or service and then selling them to someone else. I do not have that choice in a great many cases when dealing with the products or services the government controls.
The government will not allow me to set up a court and adjudicate murder cases and execute or imprison offenders. I cannot hire and arm and train a private army and invade Venezuela. I can protest if the U.S. does the latter, but I cannot withhold those portions of my taxes that would be allocated to that effort and say “I don’t want to buy any more ‘invasion of Venezuela'” (nor can I send in extra money and buy extra portions of it). I cannot give the government specifications for the road in front of my house and demand that either it build that road according to my specifications or else I’ll fire them and hire someone else to build the road. They can stop me from building one of my own, and if I build a driveway from their road to my front door on my private property they can tell me what the specifications for it have to be and tear it up, build one they like and bill me for it if I ignore them.
I can vote for new governmental leaders at specific times. But that is much different than hiring and firing someone, or choosing. A whole lot of other people besides me have something to say in the decision, and if they disagree I’m stuck with their decision. Whereas if I don’t like the food Dominick’s sells anymore I can walk out and go to Jewel and you have no say in the matter, or I can buy a farm and raise and trade for my own. The government has a monopoly on many of it’s products, and it enforces that monopoly status. If you want to set up a private court for adjudicating certain matters and put it on TV and operate it for profit, you can go ahead. But you can’t force anyone to use it. The government can. And you can’t adjudicate criminal matters, the State enforces a monopoly on that.
Again; there are all good reasons for the above. I’m not saying that it’s wrong, I’m illustrating the fact that I am not a customer of the government. It is a fundamentally different relationship than the one between me and a corporation or a consultant and is a false analogy.
Mythago:
Faux-lifers? Excuse me, I don’t understand the term.
slyphhead
Your point on the printing press is well made, RonF, but also remember that a case could be made that government has an obligation to not allow the ability to exercise that right in question to become unduly difficult. Say a private company comes in with the intention of quashing a few muckraking newspapers in the area, and drives out all printing-press makers out of business before taking them all off on the market.
Drives all printing press manufacturers in the world out of business? Or even in the U.S.? That’s a rather far-stretched analogy.
To your point, though; the government has the obligation to ensure that the law is followed. A higher level of government has the obligation to ensure that a lower level of government does not interfere with the exercise of a right that is guaranteed by that higher level beyond it’s authority to do so. What it does not have the obligation to do is to fund the exercise of those rights by people who cannot otherwise afford it. That’s their problem.
If, say, there’s only one or two abortion clinics in a whole state, and lawmakers put as many barriers to prevent people from being able to reach those clinics – which is what parental and spousal consent/notificationn dealies are basically about – I’d say that women in fact do not have a right to procure abortion.
I favor parental notification laws. In fact, I favor parental consent laws. My daughter is no longer of an age when she would be subject to such, but were she of such an age I would have a huge problem with the State asserting the authority to interfere with my right to know what my daughter’s health situation was, to counsel her about what she should do, to have a say in where she would go and when and what doctor she would choose. It makes no sense that the local tattoo parlor can’t put a butterfly on her ankle without my consent, but that a State agency would be able to assist my daughter to get an abortion without my knowledge (barring judicial determination of danger of abuse, etc.). I’m the parent, not the State. From what I’ve read (and what the basis of my personal support for such laws is), the reason for parental consent and notification laws is so that parents know what’s going on with their kids and make sure that they, not the State, are making the decisions as to what’s best for their children. For you to dismiss all this and say that my true motive is to limit abortion is ignorant and insulting.
The right to choose is a coin with two sides. Men have the same feelings about unplanned children as women do. He either wants it or doesn’t. Either bonds with it or doesn’t. Either wants an abortion or doesn’t.
Does the father have the same rights as the mother to not let the unplanned existense of a child interfere with his life? She can choose to abort it if she finds it inconvenient. Can he choose to walk away?
CJ, if you want to discuss the “Choice for Men” issue, may I suggest you do so on a post about that issue? There are a whole bunch of posts about that on this blog.
And there are parental notification posts, and farm subsidy posts, government checks and balances posts, community rights and responsiblilities posts, healthcare posts, and tax benefit posts. This seems relevant to me, Amp.
Deadbeat Dad’s reasons for defaulting are identical to the reasons being given for choosing an abortion; It was an accident, I didn’t want it, I don’t care about it, I have career plans, it’s my life, I shouldn’t be held hostage to its needs. I hear it from men’s side all the time: she could have gotten an abortion, so if she doesn’t, paying for its future is her problem, not mine. I don’t agree with that, but it’s there all the same.
How’s your basement?