I’ve thought about the abortion issue in terms of social control, the morality-punishment link, and symbolic conflation. It’s been on my mind for much of my adult life. The culture wars began just as I started high school, as my thinking about the larger world began to develop. Abortion was always the most potent of the culture war issues.
Corey Robin brings in another perspective—What Donald Trump Can Learn From Frederick Douglass:
If the goal is simply to constrain the agency of the subordinate class, the simplest thing to do is to punish the disobedient so that she doesn’t act disobediently again. But in doing so, you implicitly recognize her agency, particularly if your punishment is tied to a set of laws and rules you expect her to learn. […]
If the goal is not simply to constrain the agency of the subordinate class, but to deny it altogether, the far better move is not to hold the disobedient accountable all but instead to blame her disobedience on some external force: Satan, the serpent, the doctor. She then becomes a vessel, the implement of another’s will (preferably a man’s will), which is precisely what so many in the conservative movement want women to be.
(Also, see his article at Jacobin: Agency and Abortion.)
I’m not sure what to think of that theory. It’s interesting. I wonder if that in any way fits into some of my own prior thoughts on the matter. I sense some possible connections.
Symbolic conflation is about shutting down awareness and narrowing thought, and as such agency is central to it. The main insight I had early on was that the obsession with abortion never had anything directly to do with abortion itself. I’ve struggled ever since in trying to understand what it actually is about.
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The following is a comment left at Corey Robin’s post—Chris G wrote:
That is the perfect rejoinder to this interview with a pro-lifer on NPR this morning – http://www.npr.org/2016/03/31/472501022/reaction-to-donald-trumps-abortion-comments
An excerpt: “Well, because the pro-life movement has never, for a very good reason, promoted the idea that we punish women. In fact, we believe that women are being punished before the abortion ever occurs. In other words, the early feminists believed this was the ultimate exploitation of women.”
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As reactionary conservatives falsely use rhetoric of traditionalism they’ll manipulatively spin pseudo-libertarian obfuscation. They are seeking to conserve hierarchical power and privilege over others, by any means necessary, not to conserve tradition and/or liberty. Look at their actions that belie their words.
Libertarians get medieval on women
by Corey Robin
“Sounds like a libertarian paradise, right? Society is dissolved into atomistic individuals, obstacles to our free choices are removed, everyone has the same rights and duties. But Mises is not celebrating this ideal; he’s criticising it. Not because it makes people unfree, but because it makes people – specifically, women – free. The problem with liberating women from the constraints of “social and economic conditions” is that… women are liberated from the constraints of social and economic conditions. […]
“Now Doherty will reply, well, that’s just Mises’ view of feminism, who cares, we libertarians stand for freedom. But the underlying logic of Mises’ argument – in which the redistributive state is criticised not for making men and women slaves or equals but for making them free – cannot be so easily contained.
“It can easily be applied to other realms of social policy – labour unions, universal healthcare, robust public schools, unemployment benefits, and the like, which the left has always seen as the vital prerequisites of universal freedom – suggesting that the real target of the libertarian critique may be the proposition that Mises articulates here so well: That all men – not just the rich or the well born – and all women will in fact be liberated from the constraints of their “social and economic conditions”.”
Marmalade 