David repeatedly talks about what the pro-life movement stands for as if he speaks for it, but he does not. I don’t think a discussion of tactics on “both sides” is complete without an accounting of the enduring and pervasive history of violence and harassment in the pro-life movement https://jacobin.com/2022/05/antiabortion-movement-violence-pro-life-roe-v-wade-womens-rights
I think this conversation reflects a fundamental misunderstanding on the part of all three of you. You three are commentators and intellectuals. You have mistakenly assumed that if you gathered three who held differing beliefs, you’d have covered the important ground of the controversy. But that’s simply not so. One can be pro-choice but not feel especially strong about it as a priority among other issues, for example. A discussion among people for whom this is their number one issue, and where the ugly reality of activist tactics and actual red state laws on the books or being proposed was openly discussed (rather than dismissing them with “I’m against that” and looking no deeper) might have been more productive or interesting.
As it is, it does not surprise me that the three of you were able to speak politely about it. But I’m not sure what was learned from it.
Though I see where you are coming from, Adam, the purpose of this conversation was not to duke out and resolve the deep disagreements between us because that is just not possible in this case because of the reason I mentioned (both sides have a point!). But as Chandran Kukathas notes, liberal polities are not based on some commonly understood and accepted conception of rights. Those are always contested. To the contrary, it accepts that disagreements and differences are a fact of nature. And the liberal project is based on finding ways to co-exist despite them. So this was meant to be a conversation between three people who accept the liberal project and discuss the limitations that this project places on their own advocacy and activism of their very different understandings of rights. And much as I disagree with the pro-life position and the violence that you allude to, the pro-choice side has its own excesses.
Glad to find another Kukathas fan :) but among the most difficult aspects of liberal democratic coexistence is how to maintain adversarial systems like elections and party politics in a way that it remains a “regulated rivalry” rather than an uncontrolled perpetual escalation. Between people like the three of you there’s clearly no danger of that; again I would have found it interesting for people pretty deeply committed to activism on each side but also to liberal coexistence to have a frank discussion. I think someone closer to how evangelicals talk about this topic would be less quick to dismiss the idea that it’s chiefly about controlling women’s bodies and relegating them to traditional gender roles. David should know better, but he was given the space to make a number of uncontested but far too convenient characterizations of his side (not just himself).
I don’t think it’s very helpful to make a generic statement like “the pro-choice side has its own excesses.” The pro-life side’s violence and intimidation tactics are well beyond anything done on a similar scale on the pro-choice side. Part of what troubles me is a tendency by some to conflate liberal tolerance with a need to make such rhetorical gestures towards symmetry which frankly concedes too much. I’m quite comfortable with the idea that we’re all morally equal human beings with different points of view and with the idea that some sides are not just wrong but have behaved worse overall.
Both David and I are pretty deeply committed to activism—and congeniality to the other side will not deter us one bit from it. (I may well go outside the SC and protest peacefully.) But I still think you are missing the point. The point of this conversation wasn't to find someone "representative" of the other side. The point was to find someone who was committed to liberalism and ask them what limits they accept on their tactics. Those then become a touchstone for judging their own side and creating a basis for moral judgements. If the prolife side starts returning women to traditional gender roles, this kind of conversation will help set the parameters for judging it. As for "part of what troubles me is a tendency by some to conflate liberal tolerance with a need to make such rhetorical gestures towards symmetry which frankly concedes too much," I couldn't agree with you more. In fact, getting past the moral equivalence trap that a "pox on both your houses" libertarian mentality has fallen into is a huge purpose of this publication's existence. My impression of the pro-life violence is that it has cropped up occasionally but the community has also done a good job of keeping it in check. There has been no broad sanction handed to it -- which is analogous to the pro-choice side, sporadic violence but not an inherent part of its activism.
I appreciate the thoughtful arguments of all three participants. I would probably even go further and say that the labels "pro-choice" and "pro-life" are misleading; my preferred labels would be "Supporter of Abortion Right" (SRA) and "Opponent of Abortion Right" (ORA). In that regard, majority of SRA are not celebrating any abortion, they just feel that sometimes this option needs to be open, as nicely articulated by Cathy.
I am wondering about a different question. The Alito opinion is essentially contemptuous not just of the Roe decision but of all the actions of the Supreme Court in the second half of the XX century. Furthermore, the opinion talks about historical traditions -- and the Justices are happy to consider the experiences of the XVII century England as "relevant" but discard the experiences of the XX century America and Europe as "irrelevant". David has a well-thought argument why abortion is different from everything else. Alito mentions the same -- but can he be trusted (given that he and his collaborators deceived the senators on this same topic on multiple occasions)?
My question to David and other honest people on his side of the divide is then as follows. Can the "classical liberal" pro-lifers (or ORAs) articulate a political and philosophical arguments how we can live under modern liberal democracy where abortion is prohibited? In other words -- the Supreme Court is happy to have us all live under the same laws as in 1890-s Kansas (male dominance with some rights for women, no restrictions on gun carry, no worker rights, no welfare or other safety provisions, no progressive taxation, anti-immigrant animus, soft -- and sometimes hard -- racism, freedom of speech subject to the whims of the local sheriff, enforced religious participation, etc.) Most Americans never lived under such a regime. Is this something that ORAs are willing to countenance for this country? If not, where is a political force that can fight for liberal democracy without abortions?
David repeatedly talks about what the pro-life movement stands for as if he speaks for it, but he does not. I don’t think a discussion of tactics on “both sides” is complete without an accounting of the enduring and pervasive history of violence and harassment in the pro-life movement https://jacobin.com/2022/05/antiabortion-movement-violence-pro-life-roe-v-wade-womens-rights
They engaged in tactics like protesting *at the middle school* of the child of the landlord of a clinic https://thinkprogress.org/in-protest-outside-middle-school-anti-abortion-activists-target-daughter-of-abortion-clinics-1fb71cf3a3c0/
I think this conversation reflects a fundamental misunderstanding on the part of all three of you. You three are commentators and intellectuals. You have mistakenly assumed that if you gathered three who held differing beliefs, you’d have covered the important ground of the controversy. But that’s simply not so. One can be pro-choice but not feel especially strong about it as a priority among other issues, for example. A discussion among people for whom this is their number one issue, and where the ugly reality of activist tactics and actual red state laws on the books or being proposed was openly discussed (rather than dismissing them with “I’m against that” and looking no deeper) might have been more productive or interesting.
As it is, it does not surprise me that the three of you were able to speak politely about it. But I’m not sure what was learned from it.
Though I see where you are coming from, Adam, the purpose of this conversation was not to duke out and resolve the deep disagreements between us because that is just not possible in this case because of the reason I mentioned (both sides have a point!). But as Chandran Kukathas notes, liberal polities are not based on some commonly understood and accepted conception of rights. Those are always contested. To the contrary, it accepts that disagreements and differences are a fact of nature. And the liberal project is based on finding ways to co-exist despite them. So this was meant to be a conversation between three people who accept the liberal project and discuss the limitations that this project places on their own advocacy and activism of their very different understandings of rights. And much as I disagree with the pro-life position and the violence that you allude to, the pro-choice side has its own excesses.
Glad to find another Kukathas fan :) but among the most difficult aspects of liberal democratic coexistence is how to maintain adversarial systems like elections and party politics in a way that it remains a “regulated rivalry” rather than an uncontrolled perpetual escalation. Between people like the three of you there’s clearly no danger of that; again I would have found it interesting for people pretty deeply committed to activism on each side but also to liberal coexistence to have a frank discussion. I think someone closer to how evangelicals talk about this topic would be less quick to dismiss the idea that it’s chiefly about controlling women’s bodies and relegating them to traditional gender roles. David should know better, but he was given the space to make a number of uncontested but far too convenient characterizations of his side (not just himself).
I don’t think it’s very helpful to make a generic statement like “the pro-choice side has its own excesses.” The pro-life side’s violence and intimidation tactics are well beyond anything done on a similar scale on the pro-choice side. Part of what troubles me is a tendency by some to conflate liberal tolerance with a need to make such rhetorical gestures towards symmetry which frankly concedes too much. I’m quite comfortable with the idea that we’re all morally equal human beings with different points of view and with the idea that some sides are not just wrong but have behaved worse overall.
Both David and I are pretty deeply committed to activism—and congeniality to the other side will not deter us one bit from it. (I may well go outside the SC and protest peacefully.) But I still think you are missing the point. The point of this conversation wasn't to find someone "representative" of the other side. The point was to find someone who was committed to liberalism and ask them what limits they accept on their tactics. Those then become a touchstone for judging their own side and creating a basis for moral judgements. If the prolife side starts returning women to traditional gender roles, this kind of conversation will help set the parameters for judging it. As for "part of what troubles me is a tendency by some to conflate liberal tolerance with a need to make such rhetorical gestures towards symmetry which frankly concedes too much," I couldn't agree with you more. In fact, getting past the moral equivalence trap that a "pox on both your houses" libertarian mentality has fallen into is a huge purpose of this publication's existence. My impression of the pro-life violence is that it has cropped up occasionally but the community has also done a good job of keeping it in check. There has been no broad sanction handed to it -- which is analogous to the pro-choice side, sporadic violence but not an inherent part of its activism.
I appreciate the thoughtful arguments of all three participants. I would probably even go further and say that the labels "pro-choice" and "pro-life" are misleading; my preferred labels would be "Supporter of Abortion Right" (SRA) and "Opponent of Abortion Right" (ORA). In that regard, majority of SRA are not celebrating any abortion, they just feel that sometimes this option needs to be open, as nicely articulated by Cathy.
I am wondering about a different question. The Alito opinion is essentially contemptuous not just of the Roe decision but of all the actions of the Supreme Court in the second half of the XX century. Furthermore, the opinion talks about historical traditions -- and the Justices are happy to consider the experiences of the XVII century England as "relevant" but discard the experiences of the XX century America and Europe as "irrelevant". David has a well-thought argument why abortion is different from everything else. Alito mentions the same -- but can he be trusted (given that he and his collaborators deceived the senators on this same topic on multiple occasions)?
My question to David and other honest people on his side of the divide is then as follows. Can the "classical liberal" pro-lifers (or ORAs) articulate a political and philosophical arguments how we can live under modern liberal democracy where abortion is prohibited? In other words -- the Supreme Court is happy to have us all live under the same laws as in 1890-s Kansas (male dominance with some rights for women, no restrictions on gun carry, no worker rights, no welfare or other safety provisions, no progressive taxation, anti-immigrant animus, soft -- and sometimes hard -- racism, freedom of speech subject to the whims of the local sheriff, enforced religious participation, etc.) Most Americans never lived under such a regime. Is this something that ORAs are willing to countenance for this country? If not, where is a political force that can fight for liberal democracy without abortions?