Comments Elsewhere

Robert, much earlier in the thread:

EC prevents the implantation of a fertilized embryo into the uterine wall. It is an abortifacient. (At least some forms of it work this way; I hear conflicting reports that there are non-abortifacient ECs but I haven’t seen details.) This, by many of us, is abortion, albeit about the most attenuated possible form of abortion. So, EC is abortion, EC is abortion, EC is abortion. There, now we’re functioning at the same discursive level.

No, it’s not. “Abortion” is a medical term, referring to the premature termination of a pre-existing pregnancy (when that termination doesn’t result in live birth). Emergency Contraception works in one of two ways, depending on matters of timing and chance: either it prevents ovulation from happening at all, or else it prevents a blastocyst from implanting in the placenta when it reaches the uterus. (Pregnancy — another medical term, mind you — does not begin until implantation.) In neither of these cases is there a pregnancy to be aborted; in neither of them is there an abortion. EC does not cause abortions; it is not, therefore, an “abortifacient.”

You may think that Emergency Contraception has something morally in common with induced abortion; you may oppose it for precisely the same reasons, and so think that there should be a common term to cover everything that you oppose for whatever those reasons are. That’s fine; innovation of that sort is something that competant speakers of the language do all the time. But “abortion” is a term that already has a perfectly good meaning, and making up new meanings for it to inject into public discourse, without making it very clear that this is what you have done, amounts to telling lies about EC in order to try to get people on board with your agenda.

Telling lies is wrong.

Q Grrl said:

As a feminist, however, I don’t think that the personal agency of women or their bodily integrity is up for debate. It simply isn’t.

Will responded:

Excuse me? Since when does a topic suddenly get closed to debate?

When a woman decides what she wants to do with her own body. Women’s bodies belong to them, not to you and not to “the public”. You can keep talking about what other people ought to do as long as you want but you haven’t got any right to demand that a woman listen to what you have to say about it. Period. Sorry.

I’m sorry, but any policy that affects my rights, or will affect the society I live in will always be up for debate.

Great. I think that male anti-choice commentators should be forcibly sterilized and publicly branded with hot irons because of their immoral political beliefs. This clearly affects the society I live in. So let’s debate! Let’s put it up for a vote! You’re not against democracy and intellectual discourse, are you?