It's Mother's Day, so when better to talk about abortion? This episode goes from a personal story to postmodernism and rationalism to the definition of federalism. It covers Glenn Greenwald's article, "The Irrational, Misguided Discourse Surrounding Supreme Court Controversies Such as Roe v Wade" and the impassioned comment thread it sparked. I raise the question, "Is this a leak or a planned distraction?" The issues of abortion, gay marriage, pandemic response and censorship are examined, not for what we think is right but for who should decide over how many people. I define federalism from my book, How to Dismantle an Empire, and as it was advertised when the EU was formed.
In the following, I’ll put the quotes, links and ideas that lend themselves to outlines. However, if you have some dishes to wash or clothes to fold, I recommend watching and being in conversation with me. I love that Substack reaches readers because I am, after all, a writer, but the two mediums aren’t redundant. Stories and jokes work better with nuance, and text is better for organizing lists or pithy points. And Substack allows links in the comments to your own work or those you’re referencing, from which I’ve learned a lot. But either way, I’m grateful that you’ve let me into your head and I hope I can make myself useful rearranging the furniture while I’m here ;-)
When abortion was a hot-button issue last time around, I remember ads with young people saying, “If my mom had believed in abortion, I wouldn’t be alive today.” I thought there should be other young people saying, “If my mom hadn’t believed in abortion, I wouldn’t be alive today,” because every baby born at the wrong time is a baby not born when it’s right.
During my 20’s, if abortion had been criminalized in every state, I wouldn’t have done any of the things I did: come to California, go to graduate school, have a career that let me buy a house, meet my husband and decide to become breeders and have more than our share, a veritable wealth of daughters. They were only possible because I had a choice.
I wouldn’t have been able to say this when my parents were still alive. They were the chairpeople of the Right to Life committee at their church, single-issue voters. Nothing was more important to them, and for the right reasons—they felt every child was a gift from God and one the world needed in it. It should be honored and treasured, and we should trust that it would be okay even if we didn’t have it all figured out.
Although I don’t agree with their definition of a child—in their minds, beginning at or before the moment of conception (since they were also against birth control)—I agree with their heart. I would like to see every person treated as if the world needed them in it, as if the right to life didn’t end at birth. We all deserve to be treasured and honored and protected.
But that’s not the topic of my talk today. I want to question if this was an actual leak or a planned distraction. We’ll know if it’s not a real leak if no head rolls and no perpetrator is ever found. What would its purpose be?
In Jesus, Endless War and the Rise of American Fascism, Chris Hedges writes:
The Democratic Party is hoping to thwart an election rout by running against the expected Supreme Court decision on abortion. This is depressingly all that is left of its political capital.
The Democratic Party – which had 50 years to write Roe v Wade into law with Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama in full control of the White House and Congress at the inception of their presidencies – is banking its electoral strategy around the expected Supreme Court decision to lift the judicial prohibition on the ability of states to enact laws restricting or banning abortions.
I doubt it will work.
In Glenn Greenwald's article, "The Irrational, Misguided Discourse Surrounding Supreme Court Controversies Such as Roe v Wade," he writes:
The reaction to Monday night's news that the Court intends to overrule Roe was immediately driven by all of these common fallacies. It was bizarre to watch liberals accuse the Court of acting “undemocratically" as they denounced the ability of "five unelected aristocrats” — in the words of Vox's Ian Millhiser — to decide the question of abortion rights. Who do they think decided Roe in the first place?
Indeed, Millhiser's argument here — unelected Supreme Court Justices have no business mucking around in abortion rights — is supremely ironic given that it was unelected judges who issued Roe back in 1973, in the process striking down numerous democratically elected laws. …
This extreme confusion embedded in heated debates over the Supreme Court was perhaps most vividly illustrated last night by Waleed Shahid, the popular left-wing activist, current spokesman for the left-wing group Justice Democrats, and previously a top aide and advisor to Squad members including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Shahid — who, needless to say, supports Roe — posted a quote from Abraham Lincoln's first inaugural address, in 1861, which Shahid evidently believes supports his view that Roe must be upheld. …
It is just inexplicable to cite this Lincoln quote as a defense of Roe. Just look at what Lincoln said: “if the policy of the government, upon vital questions affecting the whole people, is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, [then] the people will have ceased to be their own rulers.” That is exactly the argument that has been made by pro-life activists for years against Roe, and it perfectly tracks Alito's primary view as defended in his draft opinion.
At what level should these decisions be made? Are the states too big? From my book How to Dismantle an Empire, I define federalism as the negotiating body between sovereign entities. I use the principle of federalism when the European Union was formed that decisions should be pushed down to the lowest level possible.
federal government: the organizing body of a voluntary union of sovereign states, each of which can issue their own credit or currency, set their own trade policies, enter into alliances, collect their own taxes, and manage their own internal affairs without interference. Members can also secede if the union no longer serves their interests.
What size should these entities be? From my chapter Too Small to Fail:
In “The Secessionist Option”, Ian Baldwin writes that when the Declaration of Independence was written 240 years ago, there were over 18,000 sovereign political entities. In a global population of 800 million, they would have averaged 45,000 people each. In the newly-forming United States, each of the founding thirteen colonies averaged around 200,000 people.
This is about the size of a county, which protects against majority rule by the right of secession. If we agree that these decisions can be made on the level of 350M people by five unelected judges, we also accept their right to decide if it goes the other way.
On a comment thread, a woman called june tenth wrote:
abortion is no solution to the condition in which women feel no other way out but abortion. a just society in which women or anyone else have real choices based on their needs is. abortion or no abortion are two sides of the same capitalist coin.
With true federalism, we could create economies that give women a real choice to have children who are welcomed, honored and protected, even after they’re grown.
Other videos that explore related themes:
Waking the Dragon Mom on Jordan Peterson
Responding to Russell Brand's interview, I agree with Jordan that men and women are fundamentally different and I describe a feminine ideology, morality and shape of government. Jordan suggests a fourth branch of government as symbolic with a king. The symbol I'd choose for a feminine structure is the interlocking honeycomb with the child in the center and the queen bee serving the hive. Jordan proposes that lust isn't a sin when directed to the marriage, but I look at sin as seeing inferiority, including objectified wives. I end by applying problem-solving criteria to the pandemic and wonder what it will take to wake the dragon mom.
Is Our Love Being Pimped for Profit?
In Russell Brand's interview of ex-Navy SEAL Jocko Willink, he asks, "Is our beauty being harnessed for nefarious ends." I rephrase that by asking "Is our love being pimped for profit" by all of us being monetarily raped and economically drafted into servicing the empire. I differentiate between the work we do and the job we're paid for, and quote John Cusack on sugar daddy politics and Arundhati Roy in defense of self-defense. I suggest that we sell our bodies but keep our hearts and minds free, and explain why Russell is my favorite hooker in the YouTube brothel.
It's always been a point of irony for me that women, the only beings that are truly MOTHERS, and I make no apologies for my views about THAT (yet another distraction!), have been and are STILL considered PROPERTY of men. That a group of MEN have been making decisions about what women are "allowed" to do for the past at least two or three thousand years is clear proof of that. It's NOT a "man's world," except that men seem to wish it. Might does NOT make right, except that men seem to enforce it. The chicken, OBVIOUSLY, came first. Men have long claimed a greater "stake" in the realm of offspring, because it has to do with THEIR mantle being passed on, as it were, but generally, only for MALE offspring. It is scandously recent that women were even able to control their own wages, or own their own property. This is STILL TRUE in many places in the world today. This superiority complex men claim, surely a defensive posture engendered by their FEAR that they are actually INferior because they cannot produce life, has never been granted by women, but again, by men themselves. To be honest, I'm a little weary of men feeling they should RULE-- look where that's brought us...
That said, I agree this is planned distraction. It is one more attempt to DIVIDE AND CONQUER, another tactic of MEN. Women are not toys, nor pawns, and women should not allow this kind of manipulation to continue. It's time that women took their rightful place, which is alongside, not behind, and not under the boot of, men.
All human beings belong to themselves, and themselves alone. Men making decisions about and for women is a form of slavery; it is the worst side of Patriarchy, after the impulse to declare war.
Many years ago I read, or heard in a documentary, that the anti-abortion "right" was able to shut down about 90% of the abortion clinics/facilities in the USA. There are a number of "red" (Republican/conservative) states that had very small numbers of abortion facilities, if any, in some cases, one abortion facility in an entire state.
The "right" could have called that a "win" politically and gone home, but abortion is as much of a propaganda (and funding raising and political organizing) narrative for them as it is the "left".
It seems like a relatively sane solution would be to allow for local legislation, and generally prohibit the use of taxpayer money for abortions (to semi-satisfy the 'right") and only ban abortions (with exceptions for rape/abuse/medical problems) in local situations were the vast majority of women themselves want abortion banned (to semi-satisfy the "right").
But instead of some kind of same solution, extremists on the far left and far right just want to use the issue for political purposes.
To people on the "right", if you don't like abortions, don't get one.
To people on the "left", stop insisting on federal/state tax money to fund abortion clinics.