Trust. The topic doesn't fit well with the usual Meta Monday banter about Blogistan Polytechnic Institute, the resident faculty, the wine cellar library, our motto of Magis vinum, magis verum ("More wine, more truth"), and the hot tub faculty lounge. So I'll skip the banter.
Trust, the foundation of progressive moral values, is in short supply in America. Distrust of women is the basis of the abortion 'debate,' and why so many women are outraged about the Stupak-Pitts Amendment. Lately it seems Americans don't trust anyone. Not each other. Not government. That makes it harder to argue progressive policies.
More below the fold....
Banter aside, Meta Monday calls for our usual thank-yous to last week's guest lecturers. Last Tuesday, Professor of Neuroholdemology Caractacus offered a fascinating lecture on patterns of discussion. Last Wednesday, Professor of Mediamaternity theKgirls opened an important dialogue on how adoptive families are portrayed and perceived in our media. If you missed either, please read them.
Tomorrow, Caractacus' weekly series on Things We Learned This Week continues with a talk on how consequences (should) shape our analysis of inconclusive facts and situations. On Wednesday, newly-tenured Professor of Ursacyclicammology KVoimakas will offer a discussion of relaxation. As always, Chef will be on hand with breakfast treats and the Professor of Astrology will be off hand with buffered treacle.
Note: We currently have no guest scheduled for next Wednesday, November 18th. If you would like to host Morning Feature on that or any following Wednesday, please volunteer in a comment below.
As for the resident faculty and the rest of the week, they will probably talk about trust. If cognitive linguist (and Kossack) Dr. George Lakoff is correct, and I agree with his analysis, the core difference between progressive and conservative moral values hinges on trust. Progressivism is based on trust that enables a Nurturant Parent to help the nation-as-family with our shared challenges. Conservatism is based on distrust that requires a Strict Father to keep the nation-as-family in line. The rest of our moral values - progressive or conservative - emerge from a basic question: Whom do we trust?
I'm probably in a minority who feel that, as a matter of the economics of access to health care, the Stupak-Pitts Amendment will have very little real impact. As I understand the amendment, it says health insurance offered under the federal exchange cannot cover abortion procedures. I don't like that for reasons I'll discuss below, but I don't see it as consigning women to die in back-alley abortions. On average, abortions cost less than $400, less than the deductibles for most insurance plans. Women with health insurance would have had to pay for most abortions out-of-pocket anyway. Moreover, as I understand the bill, post-surgical complications - which can happen with any surgery - will be covered no matter the underlying surgery. Even if the surgery was an abortion. In terms of economic access to abortion, Stupak-Pitts doesn't change much.
Yet like most progressive women, I find Stupak-Pitts outrageous. For me that outrage is less about what the amendment does than what it - and the entire abortion 'debate' - says about women. If you begin by presuming we women are morally competent human beings, capable of making reasoned and informed decisions about pregnancy, there is no abortion 'debate.' Under that presumption, you trust a woman to make the best decision she can in light of the totality of her circumstances, including her awareness of the personhood of the fetus.
No one is aware of that personhood more than a pregnant woman. If you've never had another life inside you, you cannot understand how profoundly a pregnant woman is aware of that life. Any woman who's had a miscarriage - a spontaneous abortion - can tell you how heartwrenching that experience is. I always wonder what he or she would have been like, what potential life swirled away in a tiny, bloody blob as I flushed the toilet. Every woman I've spoken with who has had or was considering an abortion weighed those same thoughts. It's a decision and an experience I would not wish on anyone.
I trust women to make that decision in consultation with their doctors and whomever else the women choose to bring into the discussion. The broad legal outline of Roe v. Wade is plenty of "guidance" from society. Women don't need the ghost of Rep. Henry Hyde or the oversight of Representatives Bart Stupak, Joe Pitts, and the others who voted for their amendment ...
... unless you presume women are morally compromised and cannot be trusted to make the best decision in light of the totality of their individual circumstances. That presumption of women's moral incompetence - shared by too many Americans, including too many women - is at the core of the abortion 'debate.'
We're "irrational," or our "hormones are raging." We've "just changed our minds" and are "using abortion as birth control." Pick whatever misogynistic phrase you like, and you get to the same spot: women are morally incompetent, incapable of making reasoned and informed decisions about pregnancy. We need society, run largely by males and for male interests, to tell us what to do. We need a Strict Father to keep us in line. If we can't prove our moral purity - "rape, incest, or the life of the mother at risk" - anti-abortion people presume our moral impurity.
That's what the Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats told American women Saturday night, and that's why progressive women are reasonably outraged.
It's about trust, the foundation of progressive moral values ...
... or distrust, the foundation of conservative moral values.
Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats don't trust women, and the economics of abortion aside, a whole lot of us think that's outrageous.
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Happy Monday!