Pro-life feminism

[morality_play]

There's a thread on the abortiondebate community, here, about pro-life feminism, started by user sunovermountain. Usually, no thinking except the most elementary can escape the crushing gravity of the vast, droning, intellectual black hole that is that community, but a few stray particles of critical thought made it out this time. They originated with the_alchemist, who was

Comments

[anonymous]

A thought provoking discussion, as ususal. Thanks for posting it! One niggling comment: I'm unsure you're using neonate correctly, though I'm unfamiliar with terminology in these debates.

I'd be interested to hear more about the distinction between agency and patienthood and the assignation of rights and protections to species. Care to expand or refer me somewhere?

[morality_play]

Well, the matter of species rights is fairly broad. I don't mind expanding on any point I made above, but the breadth of the subject makes it cumbersome to tackle as a whole. Obviously part of the matter falls under the rubric of moral philosophy. What are the necessary qualities that moral worth follows from, and what do we mean by expressions like "moral activity?" My preoccupation is with the minimum requirements for an action to have an intelligible moral status. I'd submit one absolute minimum necessity is intellectual subjectivity attributable to the subjects involved. There's actually a region of inquiry at the intersection of cognitive science and moral philosophythat takes this as it's subject matter. Neurophilosophy and cognitive ethology for example. And I often prefer people begin with the cog sci to establish what's under analysis in the philosophy. So if you were looking for literature, I'd begin there

[monocrat]

We're LJ friends, at any rate! I see my comment is still screened, was it perhaps logged anonymously?

[morality_play]

It was, as you can now see. My livejournal commentary on the subject of abortion inspires more drama than it ever should. I recieve a number of anonymous comments from a few individuals who prefer not to attract recriminations from the moderators at the abortiondebate community. Thinking you were one of them, I thought it best to leave your comment screened.

I now assume _you_ are not concerned about the recriminations of sixteen year old girls.

This is a little awkward. As it happens, I'm in the middle of another long series of journal entries about "why libertarians are nasty-bad people." I don't want you to think it was designed to be provocative. Until I saw your comment... Well, I contribute to this journal so infrequently, I assume you and eleventoes don't even read it. I mean, life is too short.