It’s hard not to suspect that the real reason abortion is such a hot issue in some places is that it offers what looks like a respectable or decent pretext or excuse for pushing women around and telling them what to do, when none of the other pretexts for doing that retain a shred of respectability. Abortion is the one ‘reason’ for bossing and controlling and confining women; for, in short, taking away their autonomy. It’s the last resort – it’s what’s left when all the old ‘traditional’ unreasonable ones have been shown up and knocked down and got rid of. When they can’t be defended any more, there is one last way: abortion. Hooray hooray, there is still one … Read the rest

Update. I tweaked this a little to make it clearer that it was the idea behind the law I was criticising and not the lawyer.

Irrelevant? Really?

The right to life of Miss D’s unborn child continues until it is dead, the High Court heard yesterday. The courts cannot engage in “a measuring exercise” about the capacity of the child prior to birth, a lawyer representing the unborn said. “This is a live foetus, that is the beginning and end of it, and the fact it has no brain and cannot survive after birth is irrelevant,” James Connolly, SC, said.

He’s the lawyer who is arguing for that side, so he has to say something, but the idea behind … Read the rest

Hmm. I’ve spotted a possible addendum or amendment that could make the apparent disagreement disappear like a popped soap bubble. I think getting it right – the gerund, the activity, the verb – is praiseworthy; but that doesn’t mean I think people who get it right are necessarily praiseworthy for doing so. I don’t really think that, I suppose – I just think they ought to, we ought to, as we ought to be civil and considerate as opposed to rude and troublesome. Maybe that was the point. I can buy that. Sure – I get it! The smugness and self-congratulation comes in if people preen themselves on simply doing the right thing. Now that, I think, is a … Read the rest

I’ve been pondering the connection (if any) between getting things right or getting at the truth, and merit. The pondering was prompted by this post at Talking Philosophy and specifically one part of the overall argument:

I don’t think that getting things right – in the sense of believing or accepting something to be true, rather than finding out that something is true (yes, I know – the distinction is complex) – is praiseworthy. Or, at least, I don’t think it is praiseworthy enough to justify the cloying smugness that some people – and groups – manifest when they think that they have got things right.

I saw the point of that at first (and perhaps still do in the … Read the rest