Tim Worstall

Blogging For Choice

This sounds like a really good idea: Blogging for Choice:

One answer to her challenge came this week, on Monday, which if you read feminist blogs you’ll know was Blog for Choice day. American-focused, of course – you can tell from the wording – but pro-choice women from around the world joined in.

Indeed, choice, yes, all for that, cornerstone of liberty and freedom so it is.

It reminds them all that there is almost nowhere on the globe that a
woman can be certain of maintaining the right to control over her own
body, the most basic human right that there is. It also collects
together collective knowledge of ideas and tactics to continue the
fight.

Not sure why this is limited to women really. Ownership of one’s own body is the most basic human right there is for men too. No slavery, the right to ingest as one wishes, to offer said body for pay or play (amongst consenting adults of course) as one wishes. Why should this be limited to women?

One might even go further and insist upon choice, blog for it, in all areas of life: education, health care, what one may buy from whom, where one might go: all worthy of being championed don’t you think?

My post was about a BBC investigation that found some women were having to wait up to seven weeks for an abortion through NHS services,

Ah, this is all about a rather different meaning of choice then. Your right to take my tax money so that a third person can kill a fourth quickly. Amazing how different words can have different meanings to different people, isn’t it?

In

10 responses

  1. Katherine Avatar
    Katherine

    So someone can only use the word “choice” when talking about the whole of humanity and all things? One can never use the word “choice” now to refer to something specific without falling foul of, what, well, I can’t can’t tell what your objection to the word “choice” is, except that you don’t like what is being said and have chosen a particularly pedantic and pointless way to attack it.

    Reply
  2. Richard Avatar
    Richard

    you actually linked to this crap from the guardian website. what the f*ck for. I see now why you need to leech off the comment is free website to get some sort of audience. how many vistors keep coming back is another matter, eh.

    Reply
  3. sanbikinoriaon Avatar
    sanbikinoriaon

    Amazing that you think you can equate a developed foetus with a ‘person’, sure. Like it or not, foetuses are pretty easy to come by, and if you’ve got one and don’t want it, there’s no reason why you can’t get another one later at a more appropriate time.
    Do you actually want either a) more single mothers or b) kids going into adoption?
    No, I didn’t think so.
    A low point on this blog.
    Tim adds: My view has often been expressed here. Yes, I do equate a foetus with a person. There are two reasons you can legitimately kill a person: in immediate self-defense and in the course of a Just War (the definitions of those we will leave for another day).
    The vast majority of abortions meet neither of those criteria.

    Reply
  4. StuartA Avatar
    StuartA

    While this blog, and your comments generally, have always been pedantic, I believe this may be the most footling, inane objection that you’ve yet raised.
    You are aware that abortion campaigners on one side of the debate use the term “pro-choice” to characterise their stance. The aims of the “Blog for Choice” campaign are not disguised, either by their website or the “Comment is Free” piece to which you link. Yet your sole explicit complaint is that their use of the word “choice” doesn’t encompass your brand of screaming market fundamentalism.
    I suspect the subtext of your gripe is revealed by the claim that abortion entails killing a “person” — something that you assert without argument as if it were self-evidently true. Those behind “Blog for Choice” would presumably not agree, but by smuggling such an opinion into the last paragraph of your ploddingly sarcastic post you avoid any debate.
    If this isn’t simply an attack on abortion what, in the end, is your point? That slogans aren’t scholarly monographs? That they stand for something less than linguistic ambiguity might suggest? Will we next see your hilarious dismantling of the McDonald’s “I’m lovin’ it” campaign?
    “Why, they refer to ‘lovin’ it’. They must mean spending an evening in one’s favourite eatery, indulging in a little wine, perhaps making the odd humorous reference to (ho ho) ursine defecation vis-a-vis the Eurocrats in Brussels and their statist ways… But no! They’re referring to hamburgers. I don’t find I’m ‘lovin’ it’ when eating a McDonald’s hamburger – indeed one might argue their brand of oikery prevents others ‘lovin’ it’ generally…”
    Except they’re a company, so free from your nitpicking. Perhaps this is unfair, but then it hardly matters given its obvious fatuousness.

    Reply
  5. Little Black Sambo Avatar
    Little Black Sambo

    You are quite right to demonstrate that “choice” is something different when it is a matter of choosing for some one else and not for oneself alone. In that sense our socialist totalitarian governors are pro-choice: they choose what shall happen to us and we accept the result. Similarly with an abortion: the unwilling mother chooses and the consequences are inflicted on the child.

    Reply
  6. Sam Avatar
    Sam

    Except, of course, that you don’t own your body. Your body isn’t property.
    I think, when you think about it, it’s quite a good thing that bodies aren’t property.

    Reply
  7. The Englishman Avatar
    The Englishman

    To defend Tim, though goodness knows he is capable of it himself, but perhaps too well mannered to do so, his post is a mild blog about choice involving getting other people to pay for something, which may or may not be against the payers personal beliefs.
    What is it about pro-abortionists that sets them screeching so whenever their sacred cow is prodded? It is not as though it is being minced alive…

    Reply
  8. Squander Two Avatar
    Squander Two

    In these discussions, I always think of that famous quote about pornography: “I may not be able to define it, but I know it when I see it.”
    Philosophers and theologians have been trying for most of human history to define what a person is, and, so far, the cleverest people in history have failed to come up with any sort of definition that doesn’t have holes in it. Yet we are all able to answer the question “How many people are in this room?” without having to think too hard. So I think it’s a good idea to look at indicators of our intuition in these matters rather than getting bogged down in technical definitions.
    On the one hand, we don’t generally have a funeral for a miscarriage, which shows that most of us don’t quite think of a foetus as a full person. On the other hand, the extreme emotional distress caused to parents by miscarriage implies that there’s a bit more to it than losing a few useless cells — try telling a woman who has recently miscarried that it’s OK, it wasn’t a real person, and see how hard she hits you. It’s not very helpful to talk about a foetus as a person, with all the rights of a person, but neither is it honest to imply that because a foetus is a non-person it’s just a useless lump of an object to be disposed of however we wish. The truth is that foetuses are less than people but more than blobs, and this really tells us very little about whether it’s right or wrong to kill them.
    Sanbikinoriaon,
    There is substantial evidence that the easy availability of abortion leads to more single motherhood, as it encourages men to be irresponsibly promiscuous.
    And what’s wrong with being adopted? Some of my friends were adopted. They don’t have a problem with it, so why should you object?
    I find it interesting, actually, that so many people on the Left — who, in other matters, are so keen on collectivism, society, the community — support adoption so rigidly. What could possibly be a better example of the community acting collectively to help one another than adoption? One couple have a child they can’t look after or don’t want; another want a child but can’t have one; adoption is the answer. One of the sad effects of the increase in abortion in recent years is that couples who can’t have children find that they can’t adopt either. Not enough kids to go around. Those with loads of money can adopt ffrom abroad. Those without can’t. Thank you, socialists.

    Reply
  9. Squander Two Avatar
    Squander Two

    Oops.
    > support adoption so rigidly
    should, of course, have been
    > support abortion so rigidly
    But you knew that.

    Reply
  10. StuartA Avatar
    StuartA

    “What is it about pro-abortionists that sets them screeching so whenever their sacred cow is prodded? It is not as though it is being minced alive…”
    I have no idea if this is aimed at me. For the record, however, I expressed no opinion on abortion. What I expressed an opinion on was Worstall’s method of putting his view.
    If he believes that an aborted foetus is a killed person, then fine, he can make a case for it. But he hasn’t. What he has done is imply via clunking sarcasm that he has a freehold on the word “choice” because… well, no reason at all really, except anyone sensible must associate it with liberal capitalism. Then he makes a bald assertion about his views on abortion, as if that settles the matter, and somehow discredits the “Blog for Choice” people.
    To deliver this garbage in a tone that suggests he’s in some way being clever is to invite criticism. Sacred cows have nothing to do with it.
    Tim adds: “Then he makes a bald assertion about his views on abortion,”
    Do a search on this site for the word abortion. You’ll see my views in all their glory and quite possible idiocy/wrongness/whatever. Please, this is a blog, I really don’t have to argue each and every point from first principles each and every time, do I?

    Reply

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