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Is this culture war? I'm not entirely sure anymore. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, and I'm not, not really, just wearied of it all.
So... list of recommendations of new SF/Fantasy popped up on a social media site (okay, it's Tumblr) and it's a mix of some continuing series (that I've never read but have at least heard of, e.g. Murderbot and the Ann Leckie Radch universe) and new novels. Much what you'd expect, except this one stuck in my attention like a splinter:
My immediate reaction was "that means abortion provider". And whaddya know?
So where's the culture war? Well, apart from the pro-life protestors being portrayed as screaming bigots and (of course!) the obligatory raped twelve year old*, it's just that I'm tired. There's not even the honesty of calling this what it is: abortion. No, it's "reproductive health care". That is the new shibboleth, I understand that, it's just... okay, the battle has been lost. Abortion is now enshrined as a fundamental human right, like food and water. We've long moved on from "sadly necessary, safe legal and rare" to "of course you're going to kill the baby, but it's not a baby, it's not a life well technically okay but not a real life, it's not a person, what do you mean murder, now please sign my petition about shrimp and AI are conscious entities that we should give legal rights so they can't be enslaved".
Yeah. I'm tired and I don't know where we're going from here on in, but if AI does turn us all into paperclips, we have no bloody leg to stand on in opposition.
*You think I'm joking?
Based on the review you linked, it sounds like the book was written by someone who used to volunteer for Planned Parenthood, and it draws on her experiences from that time (even if she adds supernatural elements.) While it is still probably crap (since 90% of everything is crap), that at least feels like a book that could have some interesting roman à clef-style presentations of real experiences the author had, if it was in the hands of a competent writer.
There definitely seems to be a one reality, two screens effect here.
Pro-life people like you get to claim that the battle is lost, and abortion is now enshrined as a fundamental human right. While pro-choice people can point to Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturning Roe v Wade four years ago, and a patchwork of state laws that look like this and claim that the battle is lost, and women's rights are a dead letter in much of the United States.
I tend to be a federalist on a meta-level, and so I tend to think kicking a controversial issue to the state level to let the voters decide is probably the better choice. Especially since I assume a federal ban, or a return to federal permissiveness will probably continue to have a corrosive effect on American politics.
While I'm sure much of the grey tribe are more "blue" when it comes to the abortion debate, I actually don't think that the combination of positions you outlined here is a very common one overall.
I've never understood how, if Alice in Austin is pregnant and does not want to be, Bob in Big Spring compelling her to remain pregnant is less of an imposition than Carol in Cambridge telling Bob to mind his own.
Strange, then, that she voluntarily did the pregnant-making thing.
Yeah no... Sex is not the pregnant making thing. Sex is just Sex. It can be done for any number of reasons. Pregnancy is merely a risk of Sex. Provide an actual argument that the sole telos of sex is procreation or leave your Christian-derived beliefs in your own life.
Others have already explained my point better than I could have, so I'll just say the following: I'm not arguing from Christian-derived beliefs. Sex out of wedlock, okay, fine, not ideal but it can work. Aborting retarded and unviably sick kids, nasty but necessary. Deleting public welfare to remove the bottom from society so that people can actually fatally drop out, now that's my hobby-horse. No, I'm pretty sure I'm not arguing from Christian-derived beliefs.
I'm arguing from a hatred for naive, short-sighted, hedonistic, asocial stupidity, no matter how deeply entrenched that stupidity is in the zeitgeist, or to what a degree I myself share in that stupidity.
Life. Life cannot be without procreation. Procreation is sex. Sex makes new life. That makes sex, honest sex, one of the most important acts in the human world. Declaring that sex can be done for any number of reasons may be factually correct, but it's also comically missing the point of it. No matter how much fun it is for how many people, that fun exists only to make people have sex in ways that produce offspring. Everything else is a byproduct, a side-effect, a distraction. Sex being fun is great, because it makes us make babies. Sex being decoupled from the baby-making is a civilization-endangering cultural stupidity.
I mean from a purely eugenic argument, the vast majority of people who get abortions are poor, short sighted, high-time preference individuals who are a net negative on the society that hosts them. A civilization that is full of them is already endangered. It is civilization-destroying to let the stupid outbreed the intelligent. Abortions combined with your lack of public welfare would greatly reduce that amount of people in the bottom rung of society.
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It doesn't require a shred of Christian belief to recognize that sex is the pregnant making thing. That is basic biological fact. We enjoy sex because it was advantageous (from an evolutionary POV) for us to do so, but that is not the primary purpose. The primary purpose is to reproduce.
So are these:
Arguments deriving morality and telos from biological determinism lead to the justification of behaviors the vast majority of humans consider abhorrent. To deploy it in this one case is cherry picking an arbitrary boundary line.
This post is one giant strawman. Nobody said that it's immoral to have sex for pleasure, people said that sex is "the pregnant-making thing". Which it is.
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I know the "pregnancy isn't a natural result of sex!" crowd hates Christians with a white-hot passion mirroring their hatred of having consequences of their own actions more generally and so want to blame them for all the evils in the world, but it's entirely possible to come to the conclusion that pregnancy is a result of sex from a secular perspective.
"Sex is just sex" is nonsensical, like saying "Russian roulette is just Russian roulette, I didn't know I might die."
Well, I don't. Nor do I hate dealing with the consequences of my own actions. What I do hate is hypocrites and unfairness. So if all you pro-lifers want to commit to an unlimited duty to suffer every risky outcome of your actions, I'm willing to accept every risky outcome of my own. Until that happens, this has nothing to do with the straw effigy you've created in your head. From my vantage, you want your cake and to eat it too.
And Christians want everyone to use their frame of the universe while not even considering any others, again, hypocrisy.
I'm all ears, please share a non-culturally-Christian argument on the unitary telos of sex:pregnancy.
Nature does a perfectly fine job of that, and you've displayed your unwillingness to accept it. I do not think there is any argument I personally can craft that can overcome your bias against it.
Edit: I'll take a quick stab. For one, I never said unitary telos.
I recognize that not every sex act leads to pregnancy. However, pregnancy is the natural consequence of sex absent interference. We are sexually reproducing beings. Ergo, pregnancy is a natural consequence of having sex. To have sex is to accept that risk.
The natural argument is bad, biological determinism is not deployed in almost any other argument because it has very horrible ramifications. So using it for "this one case" is an arbitrary boundary drawing that fails to lead to a general solution.
This is better.
There is a causality logical assumption in this that is incorrect. If A -> B it does not mean that B -> A. ie If pregnancy occurred, then sex/reproduction-related conditions occurred. Does not follow: If sex occurred, then pregnancy follows.
Pregnancy is a natural risk of sex, but not every sex absent interference results in an intended pregnancy. People have plenty of sex with the purpose of getting pregnant, and not getting pregnant even when its the intended outcome. The reverse is also true.
Agreed
I do not agree. Assumption of risk is never assumed to be accepted, hence why every risky activity involving other parties generally requires you to sign papers assuming that risk onto yourself and acknowledging it. This is what I mean by "an unlimited duty to suffer every risky outcome of your actions" Most people do not believe that, but then to draw an arbitrary line around sex is in essence trying to have your cake and eat it too.
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Any biologist? Yes, sex in humans doesn't result in pregnancy literally every time, but it's the regular natural outcome and the prime evolutionary purpose of its existence. It takes considerable contrivance in terms of decades of biochemistry and materials science to prevent regular sex resulting in pregnancy, and sometimes even then sometimes that contrivance fails.
It's like exploring flooded caves or BASE jumping off buildings - it's not meant to go wrong, but everyone knows it sometimes does, and the only reason you're at risk is because you enjoy the activity enough to put aside the possibility of failure. Most people don't want such high risk and consequently don't do those activities.
To note, from what I’ve heard, a substantial part of contraceptive failure- I don’t use the things myself- is that people don’t like them. They discomfit people because they’re unnatural, so people take shortcuts, they cheat, they try to get away from it.
It’s an entirely human reaction to refuse to do the thing right, when you know the thing itself is wrong.
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I mean would you extend a biological and evolutionary determinism to everything else humans do?
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