Kamala Harris
Kamala Harris
I like Kamala, I really do. I think she is a highly intelligent capable person, and even quite likeable (I used to find her off-putting). I badly want her to win. I think she will make a fine president. But there is something she says regularly that really irritates me: she is forever saying, as a mantra, that “the government has no right to decide what a woman can do with her body”. She seems to think this is a clever and decisive argument against “pro-lifers”. It isn’t. I wish she would stop saying it. Of course the government has a right to decide what a woman (or any person) does with her body—such as commit crimes with it. If anyone uses their body to harm others, the government has a right to intervene. And that is precisely what pro-lifers believe, since the fetus’s body is not the mother’s body. It is simply inside her body. What needs to be argued is that the fetus has no rights vis-à-vis the mother’s actions. Note that the fetus is inside until it is outside—so is abortion okay up until the last second? Is it the mother’s body up till then, and henceforward not? These points are familiar, if neglected. What annoys me about Kamala’s comment is that she doesn’t seem to understand that government interference in what a person “does with her (or his) body” is precisely what the law is. Doing such-and-such with your body is against the law—such as murdering with it, or stealing, or speeding. You might think that some bodily behavior is surely free of moral or legal regulation, e.g., cutting your nails or taking a nap. But even that isn’t true universally: you can’t cut your nails next to a person eating if the nails go into the food, and you can’t take a nap while your child is sitting in a hot car. Surely Kamala knows this—she is a lawyer, after all. So why repeat it as if it is a decisive argumentative point? It just makes people think she is a fraud, a spouter of nonsense. I don’t know why someone doesn’t tell her. I can’t think of a single type of action which is neversubject to justifiable legal or moral constraint—even blinking.
I agree with everything you write in this post, except “It just makes people think she is a fraud, a spouter of nonsense.” I think that you are a very rare person to think that Harris’s saying “the government has no right to decide what a woman can do with her body” is fraudulent or nonsensical, because few people take the phrase to apply except as an argument against abortion restrictions.
You’re right that, even as an argument against abortion restrictions, it is inadequate, leaving open questions such as “is abortion okay up until the last second?” But as a general explanation of why the government should not restrict the right to abortion, it does the job. Harris isn’t doing philosophy.
I can’t think of an example of a justifiable legal or moral constraint on blinking. Can you suggest one?
Actually, I believe that “the government has no right to decide what a woman can do with her body” is not an argument at all, because it does not address the claim that a woman has no right to take the life of a fetus that resides in her body. When one claims either that a woman has a right to control her body or that a fetus has a right to be born, one is not making an argument or even stating a belief but is expressing a feeling. Therefore, Harris’s statement can appeal only to those who already feel or who are susceptible to feeling that a woman’s control over her body is more important than a fetus’s being born.
The previous paragraph overlooks that many who favor forced birth do so not out of concern for a fetus’s right to be born but out of a desire to return women to their place as housewives rather than competitors with men in the professions or the marketplace.
It’s an expression of feeling masquerading as an argument–the bane of political life. It debases real thought.
I think people have an instinctive feeling that the “argument” is useless, even if they don’t (or can’t) articulate it.
As a philosopher it’s easy to think up such a case: suppose someone threatens to kill your child if you blink in the next 3 seconds, or you connect your blink to a gun and use it to kill someone.
The sociological theorist Randall Collins argued (maybe quite obviously) the real intention of the Republicans is none other than controling sex- since the sexual revolutions of the twentieth century women have been running around having sex, which is slightly different than killing babies. They fear all the sexual misconduct out there. That is the pragmatic reality or latent content if you will behind the whole abortion debate.
I wouldn’t be surprised.