Concerning Roe vs Wade: were men involved in that decision? Then they should be involved in any debate concerning whether it should be overturned. You can’t selectively disqualify men from the discussion only when there is a danger they will disagree with you.
(“You” in general, not any poster in particular.)
To me, the suggestion that only women are entitled to an opinion on abortion is equivalent to saying
Only cotton farmers had a right to an opinion on slavery (“You Yankees have never tried to bring in a crop without slave labor, so YOU don’t know what it’s like, and your opinion is irrelevant”).
Only the families of murder victims (or, if you prefer, only convicts on Death Row!) are entitled to an opinion on capital punishment. (“YOU’VE never lost a loved one, so who are YOU to say executing the man who killed my son is wrong?”)
Only soldiers and ex-soldiers are entitled to an opinion on My Lai and similar atrocities (“You civilians have never been under fire, so you don’t know the stresses of combat, so you have no right to judge what we do!”).
As I said, the lack of an agreement does not imply the lack of a true answer.
It’s easy to dismiss an analogy as being “cliched” or “insulting” when you don’t have a good answer for it.
You claimed that disagreement on the abortion issue implies that there is not right or wrong answer on this matter. Well, there was tremendous disagreement on the slavery issue. By your logic then, there was no right or wrong answer to the issue of slavery.
It’s as simple as that. You can call it “cliched” or “insulting” if you want, but don’t think people won’t notice that you’re sidestepping the issue.
No. Nobody has the right to tell ME what to do with my body. Until there is a proceedure to take the fetus out of me and implant it into a man, there is no way a man will ever order me to either abort or not abort. After they invent that, then he can order me to not have it flushed down a drain and implanted in himself.
Yes, abortion is NOT birth control, but no birth control other than a hysterectomy/panhistouvrectomy is certain. I got pregnant on regular properly used birth control 2 times, and once on a tubal ligation. I realize that birthcontrol is ultimately the womans responsibility [though men can wear rubbers/vasectomy] but accidents do happen.
It’s not biologically impossible for a Yankee to become a cotton farmer or slave, any person to have a family member murdered, or any person to be placed in a combat situation.
Really? I was under the impression that the law had the right to tell me, for instance, not to swing my fist such that it collided with someone else’s nose. The question here is whether there is someone else’s body inside you to be protected, or not. If there is, then the excuse that the act of violence is taking place inside your body won’t wash. If there is not, there is nothing to discuss.
This is the single principle on which this argument is founded and on which, AFAICT, opinion is irreconcilably divided. All the rest is flumdiddle.
So, then Renee Richards IS entitled to an opinion on abortion? 
If I’m interpreting this correctly, it sounds like “I do not and will not walk a mile in your shoes, nor you in mine. But I could walk in yours, whereas by reason of biology you could not walk in mine. Therefore I have a right to form an opinion and influence policy on your doings, whereas you do not on mine.”
This sounds sophistical to me, because I can’t see where the “therefore” is coming from other than a prior determination to disqualify my opinion.
That’s not the reason men are being “selectively” disqualified. Fundamentalist women and Catholic women and other possibly anti-choice female citizens have as much right to participate in the discussion. Why? Because they can get pregnant. Because it affects them directly, rather than by proxy. And if there are more pro-choice women than men (which I don’t really think is the case, I see a roughly equal split of opinion), then maybe it’s worth examining why that is. Are more men anti-choice because it’s easy for them to distance themselves from the situation, casting judgement from up on high, never having to worry about dealing with the real life consequences of their decisions? And if so, isn’t that an arrogant position?
astorian: Your examples aren’t gonna fly, since anyone could theoretically find themselves as the relative of a murder victim or caught in a war zone or subjected to slavery. A better example would be, say, allowing only those people who have a disability to decide what accessibility features should be required on buildings. They have to live with the disability, so they’ve got more of an idea of where guardrails need to be installed or where floors should be widened, etc. That’s not a perfect analogy either, but it’s more viable than the murder victim one. An even better analogy might be male circumcision–I have no opinion on the matter (other than a vague belief that it’s wrong to subject someone to surgery without their consent, but we do that all the time anyway) since I don’t know what it’s like to have a foreskin or not have one. If I had a male child, I would expect my husband to make that decision, because he has information I don’t.
Ideally, both partners should take precaution. I’m reluctant to say that women should have a greater responsibility because then that opens the door for all kinds of male whiners who say that an unwanted pregnancy isn’t their fault, because it’s solely the woman’s duty, so they should get off scot free wrt child support. I mean, I would never rely on someone else to provide birth control, but neither should guys–you would think that with all the cases of men getting stuck with an unwanted kid there would be no man willing to ride bareback, which leads me to think that all the guys relying on their partners are either idiots or possessed of a certain kind of entitlement that comes with not having to deal with the direct physical consequences of their actions. You’d think that with all these paternity cases men would be demanding on using a triple-ply condom smeared with spermicide yet that isn’t the case. We should ALL be taking a little more responsibility and being a little more paranoid about what our partner may or may not be doing in the birth control department. It doesn’t matter if it should be “equal” or not; any guy who isn’t an idiot is going to carry a condom around with him and wear one every single time, and vice versa. It shouldn’t be 75%/25% responsibility, it should be 100%/100%.
And, as I have pointed out three times already, this makes their opinion more biased, rather than less. Why not exclude the opinions of women altogether, since they are arguably more likely to make a biased decision?
First of all, as various other posters have pointed out, men ARE affected by abortion.
Second, if someone does have to deal with the real-life consequences of that decision, does that not make the person’s judgment biased and suspect?
And third, should the validity of one’s arguments not be based solely on the logic employed? Arguments don’t have gender, after all.
If anything, it’s the insistence on summarily dismissing the opinions of men that strikes me as the more arrogant position.
I’m not dismissing it, I’m just refusing to entertian it out of an old personal policy having nothing to do with this topic in particular. If you can’t use a little bit more thought to come up with something other than a tired and offensive black people example than why should I have any respect for your argument?
continuity_eror, I think a disinterested judge is a good one. If ever I am on trial for my life, or ever have to contest my father’s will or the custody of my son, I want a judge who doesn’t stand to gain on the deal. Granted, other things being equal, I want the wisest judge possible on the case, but I still rate disinterest pretty highly.
Concerning the eligibility of men to hold an opinion, it is nothing to the point whether more men are pro-choice or pro-life. Arguing that they could hold an opinion on condition that they don’t skew the figures is tantamount to arguing that they only get a vote as long as their vote makes no difference - which I do not suppose would be your view as a good thing on, say, whether women should be allowed to vote.
These three examples are exactly what I was referring to in my post. In [1] you have Northern bureaucrats dictating how Southern farmers should function, instead of allowing them to making their own decision (right or wrong). Look at us now passing judgement on them as we sit one hundred years in the future, why should our opinion matter? So you’ve simply extended my example by two stages, since I showed how its stupid for whites to pass a law allowing slavery of blacks, and its stupid for Northerners to pass laws on Southern farmers, and its every dumber for us to sit here in the future acting like we’re so much better than those of the past.
Your [2] example is a bit weird; you might want to rephrase that one. But [3] is a perfect example that I also used. Its easy for me to send troops into battle, its even easier for me to put them on trial for their actions, and in both cases I haven’t the foggiest idea of what’s going on. Vietnam was a classic example of generals in the US trying to fight a war on the other side of the world. Even Michael Moore was smart enough in Fahrenheit 9/11 to point out how few lawmakers had relatives in the military. So you could ask about the soldiers about their opinion about going into war and get one biased view, and then ask the Senators for their biased view.
The end result is that a man’s opinion (excluding the father) shouldn’t be moot, but it just can’t carry much weight. I think its absolutely ridiculous that a group of men would sit down and figure out laws that only pertain to women.
And that’s really the crust of it: half of us are talk about opinion as a means of law making, whereas many simply see the man’s opinion as a matter of input on the subject.
So you’re not dismissing it, you’re just refusing to consider it.
Yeah, that make sense.