The US Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v Wade has unleased a deluge of criticism and outrage. Even the UN and world leaders added theirs.
The left and pro-choice groups and individuals are calling it an attack on humanity, women's rights and freedom of choice. Peter Kalmus in The Guardian wrote "the US supreme court made a devastating decision for humanity [sic]". (Typical American hubris to equate America with humanity.)
Others say it's an opening round in an American civil war, a war that ironically the far-right has long predicted.
The right are jubilant and say it's positive for white rights.
Reaction in South Africa is muted. This is because while the decision is momentous to the US, it does not affect the status in SA allowing abortion. Also, international events receive little media attention.
So it was by chance that on the John Maytham Show on CapeTalk Thursday June 30 I heard him discuss the ruling with regular guest, Daily Maverick journalist Rebecca Davis. Her views are predictably tendentious, left-wing, typical of local media, but her insight and erudition makes one listen.
But I was quickly disappointed, not by her pro-choice views, what else, but her bias, exaggeration and misstatement of facts, or presenting alternative facts.
She claimed abortion was always allowed, presumably throughout civilisation, and that it's only in the recent era there's been opposition; that opposition, and pro-life, , sis religious-based, specifically mentioning the Catholic Church; that in the US fundamentalist churches have claimed the pro-life position while presumably other Christians and religions do not object.
Then turning to the status of abortion in SA, she said it's constitutionally allowed but access, mostly at public health facilities, is not good, I think only thirty percent. She was sceptical, even dismissive, of doctors who refuse to perform abortions. And when they refuse on religious grounds, they're obliged to inform and refer patients to facilities that do.
She was unaware practitioners are not obliged to refer patients to an appropriate one. But her unique interpretation of health laws are irrelevant when she has a political point to make.
The abortion dilemma is fraught, and opinions on both sides - pro-life and choice - can be reductive, simplistic and wrong, like Davis. She's among the intellectuals and elite who fittingly, if disparagingly, are called social justice warriors. The armchair kind.
(Davis was one of a number of media people who in 2016 and later supported the Rhodes Must Fall mob who engaged in protests and intimidation on UCT's campus. But when protests turned violent and to other campuses in the country - people were assaulted and property destroyed - Davis et al, on Daily Maverick, CapeTalk/702 and similar platforms, were silent.)
Davis disparaged religion. But religious people uphold a code, principles based on the lives and teachinge of prophets - Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha. It's no different, but more credible, than secular people like her who follow politicians, in the South African left-wing's case, eg Nelson Mandela and Cyril Ramaphosa, or Ramaphorias as they're called.
Davis is wrong about how long abortion has been socially acceptable. It's only from the mid-20th century countries around the world allowed legally them, even in secular and non-Catholic states. And even where it is permitted, there remains a stigma, not because of the religious aspect, but because it is still seen as morally and medically problematic by people of all backgrounds.
She on was wrong on a number of points. Given that she's a writer and well-informed, her mistakes must be due to her - her sui generis - extremist ideology. Who said only the right engages in hyperbole and fear-mongering.
As I wrote in my last post, I don't understand why societies around the world permit abortion and death penalty but most not euthanasia. Medically assisted euthanasia is the individual making the decision to end his or her life typically for protracted terminal, excruciating conditions. Yet this is considered murder or culpable homicide including South Africa.
The left and right take opposite sides about abortion and death penalty but either remain silent about euthanasia, not concerned about it as with the other two or against it. There is dishonesty over these moral issues.
Perhaps when one asks medical ethicists when conscious life starts, the issue here (can medicine say with absolute certainty?), one into should consider the larger ethical matter that makes abortion as a moral dilemma similar, or different, to euthanasia and the death penalty. And why the US Supreme Court's decision has created such controversy over these moral issues.
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