Anyone else on here both solidly on the left and anti-abortion?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I understand that there are a few people here who could certainly be described in such terms.

Mind you, how are do you take that? To a general dislike of it and support for heavy restriction, or to the counter-productive absurdities of the American (and, in many other countries, American-inspired) 'pro-life' movement?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Isn't it more of an ethical position (especially with reference to that absolutely absurd multi-dimensional civil war within English language political philosophy in the 1980s; right at the point at which right-wing governments and postmodernism were - in a kind of bizarre and accidental way - combining to undercut everything most participants stood for. Well done guys!) than owt else? Certainly it's not an ideology.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

And no, I don't really care about a fetus' life, honestly. Yes, I think a fetus is a living being, but not a self-aware human being. As long as it doesn't even feel pain, I don't really mind killing it. Of course killing a living being is always a bad thing, but don't we kill animals to eat them, or to make scientific experiences ? Yes, a fetus is a life, but not yet a human being. It deserves some dignity, but not the same we give to full human beings.

And what of the severely mentally handicapped? Are they full human beings? And if they aren't, then should they have less rights than the rest of us? And to what place does that lead us?

I think in general that it's better not to philosophise too much over issues like this. Better to accept the necessity of imperfect and necessarily contradictory compromise.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

There certainly is an ethical strain of communitarianism, but there is also a communitarianism that I would definitely say is a political ideology, though they aren't always the same. How are you defining ideology here?

I'm not entirely sure how I would define ideology (it being one of those notoriously slippery concepts), but I think I would demand a little bit more than the position (that I agree with, btw) that community is basically a good thing,  that individuals can't be understood properly without reference to it, and that policy ought to be shaped in reference to these facts. There is certainly no such thing as a communitarian political movement, and (significantly) the only self-declared communitarians in existence are intellectuals, most of which have other ideological positions.