For example, among the "prolife" side, there is one strand of argument that opposes abortion rights from a "cultural" perspective. They see the ability of women to have sex without "facing the consequences" as an attack on "traditional" society, and oppose abortion rights and contraceptive education with near equal vigor.
My view is similar to this, but a bit expanded. While yes, "responsibility of your actions" has to be taken into consideration, the burden should not rest upon the mother alone. The man who impregnates the woman has just as much responsibility for the child. If the couple is not married, and has no intention to become married, he must provide child support to the mother until the child turns 18 or the child is placed up for addoption. With the mother being the one who brought the child into the world, it would be her decision to place the child up for adoption, not the fathers.
But in either case, the decision to have sex is theirs alone. If the woman is not a willing participant (rape, incest,....), abortion should be allowed. Just as if her life is in danger due to the pregnancy.
Thanks, this pretty much sums up the pro-life position in one of the two debates. Not all people's policy positions are derived exclusively from either culturally-centered or morally-centered convictions, but some are. Nor is it that "cultural" issues aren't morally grounded, or that "moral" judgments cannot be culturally grounded. It's just that the two debates generally use different types of justifications based either around cultural values (Judeo-Christian mores vs. Equality/Liberty etc) or around moral appeals to the conscience; and that arguments from one debate cannot justifiably be used to rebut arguments from the other, although they are often wrongly mixed.
The rape exception provides a good illustration of this. People who oppose abortion on mostly cultural grounds should be supportive of a rape exception, while whose who oppose it on mostly moral grounds should not.
Monopolization- correct. The underlying dynamics of a debate are more important than the status quo during a period when an issue is low salience. For example, in 1893 there was a massive economic crisis but Cleveland did nothing. The public was fundamentally opposed to government intervention in the economy. Yet when economic crisis hit in 1929, the people elected a president who instituted sweeping reforms under the New Deal. Why did the government respond so differently to economic crises?
Well, the underlying nature of the debate was changed by the Progressive Movement and the government's successful mobilization during World War I. The relatively placid, lassiez-faire America of the 1920s belied the fundamental changes in the debate over government's reaction to an economic crisis that had taken place underneath the surface. These changes had taken place underneath the surface because government reaction to economic depression wasn't a salient issue from 1896 to 1932. If you had taken polls in the 1920s on the issue, they would have been relatively constant in opposition to government intervention. But in general, the "opinions" seem stable because most people aren't thinking about the issue. In reality, very few people's opinions are as stable as political obsessives such as ourselves.
When an issue emerges after many years to high salience, the factors surrounding the issue will have changed-- in the New Deal case, ideological opposition to government intervention had been quietly eviserated by the progressive movement and WWI. Most people won't recognized these changed dynamics until they return to prominence. But they could have been identified by looking beneath the surface.
The same goes with abortion. The last time the issue was really salient was during the feminist movement of the 1970s. At that time the debate was heavily cultural. Most pro-lifers fit the profile of MODU here, in their beliefs and rhetoric. Today, the pro-life rhetoric has changed, helped by new technologies and strategies, and the dynamics are shifting away from the cultural debate to the moral debate, which is totally different. This means the seeming stability of public opinion and public policy over the decades belie fundamentally shifting dynamics that may leave pro-choice identifiers in for a rude shock once the issue again becomes highly salient (which is likely in the next 2-4 years).
Poll
