Hey y’all,
Did you miss me last week? I took it off for the Thanksgiving holiday. We didn’t do anything in my house. I don’t eat meat and none of us felt like cooking anyway, so my grandmother made gravy and biscuits instead of a traditional Thanksgiving dinner. It was a wonderful day, though. We just laid around the house, watched tv, and napped. Best holiday ever.
This brings me to the first bit of housekeeping: Sky’s the Limit will be going on hiatus soon. The last newsletter of 2021 will land in your inboxes on 18 December. I don’t know exactly when I will be back – I plan on taking several weeks off – but I will return at some point in 2022 with new analysis and commentary!
I want to thank Patsy for the generous gift of the book she sent me. If, like Patsy, you are feeling generous and want to buy me a Christmas present, you can become a Patron for as little as $3 a month, make a one-time donation using PayPal, or buy me a book to help with my research. All contributions are greatly appreciated, no matter how big or how small. None are expected, though. This newsletter is and will remain free.
With that, let’s get to this week’s topics – two of the most controversial in American politics. Because nothing says Christmas like arguing over abortion and gun control.
x. Skylar
On abortion…
Abortion is one of those topics that is ruled as much if not more by emotion than by logic. For people on both sides, this issue more than perhaps any other is the dividing line between conservative and liberal, right and left, indeed even right and wrong.
For nearly 50 years, it has hung over American politics like a sword of Damocles ready to fall on the head of our body politic. Now, with the Supreme Court considering the constitutionality of a law out of Mississippi which would limit abortion to the first 15 weeks of pregnancy, the nation must face the issue of abortion in a way it hasn’t in many decades. If the Court – which is tilted in favor of conservatives thanks to Trump’s three Supreme Court nominees – rules that the Mississippi law is constitutional, it effectively guts Roe v Wade, the 1973 decision which found abortion bans violate women’s constitutional right to privacy.
The court could try to find a via media which upholds Roe while also allowing laws (like the one in question) to restrict if not rescind abortion rights. That, however, seems less likely given the questions posed by conservative justices like Amy Coney Barrett and Samuel Alito. The reality is there is every chance that Roe v Wade could be overturned, half-a-century worth of precedent be damned.
Given all this, it occurred to me that I have never fully explained my position on abortion. There are reasons for this. To begin with, no one has ever asked me to. No editor has ever commissioned me on the topic. But even in life, no one has ever asked me why I’m pro-choice. I’ve had disagreements and arguments over abortion, sure, but it has always been surface-level “women’s right to choose” vs “don’t murder babies” – talking points that diminish both sides of this contentious debate and are intellectually vapid.
In this newsletter, then, I am going to try to explain my philosophy – rudimentary as it may be – on abortion and why I am pro-choice. This is my opinion and mine alone. I’m not trying to convince you, mostly because I don’t think that I could; abortion is one of those issues where we’ve mostly made up our minds and opinions are so entrenched that it would take more than one newsletter to change most people’s. Rather, I am simply going to explain my moral and philosophical view on abortion while acknowledging and accepting that there are other views as well, even on the pro-choice side.
I am pro-choice. My reasons for being pro-choice were, for a long time, quite basic and underdeveloped. During the 2000 election, when I was a 14-year-old high school freshman, I scandalized my drama teacher by informing her I support abortion rights. She brought in pictures of aborted fetuses to try to scare me into being pro-life.
It did not work. To me, it was straightforward: a woman should have a right to decide what to do with her body. But at 14, my political views were immature and mostly the product of what I had been taught by my grandparents. Both were, and are, pro-choice. My grandmother, especially, frequently pointed out that women should have a right to their own bodily autonomy.
This was born not out of the women’s liberation movement of 1970s, which had my grandmother chosen a different path in life I believe she may have been involved with. As it stands, she spent the 1970s as a traditional working-class housewife and mother. Rather, my grandmother’s conviction that abortion should be legal came from her own lived experiences
I don’t believe she would mind me telling you this. My grandmother has multiple sclerosis. It almost killed her in the early 1960s, when she was a young mother in her 20s. It has been in remission for decades, but the fact that she nearly died so young has really defined my grandmother’s life, I think.
She has told me more than once that during her second pregnancy, with my aunt, that the doctor discussed abortion. Obviously, as my aunt just celebrated her 58th birthday, my grandmother opted against it. But she has appreciated being given that choice.
Her health was so deteriorated by that point that pregnancy could have killed her. And indeed, after that, my grandparents made sure that my grandmother never got pregnant again – Papaw had a vasectomy.
She never forgot the doctor levelling with her about pregnancy though. She had given birth to my father almost one year to the day before she gave birth to my aunt. She had a child to think of and, once my aunt was born, another.
Had she become pregnant again, would it have been right for her to leave those two children motherless to try to bring a third into the world? To leave her parents daughterless, her husband a widower? Or would the moral choice have been abortion? She certainly thought, and thinks, it would. So do I.
“But what about the baby?” I can hear anti-choice activists yelling. “The baby has a right to life!”
What is life, and when does it begin? These are the two fundamental questions presented by abortion. Many religious traditions hold that life begins at conception. If that is the case, then logically the embryo inside a woman is alive and therefore is a human being. Human beings are entitled to a right to life – it’s right there in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Therefore, abortion is the taking of a human life. That is immoral.
Is it, though? Many of those same religious traditions – and indeed the anti-choice believers who follow them – also support the death penalty as punishment, killing in self-defense, and even war. Even in their worldview, the taking of a human life is sometimes justified. The obvious counterargument here is that an unborn baby is just that – a baby. And babies are inherently innocent. No baby has committed a heinous crime or posed a substantial risk to the life of another. Therefore, killing the baby is not a justifiable taking of life.
The problem with this logic is, of course, that a baby can pose a substantial risk to human life – as my grandmother learned. A third child could have killed her. Hell, her second child could have killed her. That child would not have meant to kill her; it was just a baby doing what babies do – being born.
But let’s turn to the case of Kyle Rittenhouse, recently acquitted for killing two people in Kenosha, Wisconsin. The second person he killed, Anthony Huber, was chasing after him ostensibly because he thought Rittenhouse was a mass shooter. That is what Gaige Grosskreutz, the third man and only survivor Kyle Rittenhouse shot, testified under oath that he believed was happening.
Grosskreutz, and it stands to reason Huber, did not intend to harm Rittenhouse so much as they intended to protect themselves and others. Yet Rittenhouse, the jury found, had reasonable enough cause to fear for his life. The killing of Anthony Huber was therefore justified under Wisconsin law.
According to the CDC, 700 American women die from childbirth every year. Globally, the statistics are far higher; the World Health Organization estimated that in 2015, more than 300,000 women around the world died in childbirth. That is 830 women dying every day.
Childbirth is still incredibly dangerous for women, and all the wonders of modern medicine can not guarantee that a woman will not suffer complications from pregnancy and forced birth. Speaking philosophically and not legally, if Rittenhouse had a right to defend himself against a perceived threat by an innocent person – Gaige Grosskreutz or even Anthony Huber – then why does a woman not have a right to defend herself against bodily harm from an unwanted pregnancy?
That she put herself in that position doesn’t matter if you use the logic of the Rittenhouse case; Rittenhouse put himself in the position of going to Kenosha, picking up his gun, and taking to the streets. You don’t pick up a gun and take it on the streets without thinking you may need to use it. You don’t have heterosexual sex without understanding that pregnancy might occur. Why does Kyle Rittenhouse get to kill but a woman doesn’t? It doesn’t logically follow.
Of course, some could counter that the baby had no choice in the matter. Huber and Grosskreutz put themselves in the position to be shot because they were on the streets in a moment of civil unrest. A baby has no agency, no ability to decide whether they are conceived or born.
It’s a fair point, to which I can only say that I don’t think it matters. I don’t think that Huber or Grosskreutz went onto the streets of Kenosha that night intent on killing Kyle Rittenhouse. They didn’t even know who he was before then. The circumstances of that night were a matter of chance, or fate, or what have you. Sure, each man took actions of their own volition which led to the confrontation that eventually killed Huber and maimed Grosskreutz, but neither intended for that to happen.
Besides, the law in Wisconsin states that Huber did not need to pose an actual threat to Rittenhouse for his killing to be lawful. Rather, Rittenhouse only needed a reasonable belief that Huber could harm him. I bring all this up not to defend Rittenhouse or Huber or litigate the Kenosha case, but only because it is in the media right now and illustrates a right under law to protect your own life from threats real or perceived. If this extends to the streets, I think it should certainly extend to the inside of one’s own body.
What if you do not think that killing is ever justified, though? What about the people who would argue that Rittenhouse was wrong to take a life and so is the mother of the unborn baby? That the death penalty is as egregious as abortion?
These people exist and hold what is known as a “consistent life ethic.” The best example I can think of is the Catholic Church, which is opposed to abortion and capital punishment. The Catholic Church also puts a lot of emphasis on helping the poor, the destitute, and the downtrodden. Many Catholic priests became allies and accomplices during the Civil Rights Movement, and Catholic charities do much good across this country. There is a strong tradition of anti-poverty and true pro-life activism within the Catholic church.
I admire anyone with a consistent life ethic. I think it is commendable and I also think that it is probably the most moral position one can hold. Life is sacred, and it should be preserved, protected, and nurtured as every opportunity. It is one of the reasons I have always admired the Catholic Church and have considered converting at times, their teachings on homosexuality notwithstanding. The consistent life ethic speaks to me because it is inherently altruistic and noble.
The problem I have with it, again, goes back to the mother. If a woman could die from childbirth, are we really prepared to say that her life is less valuable than that of her unborn child? I’m not. Even many anti-choice activists are not. That is why so many Republican politicians are careful to express their opposition to abortion rights does not apply when “the life of the mother” is at stake.
But if an exception can be made then, why can’t it be made any other time? As illustrated by the fact that hundreds of American women die from childbirth every year, a mother’s life is always at risk during pregnancy.
It is an incredibly traumatic physical experience. Organs move. Bones break. They don’t make Hallmark cards about that.
What you are asking, then, is that women put their lives on the line for the sake of another – even if they are unwilling to do so. You are asking that they literally turn their bodies over to another for nine months, risking death to save the life of the unborn baby. Most expectant mothers, I imagine, willingly do this for a host of reasons – not least because they may want the baby. But I don’t think a woman who isn’t willing to gamble with her life should be forced to.
After all, there is no other circumstance that I can think of where we require a human being to unwillingly put their lives on the line to save another life. Police officers, firefighters, even soldiers are all volunteers right now; there is no conscription in the United States and hasn’t been since before Roe was decided. Women are the only group of people we want to force to die for another.
Consider organ donation. Many of us – maybe most of us – would be a match for someone in need of a kidney. Yet there is no law mandating that we donate a kidney, even though we could live with only one. Any law that mandated such would be met with massive opposition – and as the right-wing outrage over masks and vaccine mandates shows, probably from the same people who oppose abortion rights.
Holding women to a different standard than the rest of us (i.e. men) is the definition of sexism. Expecting women to risk their lives for another, even against their own will, violates their bodily autonomy and their own right to life – a human right they hold by virtue of the UN charter but also a natural right as described by our own Founding Fathers and the framers of our Constitution.
The right to life is considered such a fundamental, obvious right that it exists independent of any government. Abortion might be a conflict between the right to life of the mother verses the right to life of the baby, but the fact remains that until the baby is born it is entirely dependent on the mother and her body for its life. If a woman dies before giving birth, her baby will – without medical intervention – also die.
It cannot exist on its own. It is quite literally in a parasitic relationship with the woman, who serves as the host body. “Parasitic” is a loaded term that is certain to outrage some of you, I recognize that, but I cannot think of a more accurate word to use.
The woman, on the other hand, can exist on her own and has done for the entirety of her life – a life which we celebrate on her birthday, not her conception day. That tells me that socially, at least, we recognize that life meaningfully begins not when a sperm fertilizes an egg (an event which may go unnoticed for weeks or months and, if the woman is routinely sexually active may be impossible to accurately pinpoint). Rather, life meaningfully begins at birth.
Considering this, I believe that even if we accept that life begins at conception – which it is worth noting that many people do not accept – we should prioritize the rights of the human whose life has meaningfully begun. The rights of the human who is called upon to risk her life for the sake of another, even if she is unwilling to do so. The rights of the human whose body must accommodate another human being for nine months. The rights of the human who has self-awareness. That human is always the woman.
Of course, if the woman is willing to take the risk and have the baby, that’s fantastic. My grandmother was, and my aunt has been nothing but a blessing to our family. Roe v Wade protected a woman’s right to choose – and pro-choice should not be confused with pro-abortion. For me, it means just what it says: choice. I want women to be free to make that choice for themselves.
I’ve heard stories of women, pre-Roe, who were forced into abortions. Some were done by husbands who exerted control over their wives that men no longer hold over women (thank God), but some were by minors whose parents forced them to abort a wanted baby in order to stave off the scandal an out-of-wedlock birth might bring. Those women deserve a choice to decide what happens to their own bodies too. Just as no one should be forced to give birth, no one should be forced to have an abortion.
To me, then, this is a case of women’s autonomy. It is also a case of class. Sure, poor and working-class women in places like Texas and Mississippi may be denied an abortion and forced to give birth because they can’t afford to travel to more liberal states. Well-to-do women will still be able to have an abortion on the sly. Repealing Roe does little more than punish the poor – a conservative pastime, frankly.
Wealthy Americans will continue to have abortion access, just as they did before Roe. Overturning Roe v Wade does not mean that abortion will suddenly be illegal in all 50 states. Many states will retain abortion access, and the moneyed elite of the states which ban it will still be able to travel to those other states – or even other nations – in order to have abort their unwanted pregnancies. This happened even into this century, when Irish women would cross the Irish Sea to obtain an abortion in England, Scotland, or Wales. A heavily Catholic country, Ireland legalized abortion by popular referendum in 2018.
It’s disheartening to see America possibly going backwards while other nations are making strides towards liberalizing their abortion laws. The truth is that abortion isn’t going to go away if Roe is overturned. It is only going to make life more difficult for women who are already struggling with unwanted pregnancies and the health consequences pregnancy entails.
I have not even touched on other, more tangential issues. Amy Coney Barrett raised the issue of adoption without talking about her hypocrisy in opposing LGBT adoption rights and the sorry state of our foster care and adoption system more generally. Conservatives who describe themselves as “pro-life” often oppose the expanding of resources to support mothers and children, including free childcare, universal pre-kindergarten, and a robust welfare state. There are feminist arguments for abortion that include the fact that women have traditionally been oppressed because of their reproductive capabilities and pregnancy holds women back socially and materially.
All of these issues are worthy of debate, and I may expand on them at some point in the future. But for now, I wanted to explain to you all why I am pro-choice in the most basic, heart-of-the-matter way I could. To me, it is simply a matter of bodily autonomy. Until we ask men to donate kidneys against their will, I do not believe we should ask women to put their lives on the line for another against their will.
Because, to me, it doesn’t matter when life technically begins. That’s an abstract philosophical question I’m not sure anyone can ever honestly answer. It matters when life meaningfully begins. And for all of human history, it has been considered that life meaningfully begins at birth. That is when a fetus becomes a baby, when it can survive independent of its natal mother rather than relying on her for its survival in what is, frankly, a parasitic relationship.
Babies are a blessing, I think. So is life, though. And I don’t believe the state should be in a position to demand someone risk their life against their will. It’s why I oppose conscription. It is why I support abortion rights.
On the “unimaginable tragedy” in Oxford, Michigan…
I want to write briefly about something Governor Gretchen Whitmer said when speaking to reporters about the latest school shooting. She called it an “unimaginable tragedy.” Look, I’m certain that Governor Whitmer was trying to convey just how terrible and sad what happened is. I know her intentions were good. But I couldn’t help to feel frustrated by that term – “unimaginable tragedy.” What was unimaginable about it? Mass shootings are as predictable as the goddamn sunrise.
The New York Times reports there have been 28 school shootings resulting in injury or death so far this year:
School shootings are tallied in different ways by different organizations, but the trends are similar. Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun-control advocacy group that uses news reports to track gunshots being fired on or into school property, recorded 138 such episodes in 2021 through mid-November.
The Everytown organization’s spokesman, Noah Levine, said that there were 32 reported incidents of gunfire on school grounds in September and another 32 in October, the most for a single month since the group began counting in 2013.
Whatever you think about guns – and look, my own views on this are more nuanced than many on the left, in part because I am from rural America and in part because as a Marxist I like the idea of an armed working class – you must have a startling lack of imagination to call a school shooting “unimaginable.” School shootings are as American as apple pie. They’re common. Mundane, even, at this point.
Think that’s an outrageous thing to say? Ask yourself how surprised you really were to hear about the news out of Michigan? Or how surprised you were by the Parkland shooting a few years ago? Someone mentioned a school shooting in New Mexico that I completely forgot happened. That’s how common school shootings have become – unless they have a historically high body count, they disappear into the mists of time, receding from memory.
What a damning indictment of our society. I think about that tweet by the British centrist writer Dan Hodges gets trotted out after every shooting. You know the one, where he says that if America didn’t do anything about gun violence after Sandy Hook it never will. That’s probably true. The moment we decided that sacrificing our children on the alter of the Second Amendment was an acceptable sacrifice, we collectively agreed to live under the specter of mass murder whenever we go out of the house. How bleak that is.
Whatever your thoughts on gun violence, or the unique nature of American law and culture that makes them a regular occurrence here where they are not in other Western nations, you can’t deny they aren’t a regular occurrence. Treating each mass shooting as an “unimaginable tragedy” positions it as an isolated incident rather than part of a pattern of bloodshed enabled by systemic failures of public policy.
What those failures are may be a matter of debate. But no one can deny there are failures. Whether it’s of gun policy, of mental health screening, of law enforcement, of schools – no doubt you have your opinions and I have mine. But I am sick of people treating each new mass shooting as something no one could have seen coming. At this point, I reckon it is a matter of when, not if, I am involved in an active shooter incident.
I was heartened by the fact that the shooter in Michigan is being charged with terrorism, though, because mass shootings are certainly a form of terrorism – even if that is only in the name of extreme gun fanaticism. If the level of mass shootings and gun violence that exists in America existed in any other nation on earth, the United States would condemn it and demand an end to the bloodshed. Journalists would report on the “sectarian violence.” And it would certainly be called terrorism.
At this point, I am finding it difficult to differentiate between the campaign of bombings and violence waged by the IRA in Northern Ireland during the Troubles and the campaign of gun violence we’re allowing to be inflicted upon ourselves because we refuse to grapple with this problem. Everyone wants to offer thoughts and prayers, but no one wants to offer a solution. Instead, we are stuck in this hellish limbo where we wring our hands after every massacre, pretending there was no way to predict it and no way to stop it.
That is, to be blunt, bullshit. We need to be honest with ourselves. This isn’t an unimaginable tragedy. This is a choice.
What I’ve been up to…
For The Independent, I wrote about my distaste for poverty porn and Black Friday. Honestly, Black Friday is such a useful demonstration of the exploitation and excesses of capitalism though. It really shows just how inhumane this system is and why we should try to find a better system. I think socialism.
Also for The Independent, I wrote about the outrage over Joy Behar encouraging gay people to come out over Thanksgiving. “It’s not that easy!” a lot of people cried at the GLAAD-award winning Behar, who has been a gay ally for decades. Yeah, I think she knows. But people should be encouraged to come out because being closeted suuuuuuuuuucks. Calm down. Not everything requires outrage.
For 100 Days in Appalachia, I reported on a bond release inspection of an old mine site in Claiborne County, Tennessee. This was a very cool opportunity that the good folks at SOCM presented to me, and I am so grateful they allowed me to tag along. I learned a lot about the important work community volunteers are doing to ensure Appalachia’s water is clean and that the coal companies are cleaning up the mess they made rather than poisoning our people.
Also for 100 Days in Appalachia, I wrote about the need for elder care in our region and my anger at Joe Manchin for standing in the way. Appalachia is aging at a rate faster than the rest of the nation, and we already have a lack of healthcare in a lot of our counties (by virtue of how rural and isolated many of our communities are). The Build Back Better bill would significantly improve elder care. But once again, Joe Manchin is why we can’t have nice things.
What I’ve been reading…
I read “Democracy of Dollars” by Richard Jacobs. Jacobs is a 90-year-old attorney with more than half-a-century experience practicing law, and that expertise and wisdom comes through in this book about how big money has captured our democracy and turned it from a democracy of people to a democracy of dollars. I don’t want to say too much because I actually had the pleasure of interviewing Dick Jacobs, and you’ll get to read that next week! You won’t want to miss it. He is brilliant.
The Lily had this great profile of Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch, the woman who might convince the Supreme Court to overturn Roe and who thinks abortion bans “empower” women. She is utterly delusional by virtue of her enormous privilege. Reading this, the classism was dripping off Fitch, who seems unable to even contemplate that other women may not have her exact privileges and circumstances.
I have, shall we say… complicated feelings? … towards Chris Cillizza, who I think frequently states the obvious as though it were some grand revelation or profound insight and often serves as an apologist for some truly grotesque politics. When he is right, though, he is right. And he has Lauren Boebert’s number, writing about how her and most elected Republicans believe that effective public service isn’t public service at all, but being a good Fox News talking head.
A Communist at Large, who remains my favorite blogger, released part 8 in his series on his “China in the age of American decrepitude” series. Here, he traces the history of modern China to see how capitalism was restored and what that cost the Chinese people.
What I’ve been listening to…
Americans won’t know this song, but my British readers will be all too familiar with it. “Stay Another Day” is a number one single from 90s British boyband East 17. It is not technically a Christmas song, but it is definitely a Christmas song. I’ve already played it like 100 times this month. It’s my jam every December.
A picture of the puppy…