Hillary Clinton gave an interesting speech last week outlining her views on abortion, contraception, abstinence, etc.
Bill Clinton made famous the line that abortion should be "safe, legal, and rare." But according to Slate's Will Saletan, (author of Bearing Right: How Conservatives Won the Abortion War). Hillary Clinton's new anti-abortion strategy is that abortion be "Safe, Legal, and Never."
According to Andrew Sullivan's take on her Pro-Life Pro-Choice Politics, her case rests on two premises: (1) the right to legal abortion should remain, and (2) abortion is always and everywhere a moral tragedy. Sullivan avers that Clinton's position is thus "a broadly pro-life position"--and he thinks that she's right.
JivinJehoshaphat has some questions for Sullivan.
I'd add two additional thoughts:
(1) Sullivan takes Clinton's statement "I believe we can all recognize that abortion in many ways represents a sad, even tragic choice to many, many women," and restates this as a premise entailing that "abortion is always and everywhere a moral tragedy." Wow. That's a fairly serious misstatement! Clinton's point was that many regard it is as tragic; Sullivan jumps to the idea that it is always, everywhere morally tragic in an objective sense.
(2) From this article, it appears that Sullivan believes life begins at conception, that all abortion is morally tragic, and that abortion should nevertheless be legal. The only way I can make sense of this is to say that the unborn baby has a right to life, but that the mother's rights trump the baby's rights. In that case, the principle at hand is "might makes right." Am I missing something? Is there a way to make logical sense of Sullivan's reasoning?
