Tradition Is Tradition, Bob

OK, I had planned on not dipping my toes in the blogohedron today, but since it's Blog For Choice Day (FACT), I wanted to say something.

Most of you know that I'm a card carrying liberal (seriously, I had a card made [1]), and damn proud to be so. Abortion, though, was for a long time by far the topic on which I was most conservative. I was still pro-choice, mainly because you have to be pretty fucking sure you're completely right before you start telling women (or anyone else) what they can and can't do with their bodies, and despite rumours to the contrary, the level of PFS is one I don't often reach.

The problem was that I never found a particularly convincing argument put forward by pro-choicers beyond "It's none of your business". Which, as I say, was enough for me on the issue, but it's not a convincing argument overall, since using it implies either a) the inherent assumption that the act involved can't be serious enough for external interference to be justified, or b) that no act can be serious enough for external interference to be justified. The latter is obviously ridiculous, and the former is problematic precisely because it assumes part of what it tries to prove, i.e. that we should butt out of telling women what to do with their reproductive system.

Anyway, all of this changed two years ago when I read this article. This was the first piece I had read that actually deconstructed this extraordinarily complicated issue and deal with each strand logically. It's wonderful, and it's right, and it means I get to look all the other wishy-washy bleeding-heart liberals in the eye again.

h/t, and I can't believe I'm typing this, to darkman.

[1] I did not. Well, I did, but it has a lonely hearts ad on it, in case I get nervous and tongue-tied.