Abortion arguments highlight devolution

There are many different ways to analyze, discuss and debate the right to choose between terminating a pregnancy or proceeding into parenthood: biology, micro-economics, gender disparity in health care autonomy and privacy, even states’ rights vs. federal. These, like so many other issues, are relevant and reasonable topics for exploration. Yet, the current debate, as our political discourse often does, gets lost in relevant details while forsaking an overarching philosophy, like fiddling with individual ingredients so intensely that we forget how the cake is supposed to look and taste.

With that, the philosophical implication of the U.S. Supreme Court’s proposed decision is that women in the United States have greater value as a tool for reproduction than as individuals; their civil protections, be it their right to privacy, their autonomy, their right of selfdetermination, are inferior to that of men. Indeed, their standard of responsibility, as defined and scrutinized by government, is greater than that of men.

In making that broad philosophical determination, this activist court (Do we all remember when conservatives talked about court activism as an invective? They do not.) is using its power to take rights away from an entire group of Americans, reminiscent of Dred Scott.

This is just one more way that our democracy, Republican or otherwise, is devolving. Democracy is funny that way; for it to work, the government, the citizenry and the media and other purveyors of information must behave with the integrity and responsibility of wanting it to work.

James Cimino Schenectady