My body's nobody's body but mine (but perhaps also my unborn child's)

The abortion debate in Canada is making headlines again. Maisonneuve magazine, a great (and surprisingly anglo, given the name) publication out of Montreal, published a piece in their last issue about the recent surge in pro-life support in the Great North. Some bits of that article are extremely helpful, I think, in exploring a more nuanced understanding of the terms of this debate. So let me recap the article with a bit of running commentary.

There's a vocal group (I'll go out on a limb and say a vocal minority) of Canadians who are making waves about illegalising abortion, and some Conservative backbenchers take them very seriously. Though the Conservatives presently have a majority government (a fact that I never tire of lamenting), these backbenchers aren't being given the leash needed to make a serious issue of abortion in Parliament, so the legality of abortion hasn't taken the national spotlight. But given the current power of the party, and the intensifying crescendo from the pro-life campaigns outside of political circles, abortion is an issue that we can less and less easily ignore in Canada.

Doctor Morgentaler was of course the pioneering figure/principal villain in the original move to decriminalize abortions up north. Since then, the government has remained pretty silent about the whole affair, though while there are not laws that strictly regulate abortion, the nation's physicians have set themselves some pretty strict guidelines. Pro-lifers make a lot of hay about the deregulated nature of abortions, sometimes claiming that Canada's abortion laws are as lax as those of North Korea (and does anyone here know very much about North Korean abortion laws anyway?), but that seems out of place because of the physicians' own guidelines. Self-regulation seems fine when it actually works.

The financial crisis of 2008 didn't show us that leaving sectors legally deregulated is asking for trouble; it showed us that banks in particular can't be trusted to regulate themselves. Banks need legal watchdogs, but Canadian doctors seem to be doing pretty well regulating themselves, so the issue of legal deregulation seems a non-starter. Apparently 72% of Canadians want "some protection for the unborn", but having that protection meted out by doctors rather than politicians seems a preferable option. (And this seems to be completely in line with Conservative ideology: Harpers's party ran on a platform of paring down big government and letting industries monitor and regulate themselves, as they've been doing by cutting back the environmental monitoring that the government uses to keep economic ambitions in check. Maybe that's why Harper doesn't want to reopen the issue: abortion is the poster-child issue for self-regulating industry.)

The pro-life movement, however, has been anything but silent. They've got protests and marches and demonstrations and conferences and conventions. And they've got religious affiliations, as the movement is strongly tied to Christian ideals. Their "crisis pregnancy centres", which are basically their response to the abortion clinic, have strong Christian overtones, including formally recognizing the divine nature of Christian scripture. Jenn Giroux, one of the spokespeople for the movement, decries the "desecration of motherhood" since the invention of the birth control pill, and urges young women to give their best years to having children.

And this is where the real problems lie. The pro-life movement, espousing fundamental Christian values, opposes itself not only to abortions, but also to birth control, despite the fact that birth control is one of the most effective and safest ways to reduce the number of abortions. The pro-life group runs an ad campaign that a foetus is a baby, not a choice. But therein lies some troubling ambiguity. One might conceivably oppose abortion, that is, get on board with the idea that once you're pregnant you shouldn't have the choice to terminate the pregnancy. But that need not entail that one oppose birth control. Pro-lifers lump together the decision to conceive with the decision to carry that conception to term, but we need not lump the two together. And when we separate those issues, and give people the option to make decisions about getting pregnant, they tend to choose less often to get abortions.

(Simlarly, the founder of MADD, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, ended up leaving the organization because they started to oppose drinking wholesale, instead of drunk driving specifically. That story may be apocryphal, though.)

What actually drives a woman to get an abortion? Fear? Desperation? Those in the pro-life campaign who paint it as a frivolous decision that one makes on a whim, if there are any such people, are deluding themselves. My anticipation is that women worry about what will happen to them if they have the child, about whether they will have the support necessary to raise a child and have a life of their own (which I take to be an integral part of raising a happy and healthy kid). Women want to flourish, and they want a situation where their offspring can flourish too. And if their situation is desperate enough, can we really blame them for believing that it might be best for everyone involved if the child were never born? Worries about support from their partner, from their family, from their community, or from their economy are all serious issues for women to consider in regards to having children, and it makes sense to reflect seriously on these issues when planning to begin/expand a family.

If we all agree on that point (and I know that some won't), then we get the ball rolling in terms of taking safe sex seriously. But if condoms and other methods of birth control are unavailable or socially unacceptable in one's circles (as the pro-lifers advocate), then unplanned pregnancy will be an issue that needs addressing. How can we justify jacking up the odds of unplanned pregnancy while at the same time banning abortions? Of course, total sexual abstinence is the best method of birth control, but only if by "best" we mean most reliable. Abstinence stems an important process of sexual self-discovery, one that is playing more and more of a prominent role in our society as the media grows more sexualized and one's identity is increasingly determined by one's sexuality (by which I don't mean sexual orientation), now more in the spotlight than ever before.

There are four interwoven issues here: sexual discovery, safe sex, abortions, and the risks of unplanned parenthood. The pro-lifers take safe sex and abortions off the table immediately, making sexual discovery come with the very real risk of unplanned parenthood. If the pro-lifers really want to stop abortions, they have to provide an environment where women, their children, and their partners can all flourish. We need greater social support for mothers and a greater push for gender equality in the workplace, specifically as it pertains to the issue of parenthood. What we don't need is any more finger-wagging from a group of religious folks telling us that the modern world is full of sin and corruption, and should consequently be abandoned. Even if sin and corruption are rampant, abandoning the modern world just isn't an option for most people. People need the support to live a healthy lifestyle where an unplanned pregnancy isn't likely to doom a woman and her child to the cycle of poverty, or where having a child doesn't keep women and their children trapped in abusive relationships. Cause real people live that situation every day, and I'm not sure that it's so clearly preferable to abortion as the pro-lifers make it out to be.

What the pro-lifers are advocating is not just putting an end to abortion. It's a whole cluster of values: women being nurturing mothers, starting families younger, generally putting their own goals aside (when those don't align with motherhood), etc. That lifestyle may be suitable for some, and to those I say that you should pursue your goals as fervently and passionately as any of us pursue what is important to us. But it isn't anyone's place to push that life on an unwilling woman. And that's exactly what pro-lifers seem to be doing through their attempts to illegalise abortion, suppress birth control, and misinform women about their own health issues, thereby making informed decision-making more difficult. It's not just about abortion.

The Nature of Philopolis, pt. 4

The first three installments, which can be found here, here, and here, have generated lots of interesting comments and discussion, so I'm very excited to see what responses I get to the this fourth and final installment in which I draw my conclusions. Really looking forward to discussing some feedback.

            So what is Philopolis offering that’s unique? For now, we differ from both Chautauqua and TED in our outlook on the creation of knowledge, in that we strongly endorse a participatory model rather than a cloistered-production-and-dissemination model. Philopolis has the in-person feel of Chautauqua, which is unfortunately campy and niche at the moment. However, given that we don’t pass this off as a wholesome summer camp, but rather as a festival, we move in a much more urban circle than the rural Chautuaquans. Hopefully that makes us less camp.

            At the opposite extreme, TED dominates the massive online dissemination model, whereas Philopolis has basically no online presence. What little online presence we have basically serves entirely to draw people to the in-person festivals, which are the real bread and butter of our organization. However, if we were to drastically expand our online presence, what would it look like? TED has videos of talks, but that’s appropriate for the dissemination model of education in a way that doesn’t seem to suit the participatory model. An online community of Philopolis would be more of a discussion board (or set of discussion boards) than a set of videos. Discussion boards, of course, exist all over the internet. What Philopolis would hopefully “lack” is the near-instant recourse to the ad hitlerum fallacy that we find in any online thread. Is that even possible? Or does one need face-to-face interaction to resist calling one’s interlocutor a Nazi at the drop of a hat?

            Another potential obstacle is that online interaction often takes place in short bursts. There is a parallel in teaching here: pedagogical researchers, of whom I’m often deeply distrustful, tell me that students have a very short attention span and that we therefore should be switching activities every 20 minutes. First off, this endorses the tacit assumption that even if their attention span really is that short, that they cannot (or should not) be expected to work at lengthening their attention span. And I don’t believe that either of those things is true. Second, short spans of attention seem to me incompatible with philosophical reflection as it’s currently practiced. That’s not to say that philosophical reflection shouldn’t change either, but my point is that there is an impasse between currently short attention spans and the current model of philosophical reflection that requires sustained time and effort. I don’t think that we should give in entirely to either of those: we shouldn’t resign ourselves to short attention spans, nor should we preclude the possibility of philosophical reflection evolving in a fruitful fashion that does not require quite as lengthy an engagement as it currently does.

            So Philopolis faces the following challenges: first, embrace the urban feel of the festival, which differentiates us from the campiness of Chautauqua camp. Second, embrace the participatory model of knowledge and education that distances us from both Chautauqua and TED. Third, negotiate the current impasse between short attention spans and the time-consuming cognitive demands of present philosophical practice. Fourth, negotiate the enormous gap between the universal but “thin” sense of community that comes with present forms of online interaction, and the “thick” sense of community that comes with in-person interaction, as well as the serial bursts vs. sustained attention that goes with that dichotomy.

            This is the state of the Philopolis union so far as I can see it at this point. My hope is not that this conception goes unchallenged: I welcome revisions to my questions and challenges as much as I welcome answers to them. Also, it’s kind of nice to think that some of these issues are those that are defining of our time: the relationship between communication, community and education (and democracy), and how that relationship is affected by the introduction of new online technologies, which in turn replace modes of communication that have been the bedrock of our culture for decades (and in some cases centuries). Are online and real life opposed, or can they play complementary roles? Can philosophical reflection evolve into bite-sized chunks, or is it essential that it be a sustained activity? Is a hybrid of theory and practice a reasonable goal to set for oneself as a community?

The Nature of Philopolis, pt. 3

Here are the links to the first and to the second installments.

            But there is one great technological innovation that is currently gutting radio and television, and forcing us to rethink the whole way that we engage with other people: the internet. (It’s interesting to think that only a few years ago, that word was a proper noun and therefore required an upper-case letter: “the Internet”. How banal it has become.) The internet has interactive power unlike any technological development this species has ever seen, and the world has never been smaller as a result.

            With information on-demand on the internet, has someone stepped in to fill the intellectual void once occupied by Chautauqua? Yes: TED, the conference on “Technology, Entertainment, and Design.” They hold two annual, in-the-flesh conferences, but their main source of popularity are the ubiquitous TED Talks (videos of the 18-minute presentations) that are available free online, 24/7. TED has effectively taken the online, public intellectual scene by storm, and holds it with a strong grip. But once again, like Chautauqua, TED is not really interactive: they are talks, someone presents his or her ideas, and the audience listens. The audience is not actually involved in the creation of knowledge; they are receptors rather than participants. TED is immensely successful in getting the general public into contact with academic knowledge, but TED and Philopolis differ on the philosophical position of the relationship between a community, the academics who are part of that community, and how knowledge is produced.

            Also, TED’s historical roots are in the Sciences, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics, STEM, areas; Philopolis is firmly rooted in philosophy. Both have since expanded beyond those original boundaries, but Philopolis still seems to hold a strong contact with philosophy by pitching it as a “philosophy + X” type of event. We can therefore explore anything, but philosophy will be part of the discussion as the overarching point of assembly.

            TED and Chautauqua have this in common: they both aim to disseminate knowledge broadly and accessibly within the broader community. Chautauqua occupies a niche, and it’s a campy market (literally as well as figuratively). The ubiquity of radio and television, and later the internet, have made Chautauqua a niche because what it offers is the richness of learning in person, in a setting that is completely dominated by the spirit of learning and populated by those who share that spirit. (It’s what a university would be if grades weren’t an issue, and they weren’t driven so hard by employment concerns, research quotas, and a dated model of scholarship.)

            TED one-ups Chautauqua by improving on their dissemination model. Everything is free and available online. What is sacrificed, though, is the sense of community, as one only feels distantly related to others through TED talks. There’s something neat about the feeling that people all over the world are watching the same video as you are. But there is an appreciable difference between that feeling and the feeling of actually sitting together in the same time and place and watching this together. 

Here is the fourth installment of the series.

The Nature of Philopolis, pt. 2

Last week, I posted part one of my Philopolis discussion. Here is part two.

            Historically first in line is Chautauqua. Before my friend Bruce told me about this event, I had never heard of it (though obviously it’s a real thing because my spell-check doesn’t scream at it with red, squiggly lines). Luckily, PBS does documentaries on all kinds of things that I’ve never heard of, so I was able to gather some background intel. Chautauqua was founded in the late 19^th century in the US as a place to instruct Sunday School teachers. It was founded on the idea that an educated public is key to the health of democracy, and the idea that churches had an important role to play in this. In order for the church to fulfill this role, the Sunday School teachers needed to be educated enough to educate their flocks, and Chautauqua aimed at just this kind of learning. It was really Bildung in the old German sense: not just an education, but a formation, an acculturation.

            Chautauqua ran on the idea of learning as a lifelong pursuit, and offered exposure to the fine arts, discussion of current events, ideas in the arts and sciences, and in religion, as well as incorporating a recreation component. It was basically a summer camp where people could get away without feeling guilty that they were wasting their time because they were learning while they were there. The original facility was installed on the edge of Chautauqua lake in the state of New York, but its immense popularity eventually lead to correspondence courses, installations popping up all over North America, as well as the inauguration of a traveling circuit, like a circus of intellectuals and artists.

            What drove Chautauqua? It responded mostly to three needs: the need for a place to take a “vacation” without the guilt of a vacation; the need for information and intellectual exposure in the United States, particularly in the rural areas where access to such things was greatly restricted. Interestingly, this movement showed that “infotainment” need not be totally vicious. To pass off entertainment as information, as we see in the sensationalist news media today, is deadly to our democratic engagement. But to pass off information as entertainment is just the reverse: what a virtuous idea! And what a biting criticism of our education system that we scoff at the very possibility of learning as entertaining and enjoyable.

            So what killed the movement, then, if it was so big? The pressures of the Great Depression didn’t help anything, as the network had greater and greater trouble supporting itself financially and had to pare back its offerings, but the deathblow was struck by the introduction of radio (and television) into the mass market. The greatest need that pushed Chautauqua was the relative scarcity of access to information in rural areas, where universities and libraries were difficult to access. But radio broadcast changed all of that by providing access to information through a much cheaper distribution medium. Moving people around from town to town is costly, especially relative to the cost of moving some electrons. By the end of the Second World War, Chautauqua was passé, and only the original installation in New York state is left as a commemorative to the movement. (It still offers a whole summer worth of activities, and actually has a whole town that it runs somewhat like a summer camp.)

            Radio, television and movies made the dissemination of information and entertainment (as an outlet for one’s leisure time) much easier to access. Are these not still around? Do these not still work against the possibility of offering something like Chautauqua? Make no mistake, there are definite parallels to the festival of philosophy, and we need to be aware of the forces that would undercut our relevance and our ability to grow. Radio and television definitely make market penetration more difficult, but we can offer something that they can’t: interactivity. Radio and television disseminate; they are not participatory. That’s where Philopolis has the upper hand in this battle.

Here is the third part.