What we might call the weak pro-Lifer believes that 1) the foetus is a person, 2) it’s wrong to kill persons, and so 3) it’s wrong to have an abortion. Is this incompatible with the pro-Choice position? Not at all. The incompatibility arises only with the strong pro-Life position, according to which 1) the foetus is a person, 2) it falls to the state to protect the lives of persons, and so 3) it falls to the state to prohibit abortion. In short, the weak pro-Lifer holds a moral position, whereas the strong pro-Lifer holds a political one.
The challenge for the strong pro-Lifer is that more often than not jurisdictions are contiguous, and transportation is fairly cheap. So suppose there was a raft anchored just offshore, but outside our jurisdiction, to which people routinely paddle out with a guileless other in tow, an other she fully intends to murder there. It would be odd – would it not? – for the strong pro-Lifer to say, “Well, I suppose that’s all right!” Surely he’d want to say it falls to the state to block her from paddling out to the raft with murder so clearly on her mind. And since the state can’t infer her intent, it should block her egress just in case she has another in tow. But since, under these circumstances, she’ll be disinclined to let on she has another in tow, the state will have to see to it she doesn’t, before she’ll be allowed such egress. And now, gee, by comparison The Handmaid’s Tale isn’t looking so bad!
My point here is not to demonstrate that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. It’s to point out that policies come in packages. Strong pro-Life entails exit controls. And trans rights – if they’re not to be rendered inert by criterial (as distinct from evidential) self-identification – entails gender classification boards, not unlike the race classification boards in South Africa under Apartheid. In fact the same can be said for virtually any affirmative action program. If your saying so doesn’t make you black, somebody’s saying so has to. And so on.
The SJW thinks worrying about dissimulation is just obstructionist awfulising. She thinks that if it turns out we can’t rely on everyone’s good will, we’ll cross those bridges when we come to them.
No we won’t Because we can’t. Law is by definition coercive. People aren’t stupid enough to cooperate in their own being coerced. But apparently the SJW thinks they are.
When there’s no solution to a problem of your own making, you have to back up and unmake it. That’s why the only solution to the abortion conundrum is women’s full reproductive choice. No state interest, no fear of dystopia.
The solution to the trans conundrum is isomorphic. If there are no trans rights, we don’t need gender classification boards. We don’t want gender classification boards. So we have to deny that there are trans rights.
For the SJW this combination of 1) full access to abortion but 2) none to the washroom of one’s choice, just doesn’t compute. She needs a way around this. I’m watching her navigate this maze like Charlie watched Algernon. But unlike Charlie I’m not racing against her. I genuinely want her to find the cheese. So you go, girl!
Categories: Social and Political Philosophy
Paulosophical Vimplications 
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