Jane Galt (the sharpest woman I’ve met) describes how the abortion debate is full of bias and bias accusations:
My favourite, though, are the posts where everyone speculates on the motives of the other side. … So what [pro-lifers] obviously really care about is screwing up women’s lives so that they’ll have to spend the rest of them barefoot and pregnant and in the kitchen making lemonade for Pa and his friends when they come in from a hard day of plowing and oppressing colored people. And pro-choicers don’t actually care about women; all they’re really interested is enforcing a radical feminist agenda on the rest of us so girls won’t be able to wear dresses and lipstick any more and boys will have to have their genitalia surgically removed at puberty and replaced with a copy of The Feminine Mystique. …
There is quite a lot of reasoning from the result to the premise on both sides: people who think that it is of surpassing importance for women to take their place at the helm of half the world’s institutions notice that this would be much more difficult in a world containing both frequent sex with people you don’t intend to spawn with, and restricted access to abortion; they therefore reason that abortion must be moral. Conversely, the pro-life side notes that if you deny the obligation of a woman to carry her pregnancy to term, all sorts of other family obligations become harder to logically support, and therefore conclude that abortion must be wrong. Since the pro-life side generally does not care so much about total workplace parity, and the pro-choice side generally does not care so much about preserving traditional family structures, they conclude with some truth that there is a somewhat questionable moral discounting going on across the divide. But the sin is sufficiently equally distributed that this is not enough reason to dismiss the moral heft of the other side’s arguments.
Like Jane, I’ve not "found a well-reasoned answer to the abortion question," and remain uncertain.
lpdbw (did your mommy really call you that?), I can see why you might think my claim gratuitous or superfluous, but I don't see how it is ambiguous. I can sensibly make one statement about Jane's relative ranking without making all possible such statements.
Off topic for this post, but I think on topic for this whole blog:
Is there anything that should be said about a blog named "overcoming bias" where a poster states: "Jane Galt (the sharpest woman I've met)..."?
While this is certainly a statement of personal opinion or a personal observation, and thus inarguable, it seems either gratuitous or superfluous.
What does it mean to be the sharpest woman you've met? Sharp, but not as sharp as the sharpest man you've met? Sharper than any Black you've met, but not as sharp as the sharpest Asian? Does Megan have a chance to become the smartest person you've met?
As it happens, I admire Megan, though I actually often disagree with her, and found your blog through hers, so please be aware I'm actually curious at your turn of phrase, and neither sniping nor picking nits.
Well, to be honest, maybe picking nits just a little bit.