Linguistic Three Card Monte

John Tierney’s NY Times op-ed column of January 10th, “Men’s Abortion Rights,” contains the essential flaw of his argument in the title, “men’s abortion.” There is no such thing as a man having an abortion, so, according to the logic he espouses, men have no standing in the debate. Yet neither debate nor resolution is the point of his article. The point is to assert his authority to stir things up.

Tierney and others keep standing up, keep proclaiming their right to express themselves allows them to make broad, inaccurate and patently false statements under the mistaken notion that all opinions should be treated equally. This tactic justifies saying creationism is as valid a construct as evolution because any debate, no matter how scurrilous, stupid or distracting is good. Bill O’Reilly used this same device when he declared there was a war on Christmas.

Less grandly, but no less powerful, this tactic is also used to sell diet and personal finance books. You, too, can be slim, trim and wealthy, full of thoughts and experiences that are not your own. Send money to get a free sample of how to be upwardly moral and thin at the same time.

In Mr. Tierney’s case, the slimness is in what he posits as the quarrel. He insists that he is pro-choice - provided men are doing the choosing. He pulls the woman as succubus suspicion out of his hat, saying women use their bodies to trap men into taking responsibility over another body, to justify his position that men can lay claim to women’s bodies. He claims that feminism is about creating “gender neutral policy” - as if such a thing were possible or even desirable - ignoring what feminism is, an analysis of gender as an element of power structures. He claims that men have no power in the world, merely position, status and money – oh wait, that is power.

To accept this article as thoughtful is to ignore the suppositions behind Tierney’s curtain: that there is no history of women being abused by men; that child support payments are generous and made on time; that the unpaid labor of a homemaker is equivalent to the paid time of a breadwinner. Tierney sees “the playing field” of life as lush, green, soft and even. For him fairness means equality means the same set of rules. For him fairness means equality means the same set of rules regardless of circumstance; context matters less than construct.

Never mind that such grandstanding is demeaning and that the stories he tells are untrue. Do not see the derision in his divisiveness, the cruelty in his language. Women are subordinate clauses.

These pretend arguments about ethical principle pit people against each other, men against women, women against women, in a challenge race to the high moral ground. I am not sure where the high moral ground is, but those who believe they have the only sacred map inevitably get lost and fall prey to charlatans who turn real dilemmas into Three Card Monte.

People possess their own moral compass within a public system of shared values. The relationship of body to mind to soul cannot be fought in the courts or in public. It can be pondered, imagined and earnestly discussed, but the border between the individual and society is always blurred by its own motion. Abortion should be treated as a public health issue, one that keeps people, and by extension society, well and whole, not as a journalistic talking point or political football.