Don't count on CNN for a good title (my real thoughts on the WMW)--and thinking ecologically

CNN contacted me before Christmas to ask if I'd weigh in on Trump and abortion. I was thankful for the invitation as I'd really not said much about his candidacy during the general election. (Rick was thoughtfully expressing many of my own sentiments.)  Like many others, I was more relieved by Hillary's loss than I thought I would be. I am now also hopeful for solid judicial nominations [identity politics warning: perhaps a woman to eventually overturn Roe!] and the life-changing possibilities for poor schoolchildren in a Department of Education that favors school choice. Still, like so many on the left and right, I remain deeply concerned about Trump's character. (I'm hoping Kellyanne Conway provides as much counsel as possible...it'd help as a start if she just took away his phone.)

 

CNN held the piece for weeks, well, until the Women's March on Washington became a...thing. So I contextualized. CNN then took the liberty of suggesting in their title that I was among those concerned about not being included in the march.  Just for the record, though I understand the desire for some pro-life feminists to be represented--to give voice to another perspective--I would never have attended their march to protest a fair election, especially a demonstration that so extols abortion and even links its availability to human rights; my serious concerns with Trump put me too in the wait and see (and pray and write) category. And to further aggravate this pro-lifer, this "women's march" (for half the country's women anyway) is getting far more press than the annual March for Life which generates hundreds of thousands of protesters each year! Thus, my friend Carol Crossed's piece in today's Washington Post is more aptly titled for my way of thinking about all of this. Alas, here's my piece at CNN.

 

More happily titled is the two part series also published yesterday at Public Discourse on how to think ecologically about our culture's current...mess. I think the concepts of human and social ecology are especially helpful in responding to the ubiquitous Millian worldview that considers the "harm principle" as the only just way to think about cultural issues. (JS Mill, by the way, said this:  “[M]isplaced notions of liberty prevent moral obligations on the part of parents from being recognized, and legal obligations from being imposed, where there are the strongest grounds for the former always, and in many cases for the latter also....")

I hope these articles--mining social commentary from the 1990s--help a bit. More to come in months ahead in the form of a law review article... and, if all goes as planned, a book.