Monday, February 23, 2009

Ecojoy and Abortion

A clinic in Madison has announced plans to perform second-trimester abortions...

How does ecojoy help understand the issue?

Anti-abortion or pro-life thinking is influenced by binary or single-dimensional thinking - something is either back or white, right or wrong. Taking life is murder. The circumstances do not change the outcome.

Support of abortion, or pro-choice thinking is influenced by multi-dimensional thinking - things come in shades of gray, and the rightness or wrongness of a thought or act have multiple dimensions and values.

Po-life thinking is dominator thinking. With dominator thinking, the locus of control is external. Moral leaders determine the morality of abortion.

Pro-choice thinking is partnership thinking. With partnership thinking the locus of control is internal. Since the fetus is growing inside her, it is the pregnant woman's right to choose abortion based on her own life circumstances, her spouse, and information from her doctor and from moral advisers.

Pro-choice thinking involves heterarchical connections between the pregnant woman and her spouse, her doctor, and her moral advisers.

Pro-life thinking involves hierarchical connections between moral leaders, the community, her spouse , her doctor, her moral advisers and the pregnant woman.

Neither one of these ways of thinking is inherently right or wrong. They are consistent within their own way of thinking.

We are in the midst of profound cultural transformation from dominator thinking to partnership thinking. This transformation is being fostered and encouraged by the effects of communications media. The dominant medium of our time is the Internet.

Our culture is changing from a position that abortion is murder to a position that it is a woman's right to chose to end a pregnancy based on her particular circumstances.

We can help ease the negative effects of the cultural transformation by education. We can reassure dominator thinkers that individuals don't need dominator thinking to behave morally, and that partnership thinking is not chaos.

If pregnant women and mothers and their children have community support (safety, food, shelter, information), it is likely that the rate of abortion would be reduced.

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