Without particularly wishing to have the same old abortion debate, I'm kinda curious about this. In terms of ideology, it is traditionally the left that tries to restrict people's choices towards the more socially conscious, while the capitalist right is more inclined towards offering people freedom of choice and fucking off the consequences.

So why on this particular issue are their positions reversed? Why does the right deny people the right to choose on this matter, while providing them ample choices of ways to harm themselves elsewhere?

This isn't a bleeding heart routine, I'm just genuinely curious as to why this paradox occurs.

I suppose it depends if you mean economically left-right or socially left-right, because there are other ways the left generally tries to protect people's freedoms and the right doesn't (Gay marriage, cannabis legislation, etc).
I saw a documentary a couple of years ago about the Republican party and how it moved more towards socially/morally conservative in the late 80's/early 90's, I think it said that Republicans were traditionally pro-choice but I can't remember for sure.

At the risk of sounding angsty and paranoid, I think that Republicans/Conservatives generally want to protect industry/the rich and in banning abortion they aren't hurting anyone they're trying to protect; but they're creating a disposable future workforce. I don't think they care much about life/the unborn but it's an easy and emotive way to gain votes from people who genuinely are against abortion. I also think in the UK at least, that with the Labour Party in the beginning, "radical" causes like votes for women, etc; attatched themselves to the left and so set a precedent for womens rights, etc and socialism to go hand-in-hand. Then by the time women started to argue for abortion to be legal, they were a part of the left.

Also I don't think that when the argument first started, we knew as much as we know now (which still isn't much) about fetuses and their development. So, not knowing when a fetus can feel pain and so on, but knowing that abortion was a freedom/right women wanted, maybe the majority of the left went with what they knew for sure. If that makes any sense.

Also, I suppose in the UK abortion isn't as much of a consumer choice issue as it could be in the US, it's more that they're provided by the government. I know I've heard the argument somewhere that abortion is comparable to shooting an intruder in your home (therefore quite a right-wing pro-choice argument, I think), which I haven't heard here much because I doubt it would go down well.

I'm not sure this post made much sense because I'm tired, but those are my initial thoughts.

because the world is fucked up

That's a slightly lamer response than "it's God's will".

I always assumed that they were guided more by their Christian fundamentalist "shareholders" (party sponsors etc.) more than through the ethics and practicality of it, which I guess would be borne out by that.

Now I think of it, I've only ever heard right wingers complaining about emigration rates (this is perhaps less a US issue and more a UK one), despite very often also complaining about problems which stem from over-population. If the population gradually decreases, who stands to lose out most?


Shooting an intruder in your womb?

Its hard to believe the Republican party of today was once the party of Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt. The Republicans of today are for states rights and pro big business. The Civil War, and the Emancipation Proclamation would have been in conflict with today's Republican ideology. With Teddy Roosevelt's image as a trust buster and a conservationist, its unlikely Teddy would ever be nominate for president today. With today's GOP rather weak environmental concerns, TR would have been very frustrated.

Chinn up though; in a few hundred years your Democrats and Republicans will have become as moderate and homogenised as our Conservative and Labour parties, to the point where they can completely reverse their political orientation (1997-present) without anyone batting an eye-lid.

I'm pretty sure religion has become a much bigger part of politics in your country. Initially I though I just didn't notice it so much when I was younger, but now I'm thinking that it really has changed.

I dunno, I'm just wondering, but it seems like the right-wing has nothing to gain from being moral and upstanding unless there's money in it. Ideologically it makes little or no sense.

Because the "every man for himself" approach is a throwback to primitive biblical times. Eye for an eye, etc. Ophiel, you may have misinterpreted the "fucked if I care" attitude for apathy, which it is not. It is simply a general disregard and/or lack of empathy for those who are outside their particular sphere of existence. Their idea of "social consciousness" is more rigid (not to mention just about an oxymoron) because it originates from the past, whereas the left's concept is a more modern, hippy-ish, all-inclusive kind of rubbish.

Does that help answer your question?

Much though we may wish to deny it, we all have a rigid idea of right and wrong. You can see this in the various threads about/disintegrating into paedophilia. No matter how liberal, we all know that fucking children is "just wrong". Yet if we were as far from Republican as we'd like to be, we wouldn't regard anything as "just wrong".

I don't know what happened to the Republican Party. I just know that last time I took a history of the US class it really sounded like I would be a Republican (if Republicans were actually Republicans). I was reading last night about Bertrand Russell losing his position at New York College because he was an atheist. The Democrats wanted him gone, the Republicans stuck up for him. What happened?

And now, we're disintegrating into the basis of human nature and morals, which is just a human concept anyways. Fucking children isn't wrong, because there is no wrong unless you're speaking from the law's perspective, the law being a human construct etc etc.

Would it be logical to assume, if we are using traditional "right and left" models, that the right-wing is "pro-life" because they tends to favour the "old-skewl" which has its roots in teachings from bible, which in turn looks down upon such things as abortion? That the left is most definitely using the "squirrely hippy" method, which has it's roots in drum circles, patchouli and dreadlocks which have nothing against abortion? This seems a simple answer.

why though?

Ok.
You asked
Their "postions" are not reversed.

While most people think the left as "emotional" and the right as "cold", it is not true-- both sides are motivated by their own needs and morals, and both sides are emotional. Abortion is one particular area where this becomes quite obvious.

The right has an emotional and negative response to abortion because the right's ideology is rooted in fundamentalist christianity, which abhors abortion. The left's ideology is based on social equality, which does not.

There is no paradox here.

Ronald Reagan for me.

Aren't you sixteen? The Republican party wasn't pro-choice four years ago. Things may be intensified now, because of regaining the White House and because in the past Republican presidents tended to play to the Religious Right for votes more than actually be part of it, as Bush Jr. is, but there haven't been major policy changes in the issues affected by that. Even though Regan wasn't really personally part of the Religious Right, he was anti-abortion. I remember reading in Peggy Noonan's book that Nancy felt he shouldn't talk about it so much, because he already had the support of the anti-choice population, so it could only cost him votes, but he would do it anyway, because it was important to him (I disagree on the issue, but I have to say I do admire sticking to the principle like that).

BTW, near-total aside, but I'm 37 and I've lived under Republican administration for all but 12 years of my life. Clinton might be the first president you remember, but that doesn't make him not an anomaly in recent times. The first president I remember is Gerald Ford. Once I read a review of a novel called ‘Memories of the Ford Administration’ and I was three-quarters of the way through before I realized the book's title was a joke, because he was never elected and didn’t serve a full term. Even now that I know about Watergate and everything, it’s still hard to keep in mind that he wasn’t really a real president except officially for a short time, simply because when I was first old enough to know the president’s name, it was his.

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Only if you buy that. I was led to believe that the right has its roots in capitalism, and that the religious side of it is pretty much incidental.