Aborting Democracy?

Should we still be debating abortion, so late into the 21st century?

Many of us thought abortion was done: at least within liberal democracy, women’s bodily autonomy ought to trump any fancy metaphysics, so that it really doesn’t matter what moral status the fetus deserves, if any (personhood or potential, for example) – right?

Enter Trump, whose 2016 win led to the Supreme Court going back on abortion rights. Ironically, what many conservatives take to be Trump’s big win, might just cost him the 2024 election.

Has the politics of abortion transcended its ethics (for economic reasons, most likely), or do recent political developments rather remind us that normative questions can never be put away for good?

Equality being the other obvious one here – think of resurfacing debates around migration. And if principles are, by definition, never non-negotiable, might democracy itself be next?

Join our global abortion panel to discuss these questions, hoping that for an hour we can forget the small issue of who is actually going to win.