on that
there is a certain agreed-upon conception of the essential nature of the human person and of human experience which can be universalized. In light of that normative conception, ethical positions are developed and ethical judgments are maid. Indeed, in past centuries, those employing a normative concept of the nature of the human person or of human experience did not inquire from whence their conception arose; they took it to be self-evident truth.
Secker takes the view that human experience (= women's experience) can "provide normative criteria according to which judgments can be made about situations once they are accurately and fully understood." In other words, moral debate with pre vailing authoritative moral criteria is legitimate where the vicissitudes of human experience hit a wall of abstract rules meant to govern all situations. That, says Secker, the Church denies, essentially denying moral standing to women, who hit the wall not least because the rules are unduly skewed in favor of men. She gives the example of abortion, which is not an abstraction but "a social and relational context which itself is a component part of the full moral description [= debate]."
In saying that the abortion debate needs to be "recast," Secker is advocating radical transformations, not just of the parts of the argument for or against abortion, which are really an abstraction, but of whole structures of thought, which take into account the concrete, real-world psychological and material consequences of making the decision one way or another. To the degree the Church resists this transformation and more, insists on its absolute authority on abortion or other difficult issues, it reinforces and indeed seems very much determined to remain in the vanguard of suppressing the legitimacy of individual moral agency. In this regard, Secker cites "ancient myths, cultural suspicions of human bodiliness, and philosophical dualisms" that hav...