Abstract

Pro-life and pro-choice advocates have both accused the other side of being similar to the defenders of slavery and/or Hitler. This essay seeks to clarify this debate by outlining the three main dimensions of reality as it is inhabited by human beings: the vertical axis, the horizontal plane, and individual selfhood. These dimensions have corresponding political forms and they also serve to channel and rhetorically justify violence. “Re-enactment” is a better term than “analogy” when one understands that othering and violence are shape-shifting phenomena in human history.