They are smart guys (though Singer always drives me nuts), but they don't have anything new to say about this topic.

I agree with Miko that they're treading familiar ground. Does anyone know if the documentary that this is taken from is available to view online? Didn't know it existed.

This morning I watched it halfway through and was called away.

I am pro-choice all the way but I think a person has every right to be pro-life for the sake of it. I don't think a person has to be an activist for starving or medicine deprived children to have an opinion on abortion. And who is to say they don't care about starving children? I know the situation is much broader and complicated and perhaps Chomsky was talking about groups instead of individuals but these are my thoughts.

Chomsky wasn't saying that a person must be an activist, but rather that a person has to be willing to take those other, more simply-solved problems of social policy seriously in order for him to respect their value system enough to discuss a hard question like abortion.