Douthat vs. Kmiec
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It is probably too late tonight to be starting a post on something this contentious, but now that I have started I suppose I should make a few points about dispute between Ross and Doug Kmiec brewing in the Slate forum on the future of the GOP. This topic is relevant to what Ross and I were speaking about at Yale on Saturday at a very fine ISI conference on the future of American conservatism. From time to time, I have been known to let my frustration get the better of me in blogging, to put it mildly, so I can hardly chide Ross for his expressions of frustration with Prof. Kmiec’s advocacy for Obama. Like Ross, I find Obama’s record on abortion abhorrent (indeed, I am told that I am a theocrat on this question), and I am still unsure why Prof. Kmiec does not find it to be so, but he is hardly the first or only Obamacon who has misread Obama’s professorial style, accommodationist rhetoric and personal decency as the promise of something more. At one point, I was as frustrated with what I considered standard Obamacon blindness to the reality of his views on civil liberties and foreign policy as Ross seems to be with Prof. Kmiec’s pro-Obama arguments concerning abortion, but the more I pondered the question the more it seemed to me that the GOP and mainstream conservatism must have suffered such a profound loss of credibility with so many serious people for a reason. Understanding that reason may be a great deal more useful to the right than anything Prof. Kmiec has done on Obama’s behalf.
As an antiwar conservative, I view phrases such as “useful idiot” with a certain ambivalence, as this phrase and others like it have been thrown at the antiwar right more than a few times to make scurrilous charges against us. There has also been a tendency in certain pro-life circles in recent years to ridicule antiwar pro-life Catholics for daring to be more scrupulous concerning just war theory than their peers. Prof. Kmiec clearly has lost confidence in the GOP, and for good reason. The war and the torture regime, to name two things that have evidently deeply disturbed him and pushed him in the direction he has taken, were enabled not by his sort of so-called “useful idiots,” but rather by many stalwart, Republican pro-lifers who railed against abortion in one breath and in the next defended the degradation of human beings in the name of necessity. That still does not make his argument for Obama persuasive, but I can understand why a serious pro-life Christian would very much want to find some way to break with the GOP decisively because of his convictions and not in spite of them. Obviously, I do not see supporting the other major party as an option for conservatives, which is why I voted for Chuck Baldwin, but if the ruling party has proved itself not just unworthy but antithetical to one’s principles and it needs to be held accountable this option becomes possible.
If I find Obama’s position on abortion to be be as disrespectful and hostile to human dignity as the right’s torture apologists, indeed more so, which therefore makes him unacceptable in my eyes, it is not so outlandish or bizarre to imagine that there are pro-lifers who understandably feel the same revulsion for the party that created the torture regime. It is not so strange when these pro-lifers act to hold that party accountable. Does that vindicate Prof. Kmiec’s arguments for Obama concerning abortion? No, but it does put them in perspective.
In fairness to Prof. Kmiec, I wouldn’t be surprised that he has his own share of frustrations with the way he has been summarily dismissed and belittled over the last several months. Of all the Obama supporters on the right, Prof. Kmiec seems to have been on the receiving end of focused, fairly personal criticism to a degree that few others experienced. From my perspective, his pro-Obama arguments are not persuasive, and I have said so many times, but then I do not find libertarian or antiwar arguments for Obama persuasive, either, because they consistently side-step the man’s record and actual policy views to tell us about other things–his temperament, his intellect, his purported respect for the other side, etc. Perhaps they are right about these other things, and perhaps these other things will counterbalance what we find in his record and platform (and what we find there is terrible), but that requires a degree of trust that most of us on the right simply do not have and cannot quite understand. Indeed, to lose trust in Republican leaders almost requires distrusting leaders in both parties, and one should not trust in princes in any case. However, if you have to choose between the party that offers cynical lip service and one that openly disagrees with you and offers the opportunity of holding the former party accountable, it is not necessarily clear which party actually offers more. Of course, there is scarcely any substantive common ground possible between left and right on abortion under the current regime, but this is the flip side of the frequently substance-free nature of conservative endorsements of Obama: the Republicans have failed so badly to deliver in so many areas that even pro-lifers who can realistically expect nothing but the worst from Obama support him all the same.
I return again to my remarks from last week:
Far more important in the aftermath than coming up with new and amusing ways to mock the Obama endorsers is an effort to understand and remedy the profound failures that made this phenomenon possible before a major realignment does occur.
Unlike Ross, I am extremely skeptical that pro-lifers have had anything to show for their support for the GOP and I doubt that they ever will have anything to show for it, except for small changes at the margins and empty praise for a culture of life that in many other respects Republican policies in recent years have done more to mock than uphold. Perpetually deferred promises cannot sustain political loyalty forever.
Filed under: politics
Do you think arguing for Obama on the basis of his personal qualities (cautiousness, calmness, intelligence, respect for expertise, etc.) is compelling when it comes to foreign policy? I disagree with many (most?) of Obama’s foreign policy views. But since much of a president’s job is to manage crises and avoid disastrous mistakes I’m comforted by the kind of man Obama seems to be. That’s not a strictly “pro-Obama” argument, but it’s more positive than just saying that he’s better than the other major-party option.
Sure it is. You can negotiate with an honest man.
The exchange was rather astonishing. Ross’ response was rude, but Kmiec’s reply was unhinged.
I think the basic argument of pro-life Obamacons is that, regardless of who becomes President, Roe v. Wade is not going to be overturned, and so conservatives should not make that their poitical litmus test. This means that Obama’s attitude towards abortion can be considered of no practical significance, but rather only of theological significance, and since we are not voting for a theocratic state, it shouldn’t matter much.
Now, some people (you, for instance) will never be persuaded by practical arguments to set aside doctrinal and moral arguments, so the effort is understandably going to fail in your case. That doesn’t mean it’s a failed argument, it only means that some people simply refuse to be practical, which is of course their perogative, but it’s not as if we need to feel there’s something lacking in those arguments if they fail to persuade the unpersuadable. I’m sure you’re aware that all your anti-Palin arguments, sound as they might be, will fall on deaf ears in many quarters. So with the pro-life supporters of Obama. In this case, the deaf ears are simply your own.
Now, you could make an argument that McCain would, indeed, appoint judges who would overturn Roe v. Wade, and that would certainly override the pro-life Obamacon argument. I don’t think you would, because I don’t think you’re that blind to McCain’s real interests. So it makes sense that you wouldn’t vote for McCain on that basis, since it’s an imaginary one. But let’s face it, the only kind of candidate who would actually see to it that Roe v. Wade would be overturned is a candidate exactly like Palin, who you abhor. (I leave out Baldwin and Paul, because they have no chance whatsoever of being elected).
Also, I’m glad to see you mentioning the accusation that your position on abortion is theocratic (as is a fairly high percentage of the pro-life community). I note that you at least have the intellectual honesty not to deny it, which is also to your credit.
I think the most important fact, which goes completely unnoticed in these arguments, is that the Republican Party – and the large majority of those conservatives who support the Republican Party – *does not care* about abortion in any sense. For people like Professor Kmiec (or me, since I also consider myself pro-life), there isn’t actually a choice to be made here. Republicans have effectively controlled the political discussion in this country since Nixon, and they have most certainly controlled most of the apparatus of government for over a decade now – and they have done *nothing* to advance a pro-life agenda.
I find it hard to make this point with sufficient alacrity, and putting stars around things doesn’t always work. So just imagine I am pounding my fist on the table in fury because people I consider very smart – like you and Ross – continue to behave as if there is any meaningful pro-life agenda in the GOP. There isn’t. These people do not care about stopping abortion. Not even a whit. And when they say they do, they are lying.
Having more knowledge in this area than I care to have, I can sympathize with Prof. Kmiec. He was thrown under the bus by thugs in the online Republican/Catholic community; it wasn’t even funny. So malicious were the attacks, I had my doubts a couple months ago if he were going to be amenable to even listening to the right again. Having myself seen who I supposedly have for allies on the right for fighting abortion, I truly fear for the unborn.
You said, “Having myself seen who I supposedly have for allies on the right for fighting abortion, I truly fear for the unborn. ”
To quote Lord Nelson’s apocryphal comment regarding his gunners, ” I have no idea what effect their fire will have upon the enemy but, by God, they terrify me.”
I couldn’t follow Kmiec to the Obama camp, but I sympathized with his rejection the GOP. Those who undermine the rule of law cannot credibly champion particular just laws, such as those that would protect the unborn. They destroy the foundation on which they build.
Also, I’m glad to see you mentioning the accusation that your position on abortion is theocratic (as is a fairly high percentage of the pro-life community). I note that you at least have the intellectual honesty not to deny it, which is also to your credit.
Mr. Larison is simply not wasting his time with explaining what he is not a theocrat, since it’s plain to anyone who is familiar with the definition of theocracy–
theocracy
Noun
pl -cies
1. government by a god or by priests
2. a community under such government
And not even Byzantium qualified, since the ultimate temporal power resided with the secular authority, not with the Church or the Patriarch of Constantinople. Indeed, the accusation of caesaropapism is often made that the authority of the emperor was greater than that of the Church, and that the Church’s authority was usurped by him.
Oops, here is the fixed link for caesaropapism.
I’m a college educated “moderate” Republican of no particular parish. I’m “pro-choice” in the sense that I consider abortion a necessary evil and I do not believe that women should face criminal or civil sanctions for terminating early term pregancies. I can also count on one hand the number of Democrats for whom I’ve voted at any level since I joined the GOP in the mid-1990’s.
Abortion has not been one of my top priorities in the voting booth in many years. My disagreement with the outgoing Administration on the issues of abortion, sex eduction and stem cell research did not prevent me from voting for President Bush in 2000 or 2004. Likewise, abortion was not a major factor in my decision to support Barack Obama in this year’s election.
Simply put, after eight years I was fed up. Fed up with the damned blundering incompetence of the Bush Administration both here and abroad. I simply could not vote for John McCain and the Republican Party in good faith. Such profligacy, fecklessness, stupidity and close-mindedness should never be rewarded.
In the 1980’s, conservatives were rightly critical of the Communist regimes which sought to mold reality to fit their ideological imperatives without regard of the actual facts on the ground. Yet now, it is we who have become guilty of clinging to orthodoxy.
Despite his soaring rhetoric the Democratic nominee had his feet firmly planted on the ground throughout this campaign. Would that John McCain could have exuded the same sort of temperance in the face of the financial crisis.
I’ve never put aside ideology to such an extent in any Presidential race. Competence, rationality and integrity have no ideology. Really, this one was a no-brainer…
I’m not much for reposting comments, but I didn’t draw a single substantive response to the following that I posted at Culture11:
There is nothing “small government†about being pro-life. A true pro-life federal government would be intrusive and expensive. This is one of the great unresolved conflicts within the Republican party.
It’s one thing for abortions to end because no one wants to have them any more. Given human nature, I don’t expect that to happen any time soon. But I encourage the anti-abortion community to invest time and energy in thoughtful, non-threatening ways to reduce the number of abortions performed in the US every year.
It’s another thing to criminalize profoundly personal and private conduct. The Prohibition Era teaches us that trying to force people not to do something that they feel strongly about (a) doesn’t work and (b) causes contempt for the law. How’s the War on (Some) Drugs going these days, anyway?
As we see in the differential treatment by law enforcement of Cindy McCain and Rush Limbaugh, on the one side, and thousands upon thousands of non-violent, poor and disproportionately minority drug users on the other, abortion laws will never be applied fairly. The rich and powerful will travel to California, or Canada if the ban is nationwide, while everyone else will have to face the awesome power of the local DA.
And what are the contemplated penalties? Murder in California is 25-to-life, and that penalty attaches to the person who ordered the killing as well as the one who did it. Are you really planning on filling prisons with young women who felt compelled to have an abortion?
If personhood attaches at conception, then the only possible abortion procedures could be to save the physical life of the mother. The law permits lethal self-defense only in the case of imminent danger; rape victims would have to tough it out. Many IVF procedures would have to be banned as well. I don’t see this idea obtaining a majority vote.
Not every harm can be solved by the government, and when the government overreaches the consequences can be disasterous. Ask an Iraqi family on the receiving end of an airstrike delivered in the name of freeing them from tyranny. Ask the enormous population of convicted drug users. Ask yourself just how intrusive you want the government into your most private life.
I read that but didn’t respond, Francis. I agree with you fully. There is nothing “small government” about regulating abortion. I am not a pro-choice zealot and for the longest time was very staunchly pro-life, with the exception of rape/incest/health of the mother. It is wrong and I would never have an abortion except to save my own life. But I’ve passed the point of wanting to deal with it at the governmental level and agree that we should take more steps to prevent it instead.
Francis:
Explain how outlawing abortion would be any more intrusive than prohibiting murder and enforcing health regulations on restaurants, hospitals, and so on.
As for the legal consequences if abortion is made illegal–Robert George discusses this, and how one is not logically required to give the same sentence to a woman who has had an abortion as someone who is guilty of murdering someone born with premeditation.
tedschan: Are you serious?
Historical view: Violent acts against persons were, historically, resolved by the victims’ clans. Murder became a “crime” when, just a couple hundred years ago or so, states became powerful enough to establish police forces and public prosecutors, and put an end to vengeance as a means of public security. Abortion, by contrast, has rarely been criminalized.
Practical view: Murder: A. There’s a body, or someone reporting a missing person. B. There’s the interest of the state in preventing both the initial act of violence and revenge violence. Abortion: The only way the state knows of the act of violence is if the doctor, the mother or the father reports it. If the abortion is wanted by both parents, there is no way of the state knowing (without being extremely intrusive) and there is no concern about vengeance.
Personhood: The whole point of Roe v. Wade was finding that “personhood” did not attach in the first trimester, attached weakly in the second, and was present in the third. If you agree that a woman who has an abortion is not guilty of premeditated murder, then you agree with Roe. Are you sure you want to go there?
btw: I note that you chose not to discuss the practical consequences of trying to ban abortion. How many arrests for marijuana last year? How many abortions?
Tedschan,
I don’t accuse Daniel of being a theocrat overall, in the sense of wanting to institute a theocratic government. I do accuse him, and a large part of the pro-life movement, of basing his opposition to legal abortion on theological grounds, thus making the issue a theocratic one. Daniel, like most of the pro-life movement, wants our abortion laws to be guided by absolute theological beliefs, rather than the compromises of secular politics. He feels justified in this without providing any rationale for it, because it is not based on rational, non-religious analysis. I don’t think he’d support anti-blasphemy laws, for example, even though there is just as sound a theological basis for such a thing as there is for abortion. Without the theological argument against abortion, the rationale for making it illegal simply falls apart.
You mentioned earlier in a thread that closed down, that you wanted to make the unborn into full citizens with rights of their own, not mentioning that this is a purely theological impulse which has no precedent in any previous society. Again, this is an argument you are welcome to make, but let’s not pretend it is anything but a theological argument, rather than one based on any serious secular or cultural foundation.
“If personhood attaches at conception, then the only possible abortion procedures could be to save the physical life of the mother. The law permits lethal self-defense only in the case of imminent danger; rape victims would have to tough it out. Many IVF procedures would have to be banned as well. I don’t see this idea obtaining a majority vote.”
The attribute of personhood simply can’t be made for a collection of cells that is wholly a part of another person, the mother, and dependent upon her for its very existence and continued life. If the zygote or fetus is given personhood, one has to ask what right this person has to live inside another person’s body? If the state wants to make abortion illegal, it has to provide some alternative means for this “person” to be sustained outside the woman’s body, since she no longer grants it permission to live within her and feed upon her. The state can of course take possession of a born child that is outside the woman’s body, and which she has no desire to take care of. Orphages exist for that purpose. But if a woman doesn’t want a child to remain inside her body, what is the state to do? Can the state really take legal custody of a fetus or zygote while it is inside the woman’s body, and also take temporary ownership of the woman’s body itself and require the woman to provide her own body as shelter and nurture for this “person”? That is what declaring a fetus to be a “person” would require, and it is the definition of a totalitarian society, in which one’s own body is not under one’s own ownership and control, but is given over by the compulsory power of the state for the benefit of some other person. What form of socialist confiscation of private property can compare to this, in which the very embodiment of one’s personhood is taken and given to another against one’s will? How on earth can this be called “conservative” by any definition of the term?
Conrad,
Why do you make libertarian arguments about law and personhood to traditionalist conservatives and expect agreement? You are wasting yours and (at least my) time. Your immediate post-above is a piece of libertarian silliness (with its claim that a “person” owns her body–talk about revolutionary dogma never recognized in traditional law!)
The reason conservatives (like me) voted for Obama derives from Obama’s measured, self-controlled and, at least publicly, non-ideological bearing. It is also succinctly stated on the abortion issue by Mr. Larison “Unlike Ross, I am extremely skeptical that pro-lifers have had anything to show for their support for the GOP and I doubt that they ever will have anything to show for it, except for small changes at the margins and empty praise for a culture of life that in many other respects Republican policies in recent years have done more to mock than uphold. Perpetually deferred promises cannot sustain political loyalty forever.” The prospect of another unjust war being less likely and having a less ideological federal gov’t (not to mention less incompetent and corrupt) is reason enough to vote for Obama in a race that otherwise has no difference between the parties.
I’m pro-choice, so I’m not really the person to ask on these things, but I’ve always found the Republican Catholics justifications for caring about abortion but not about war and torture and capital punishment and any other “seamless garment” issue where the Republicans disagree with them to be more than a little self-serving. Indeed, I’ve found it to be the kind of thing that bolsters pro-choice suspicions that many Republican pro-lifers are more motivated by reversing gender equality and the sexual revolution than saving fetuses.
What I mean by this is that the usual arguments of those taking Ross Douthat’s side of the argument are that abortion are that abortion gets a stronger condemnation than the death penalty and war, because the Church allows for exceptions when the death penalty and war are permitted. Of course, the Church also allows an exception for abortion in cases where the mother’s life is in danger. But the big problem with the argument is that the fact that there are exceptions for the death penalty and war shouldn’t matter if the exceptions aren’t in play. In other words, the fact that the Church might support the death penalty in some hypothetical situation doesn’t matter with respect to the practice of capital punishment in the US, which the Church strongly opposes even with respect to vicious criminals. Similarly, the fact that the Church might find other wars permissible doesn’t justify a Catholic supporting the Iraq War, which the Church found clearly impermissible.
Again, I am not saying that one can’t draw distinctions or claim that the Church hierarchy is wrong on a particular issue. Many Catholics do. I am simply saying that if one draws such distinctions, he or she can’t really hide behind church doctrine and claim that voting Republican is required by virtue of Catholic religious tenets. That person is voting Republican because of his or her own choices and priorities, not his or her religion.
I think it is one thing to argue that a Catholic can vote Democrat because of other faith issues (war, capital punishment, etc) despite the position on abortion. I have nothing but sympathy for such Catholics, and for Larison’s argument here. But like Douthat, I have no sympathy for Catholics who argue that the Democratic party under Obama is in fact concerned with reducing abortions and so “pro-life”. This view is obviously false. Complaints about Republican failings on the pro-life front, however justified, do not seem to acknowledge that Democrats may in fact make things considerably worse, by removing restrictions on abortions, allowing public funding, and expanding access to abortion. I think that years of Republican power have given people the impression that there is no such thing as a pro-choice movement. But there is such a movement, and it is quite reasonable to vote Republican, despite everything, in order to check its advance. In particular if one believes, as I do, that further unjust wars would be very difficult given the current condition of the military, and that anti-poverty programs will not be forthcoming given the condition of the economy. Surely the truth is that neither party shows consistent respect for human dignity, and so we are forced into pragmatic questions, about which reasonable people can disagree.
All single issue voters deserve the miserable candidates and representatives they inevitably get.
Of course, the Church also allows an exception for abortion in cases where the mother’s life is in danger
No, the Church doesn’t. It may allow certain procedures if they qualify under the principle of double effect, but direct abortion is not permitted under any circumstances.
You mentioned earlier in a thread that closed down, that you wanted to make the unborn into full citizens with rights of their own, not mentioning that this is a purely theological impulse which has no precedent in any previous society. Again, this is an argument you are welcome to make, but let’s not pretend it is anything but a theological argument, rather than one based on any serious secular or cultural foundation.
#1. Read Robert George, if you are really open-minded. Saying that it is only a theological argument either shows your ignorance of the argumentation based on biology and natural philosophy, or a deliberate refusal to understand them. I don’t care to spend my time explaining that human life begins at conception. Nor is it the case that I said the unborn are “full citizens” (whatever you mean by that)–if anything I merely affirm that the unborn have the right not to be killed in the womb.
#2. Even if you were right on that point (and you’re not), read George on religion and “Public Reason.”
Daniel, like most of the pro-life movement, wants our abortion laws to be guided by absolute theological beliefs, rather than the compromises of secular politics. He feels justified in this without providing any rationale for it, because it is not based on rational, non-religious analysis.
As for Mr. Larison in particular, quit it with the mind-reading. Unless you can find evidence to back up your assertion in what he has written. Otherwise, you have no ‘rational justification’ to make your assertion.
The attribute of personhood simply can’t be made for a collection of cells that is wholly a part of another person,
As for this piece of nonsense–if someone fires a gun at your head and it becomes lodge in your skull and you survive, and it cannot be removed without death, is it therefore a part of your head afterwards? Not at all. As is the case with any foreign object that becomes located inside the body, and is physically contiguous with the actual parts of the body.
A part is understood by its relation to the whole, including the function it serves and the benefit it promotes. A conceptum can be removed (obviously) without any permanent detriment to the functioning of the mother’s body, and it does not contribute to the mother’s physical benefit.
Your understanding of part is just plain wrong, and the fact it is used by pro-choicers in their standard rhetoric shows their ignorance of real science and the world.
[...] Abortion, Democracy, and Compromise November 10, 2008, 1:27 pm Filed under: abortion, government, morality, politics Freddie DeBoer has a pair of posts on the Douthat-Kmiec dustup at Slate (on which see more from Ross, Daniel Larison, and – for a pretty hilarious change of pace – Tucker Carlson) on the GOP and abortion policy, and he jumps in particular on Ross’s admission that the pro-life position that defines the Republican Party platform on the issue is one that “does not command majority support in the United States”, which Freddie seems to take to be an act of giving the game away, and a reason to pursue a “compromise position” on the issue. But this seems to me to miss the point in a host of important ways. [...]
The notion that one has to be a “theocrat” to believe that the unborn deserve protection is thoroughly asinine. Of course, one can believe in God and one’s religious beliefs can influence his poltical or social stances and can still easily avoid being the “theocrat” of so many secular leftists’ lurid nightmares. But the fact is that there are also plenty of non-religious people (agnostics and atheists alike) who recognize abortion as a terrible thing. See http://www.godlessprolifers.com– an interesting site.
oops– it’s http://www.godlessprolifers.org
Tedschan,
I’m not saying that the only arguments against abortion are theological arguments, only that most of the pro-life movement, including Daniel’s own strong pro-life stance, is based on theological beliefs, and not on scientific notions about “when life begins”. Life does not begin at conception, in that both sperm and egg are alive as well. Life is therefore continuous throughout the generations. The question is when does “personhood” begin. To identify personhood with a single strand of combined DNA at conception is one possible definition, but it is hard to say that a single strand of DNA encased by an egg is actually a “person”. At some point, that DNA grows into a person, but where exactly it becomes that is a matter of some art, not merely science. The traditional notion is that personhood is not acheived until birth, when the fetus is physically separated from the mother and able to survive on its own. Medical science is able perhaps to take a premature fetus at about 24 weeks (I’m not sure of the current state of the art) and sustain it outside the womb. Before that, however, it is in no way separate as a “person” from the mother.
The main point is that while non-theological arguments can be made for outlawing abortion, they aren’t terribly persuasive, and the only really persuasive arguments are theological ones, which is where the main thrust of the pro-life movement lies. Your own arguments are essentially theological ones, for instance, as are Daniel’s. If he wants to clarify his views on the subject, I welcome him to do so, but I take his lack of response in these threads as an acknowledgment that his reasons for being pro-life are essentially theological in nature, rather than that somehow this charge isn’t worthy of a response.
As for your comparison to a bullet, a bullet is of course not a living organism, and if it can’t be removed then of course it is a part of your head. People have plates in their heads, and the government can’t just remove those plates by saying they aren’t part of your head. We would not consider laws that take away a person’s right to remove a bullet from his body to be constitutional. Whatever the origins of the bullet, while it resides in a person’s body it belongs to that person, not the state, and they can do with it whatever they like, remove it or not, depending on their own personal health decisions. A fetus, regardless of whether one wants to think of it as coming from inside or outside the body, is a part of the woman’s body, and is her own “property” in the same sense that both a bullet and a tumor is, and she is therefore able to decide for herself how to deal with it. We could not justifiably enact laws refusing to allow a woman to remove a benign tumor, stating that somehow it’s not “hers” to decide what to do with.
Likewise, many parts of the body can be removed without causing much distress to a woman’s health, such as tonsils or an appendix. It would be unconstitutional to outlaw the removal of tonsils or appendici, even if exceptions were made in cases involving the patients health, for concern over the “independent life” of the tonsils and appendix.
Your understanding of science is one thing, but your understanding of law is another. Using science to rationalize the state compelling the use of a woman’s body against her will to carry a fetus to term is simply both bad science and bad law.
No, the Church doesn’t. It may allow certain procedures if they qualify under the principle of double effect, but direct abortion is not permitted under any circumstances.
I will defer to your understanding. I have to believe that this is wrong, however. You are saying that even if the choice is certain death to the mother, the Catholic doctor must allow the mother to die to save the fetus? Or are you saying that the Catholic doctor can do something that he or she knows will cause abortion to save the mother’s life, but has to pretend that he or she really isn’t performing an abortion. (As you can see, I think the principle of double effect is silly.)
Dilan Esper:
see, for example, this…
conradg
Life does not begin at conception, in that both sperm and egg are alive as well. Life is therefore continuous throughout the generations.
But it is not the same life, which is the obvious point. The sperm and egg separate are not the same as the conceptum, which is different in being and nature.
Talk about personhood is not necessary to say that abortion takes away human life and should be outlawed.
Your own arguments are essentially theological ones, for instance, as are Daniel’s.
No, they aren’t.
If he wants to clarify his views on the subject, I welcome him to do so, but I take his lack of response in these threads as an acknowledgment that his reasons for being pro-life are essentially theological in nature, rather than that somehow this charge isn’t worthy of a response.
You should know an argument from silence is a fallacy
As for your comparison to a bullet, a bullet is of course not a living organism, and if it can’t be removed then of course it is a part of your head.
Now you are just using part equivocally.
The definition of part can be refined so that it can answer your objection regarding: tonsils and appendices, but the fact remains that a foreign object or a conceptum is not a ‘part’ of the woman’s body in the same way as her kidney, tonsils, or appendix are. Having power over anything in her body, whether physical or legally recognized does not make whatever is in her body a part.
Using science to rationalize the state compelling the use of a woman’s body against her will to carry a fetus to term is simply both bad science and bad law.
To say that it is bad science is nonsensical, since the science itself is in no way affected by what you perceive to be bad law. You may say it is bad law; I say your notion of law is flawed and erroneous, being grounded in a disordered notion of individual autonomoy/sovereignty. As they say about first principles…
tedschan,
“But it is not the same life, which is the obvious point. The sperm and egg separate are not the same as the conceptum, which is different in being and nature.”
You are trying to define “life” as if it belongs to some individual, with a clear beginning and end. Simply not so. The combination of DNA from sperm and egg is certainly the beginning of that particular DNA combination, but it is not the beginning of a separate “life”, in that the egg and sperm were already alive before conception, and the result is not a separate individual, but merely a new combination of already existing living material. The cell thus produced is not even differentiated into any distinctive parts or functions, which does not happen until the cells themselves are transformed in even more profound ways, as when the undifferentiated stem cells become differentiated cells. Is each of these cells a separate person? Well, with twins we say yes. With an appendix, we generally say no. But nowhere in that mass is there a “soul” that confers individuality or personhood, unless you have decided that soul is in fact our DNA, which would be a novel religious concept all its own.
To say that abortion takes away a differentiated set of living human cells is obvious, but it is not at all clear that it takes away a human person, in that the collection of cells and DNA are not, in themselves, a person. When a fertilized egg becomes a person is essentially a theological or psychological definition, not a scientific one. We can set up all kinds of definitions for personhood, and many would have their own value for various uses, but for legal purposes I see little justification for considering an embryo to be a person, at least until very, very far into pregnancy.
You say that your arguments are not theological, but relying on the notion of personhood is itself essentially an admission of just that, in that your definition of a “person” derives from a theological source, the moment of conception as defined by your church. There is no scientific basis for calling the moment of conception the creation of “personhood”, in that science has no definition of personhood to begin with. There are legal definitions of personhood, and none of them in any legal system that I know of include early pregancy, much less the moment of conception. The only definitions of personhood that I know of which begin at conception are theological ones. I think you know that, and are simply playing games with me in denying this. Certainly I feel fairly sure that your own reasons for citing conception as the moment of “personhood” is based on your religious beliefs and the teachings of your church, rather than on science. Do you actually deny this?
“The definition of part can be refined so that it can answer your objection regarding: tonsils and appendices, but the fact remains that a foreign object or a conceptum is not a ‘part’ of the woman’s body in the same way as her kidney, tonsils, or appendix are. Having power over anything in her body, whether physical or legally recognized does not make whatever is in her body a part.”
This argument is self-defeating any way you take it. To consider an embryo growing inside a woman’s body to be a “foreign object”, and thus not actually a part of her, is bizarre in the extreme, in that the only thing “foreign” about this object is the 23 original chromosones contributed by the male sperm, which once it entered her body belongs to the woman, not the man who ejaculated it. The “foreign” contribution is tiny. Every other bit of that growing body was contributed directly by the woman herself, her bloodstream and nutrients and so forth, building bit by bit every single aspect of that structure in very much the same way that it builds its own organs and skeletal structure. None of that can happen apart from the woman’s own bodily functions. Now, you can say that everything that the woman’s own body is made from is “foreign” also, in that every atom of our bodies comes from the consumption of nutrients from the world around us. The original 23 chromosones of the male sperm were excreted very early in the process, and only copies survive, copies made out of the woman’s own bodily fluids and nutrients.
So there is no sense in which the embryo or fetus is not a part of the woman’s body. But for the sake of arguments, let’s concede the point, that the fetus is a “foreign object” inside her body, not a part of her, but a separate “thing”. Well, doesn’t that make the pro-choice argument even stronger, in that how can you possibly say that a woman has no right to remove a foreign object from her body? If a fetus is like a bullet, why cannot a woman remove just as she would remove a bullet from her body. Sure, she may choose not to, but isn’t it her choice whether to remove the bullet? She is not obligated to house and feed this foreign body that has taken up residence within her system without her expressed permission or desire. If a squatter enters your house, even if he was initially invited to a party, if he refuses to leave, don’t you have the right to evict him? Certainly we do. So I don’t see how your “fetus as foreign object” argument helps your cause. On the other hand, I don’t see how the “fetus as part of the woman’s body” helps your cause either, so I can understand your desperation. I hope you can see why pro-choice proponents like myself see that the arguments for making abortion illegal simply don’t wash.
That doesn’t mean that I think moral arguments against abortion, or even theological argumetns against abortion, have no persuasive power. I think they do. For many people, such as yourself and Daniel, they are very powerful and utterly persuasive. But they are not persuasive as legal arguments. I think the pro-life movement has made a terrible mistake in persuing the legal argument almost exclusively, in trying to overturn laws that permit abortion, and instead instituting a legal regime that would make it illegal. This is of course an example of theocracy, of imposing one’s own theologically based moral values on the lives of others. As I’ve said many times, it is fine for you to believe that abortion is murder, unless you try to use the legal system to address it in that manner, just as I think it’s fine for a communist living in this country to believe that property is theft, as long as he doesn’t try to get the state to support his beliefs with the power of compulsory state confiscation of private property.
You are trying to define “life†as if it belongs to some individual, with a clear beginning and end. Simply not so. The combination of DNA from sperm and egg is certainly the beginning of that particular DNA combination, but it is not the beginning of a separate “lifeâ€, in that the egg and sperm were already alive before conception, and the result is not a separate individual, but merely a new combination of already existing living material.
The matter is certainly different, so there is at the very least a lack of material identity. As for the lack of formal identity, we can see it from the operations. An egg and sperm by themselves do not undergo development, resulting in a mature adult human being. The conceptum does. Basic science–we know what a thing is from what it does. And we know things are different when their natures are different. You can equivocate with the use of life, but the fact remains living thing [sperm or egg] is not the same thing as living thing [conceptum].
You say that your arguments are not theological, but relying on the notion of personhood is itself essentially an admission of just that, in that your definition of a “person†derives from a theological source, the moment of conception as defined by your church. There is no scientific basis for calling the moment of conception the creation of “personhoodâ€, in that science has no definition of personhood to begin with. There are legal definitions of personhood, and none of them in any legal system that I know of include early pregancy, much less the moment of conception. The only definitions of personhood that I know of which begin at conception are theological ones. I think you know that, and are simply playing games with me in denying this. Certainly I feel fairly sure that your own reasons for citing conception as the moment of “personhood†is based on your religious beliefs and the teachings of your church, rather than on science. Do you actually deny this?
Show me where I talked about personhood in my arguments. As I stated in the last post, personhood is irrelevant to the question of when human life begins and if it should be respected.
To consider an embryo growing inside a woman’s body to be a “foreign objectâ€, and thus not actually a part of her, is bizarre in the extreme, in that the only thing “foreign†about this object is the 23 original chromosones contributed by the male sperm, which once it entered her body belongs to the woman, not the man who ejaculated it. The “foreign†contribution is tiny. Every other bit of that growing body was contributed directly by the woman herself, her bloodstream and nutrients and so forth, building bit by bit every single aspect of that structure in very much the same way that it builds its own organs and skeletal structure. None of that can happen apart from the woman’s own bodily functions. Now, you can say that everything that the woman’s own body is made from is “foreign†also, in that every atom of our bodies comes from the consumption of nutrients from the world around us. The original 23 chromosones of the male sperm were excreted very early in the process, and only copies survive, copies made out of the woman’s own bodily fluids and nutrients.
When I say foreign I do not speak as to origin of the material, but to the distinctness of identity and being. All you are doing is affirming that the mother contributes matter which is taken up by the conceptum for its development. Doesn’t make it a part of the mother in the same way a kidney is a part. You can deny this, but that’s just your stubborness in the face of science.
But for the sake of arguments, let’s concede the point, that the fetus is a “foreign object†inside her body, not a part of her, but a separate “thingâ€. Well, doesn’t that make the pro-choice argument even stronger, in that how can you possibly say that a woman has no right to remove a foreign object from her body? If a fetus is like a bullet, why cannot a woman remove just as she would remove a bullet from her body. Sure, she may choose not to, but isn’t it her choice whether to remove the bullet? She is not obligated to house and feed this foreign body that has taken up residence within her system without her expressed permission or desire. If a squatter enters your house, even if he was initially invited to a party, if he refuses to leave, don’t you have the right to evict him?
Obviously, one reason is that a bullet is not the same sort of thing as a human life. Or haven’t you gotten that yet? Individual sovereignty does not trump all obligations–obligations and duties are prior to sovereignty and delimit it. But you probably have the order reversed. Given your erroneous attributions and assumptions, is it any wonder that some may find that it is not worth the time and trouble to respond to your posts, since to respond to all of your assertions would require much? Read George. And find a teacher who is willing to undo your ideas about nature and law.
tedschan,
A fertilized egg is, scientifically speaking, merely a blueprint for a human being, not a “human life”, unless you define “human life” as any strand of DNA that can replicate itself. The fertilized egg is certainly the beginning of the process of that particular DNA strand replicating itself, and beginning to build a full human being, but the point at which an actual “human life” comes into being is essentially indefinable except by practical, functional capacities, foremost among them being independence from the mother.
May I remind you that an appendix, a kidney, a liver, is also dependent on the mother for nutrients, for it’s very existence? the difference is that they never become independent of the mother, whereas at some point a fetus does. Although in some circumstances even an organ can be maintained independent of its original body, it can be removed and sustained by articifical means. Certainly cell lines can be maintained indefinitely, and there are good reasons to think we can actually grow organs from our own cells outside the body, for future implantation either in ourselves or in others. But functionally speaking, when such an organ is maintained outside our body, it is no longer “part of us”. Just as a child, once born, is no longer part of the mother.
Your use of the word “foreign” is rather dubious now that you explain it further, which also suggests that your condescending attitude is misplaced. You should see how shallow and unpersuasive your own arguments are, and how they have little to do with science and reason, and merely act as facades for your religious faith. I’m not sure why you feel the need to hide your faith behind these superficial arguments, in that the argument of religious faith is actually more persuasive than these abstract assertions you are making. The only rationale for that is your uhwillingness to admit that the real basis for your pro-life stance is theological, which would undermine your efforts to have them made into law.
And yes, I’m aware that a bullet is not a living human being. You’re the one who brought up that analogy, however, so you have to face the consequences of it. But neither is a fertilized egg a living human being either. It is a genetic template for one, a potential human being, but it is for a very long time merely a growing template, not an actual independent human life separate from the mother. The fact that its DNA is distinct from the mother in no way obviates the fact that it is in function utterly dependent on the mother for every single element of its existence, and cannot survive outside the mother until a very mature stage of pregnancy. It is not “foreign” in any sense of the word. It is merely genetically distinct, while not being functionally distinct.
Now, I could certainly tell you to find a teacher who will teach you to think like me, but that’s not an argument, it’s an admission that you don’t have persuasive arguments, because you don’t have anything to fall back on except theology. This is like talking with a young earth enthusiast about geology, you want to “correct” me by asserting matters of faith in the argument and proposing that I study at some biblical “science” school in order to see how much sense they make. Well, they don’t make sense apart from the theological framework that is their origin and basis. Which is fine, if you want to make theology the basis for human law, as plenty of people want to do these days. But calling that “natural law” is an oxymoron. Such laws are the creation of human beings.
Just one short answer and then that will be it:
A fertilized egg is, scientifically speaking, merely a blueprint for a human being, not a “human lifeâ€, unless you define “human life†as any strand of DNA that can replicate itself. The fertilized egg is certainly the beginning of the process of that particular DNA strand replicating itself, and beginning to build a full human being, but the point at which an actual “human life†comes into being is essentially indefinable except by practical, functional capacities, foremost among them being independence from the mother.
You are just trying to reduce what is irreducibly human–every counterexample you bring up merely ignores the obvious–the conceptum undergoes development, because only human beings development and go through different stages of maturity. Nothing else you’ve talked about does.
Dependence for matter to be used in development is not the same as dependent with regards to existence–the conceptum is its own principle of existence, which is separate of the principle of existence of the mother. Just because it relies upon the favorable conditions of the mother’s womb does not mean that it lacks this principle of existence.
I’ve already implicitly admitted that my arguments are unpersuasive for someone like you. It doesn’t mean that they’re not sound or rooted in self-evident principles.
tedschan,
I understand that you’ve run out of arguments, but this constant reference to the “conceptum” is simply reliance on a theological concept. It has no scientific or practical validity. All living cells and organism go through development. That is exactly the point. The fertilized egg is not a human being, it develops into one. Abortion interupts the developmental process before the fertilized egg becomes an independent human being, while it is still a part of the woman’s body. That’s why it’s up to her to decide what to do with it.
Again, I don’t find your arguments unpersuasive on either a moral or theological level. I simply find them unpersuasive on a legal level. I think they are good arguments to be made to a woman considering having an abortion. They are simply not good arguments for criminalizing her and her doctors for failing to be persuaded by you. That is the difference between you and me. I don’t really expect to persuade you either, but I am not trying to criminalize your “failure” to be persuaded by my arguments.
see, for example, this
Thanks for confirming that the Principle of Double Effect is just as stupid as I always thought it was.
Let’s see, mother’s life is in danger, so we can’t give her an abortion, but we can sterilize her (and thus prevent her from having any more children– and by the way, I thought Catholic sexual morality condemned the separation of sex and procreation!) even though that will lead to certain abortion.
Look, there’s truth to Double Effect, in that intentions matter and actually doing something accidentally is of course different than doing something intentionally. But doing something intentionally and PRETENDING that you are doing something else has no moral meaning at all- in fact, it’s worse, because you cause additional harm (the sterilization, for instance) and it involves a lie as well.
The bottom line, of course, is that I doubt this is even a correct statement of Catholic morality on abortion. I assume that, for instance, shooting down a plane on 9/11 is justified without reference to the principle of double effect. What’s really happening is that pro-life Republican Catholics want to pretend there’s no exceptions because that’s how they justify dissenting from the Church on other “life” matters but not this one.