Don’t Mention The Deity
Digg 
Stumble Upon 
Newsvine 
Slashdot 
Mixx 
Diigo 
Delicious 
Reddit 
Facebook
How about social conservatives make their arguments without bringing God into it? By all means, let faith inform one’s values, but let reason inform one’s public arguments. ~Kathleen Parker
This is the standard Damon Linker line, which has always had the small problem that it doesn’t make sense. That’s not quite fair. It makes sense, provided that the goal is to keep religious people from making public arguments that have any force. Parker, like Linker, would likely deny that this is the goal. In Parker’s case, I expect that this is because she hasn’t thought through the implications. Were we to follow Parker’s model, we would on the one hand need to say that arguments informed by religious teaching are to some degree irrational by definition (use faith over here, but use reason in public, which implies that there is nothing rational about faith or that the two are not complementary). On the other hand, we would also have to say that our public arguments cannot invoke “values,” which are in any case derived from religious teaching and therefore unsuitable to public discourse. Even to the extent that “values” might be allowed, they would have to be “values” that do not conflict with pluralist, liberal “values.” This is the Social Gospel loophole, which permits the use of Christian discourse for left-liberal ends, but which clearly forbids any version or interpretation of Christian teaching that conflicts with these “values.”
The point is not that there are not secular arguments against abortion, to take the example Parker uses, as there clearly are. Secular people on the whole do not seem terribly interested in those arguments, nor do they show any more respect for them than they do to explicitly religious ones, because the issue is not the kind of argument being made but the moral and political conclusions that are being drawn. This may reflect the extent to which different political and philosophical traditions function as little more than tribes that use mutually unintelligible mythologies, in which the answers are all scripted and known before the inquiry begins. All of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again….Debates cease to be an exercise in persuasion, and become instead an occasion for performance and expressing identity. Structuralists everywhere will be thrilled.
The point here is that social and religious conservatives should not have to truncate, abbreviate or deny their religious teachings when making public arguments, which is effectively what they would have to do if they are not to refer to God or religious teachings in public discourse. They could not in good conscience do so, but leaving that aside for a moment we should also acknowledge that it puts an undue burden on religious believers to insist that they leave out appeals to their core beliefs, which are or are supposed to be at the center of their understanding of man, society, creation and reason itself. It’s as if you said that liberals can make their arguments, but they must never refer to equality for any reason, but it is even more constricting than that. In the end, what Parker is saying religious conservatives should do is to accept the premises and terms of the debate that are hostile to their side before it begins, and then try to make an argument for their view under those constraints. As a matter of rhetoric and politics, this is a losing proposition. Once you have accepted fundamental assumptions of your opponents (and accepting that one can only use public reason in argument is to concede a fundamental liberal claim), you are merely negotiating the extent of your defeat.
Many modern conservatives will look at Parker’s statement and agree with it, because, as Rod reminds us of MacIntyre’s observation, “in America, all political arguments are among conservative liberals, liberal liberals, and radical liberals.” This is true even of a great many religious conservatives, which is why time and again when religious conservatives are challenged in this way the best response many of them can muster is that “they have a right” to free speech and religious liberty. Indeed they do, but that is not nearly powerful enough and once again accepts–as most public pro-life rhetoric already does–that we must speak in terms of individual autonomy and individual rights. Perhaps that is the most telling thing of all, in that it acknowledges that we do not recognize appeals to God or obligations to God as being in any way authoritative, but we invest appeals to the self and the rights of the self with tremendous weight, which is a function of a culture that is egocentric and decidedly not theocentric.
This may reflect the extent to which different political and philosophical traditions function as little more than tribes that use mutually unintelligible mythologies, in which the answers are all scripted and known before the inquiry begins.
But who does this describe more accurately than those who take their political inspiration directly from the Bible?
Daniel, the biggest problem with Christian values voters is not that they can’t make their arguments in secular fashion, as I’m sure they can. The biggest value is that they compromise is impossible.
If you are a Christian conservative and there is no doubt whatsoever what God wants, what is “right” – how are you ever going to stop short of that?
If you believe God thinks abortion is wrong then it’s wrong period, and no half-measure will suffice. And so, sure, you might accept a “compromise” in terms of limiting access, partial-birth abortions, whatever. But that is a mere waystation on your way to your final destination, a complete ban in all cases, every time.
In the end, in a civil, democratic society, the rationale behind governance cannot be, simply, “God says so.” I appreciate that Christian conservatives may think this all they ever need. But I don’t. And it’s my country too – or is it?
‘Daniel, the biggest problem with Christian values voters is not that they can’t make their arguments in secular fashion, as I’m sure they can. The biggest value is that they compromise is impossible.
If you are a Christian conservative and there is no doubt whatsoever what God wants, what is “right†– how are you ever going to stop short of that?’
Goldwater said the same thing. If you feel you’re doing God’s work (you’re not) you can not compromise and politics is compromise.
I think the point is that a religion-based argument is going to be unpersuasive to those of differing beliefs. You can’t have public deliberation under such conditions, particularly if those beliefs are unquestionable.
You’re just plain wrong, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster told me so. I’m glad we had the chance to have this argument.
“This may reflect the extent to which different political and philosophical traditions function as little more than tribes that use mutually unintelligible mythologies, in which the answers are all scripted and known before the inquiry begins.
But who does this describe more accurately than those who take their political inspiration directly from the Bible?”
Take their political inspiration directly from the Bible? That’s a bit of a stretch. Do they count the Bible as foremost among the authoritative texts they rely on to interpret and understanding political questions because they believe it reveals, among other things, the truth about human nature and what justice is? Yes. That’s not quite the same thing.
The point I was trying to make here is that people object to conservative arguments against abortion, for example, because they do not accept conservative conclusions, regardless of how they are framed or where they come from. This suggests that it might not matter whether or not one tries to make arguments more “attractive” to some people by abandoning explicit religious references. There is apparently a non-reducible core of people who simply will not accept the idea that the unborn are human and deserving of full legal protection and will continue to oppose extending those protections to them. After all, what pro-choice people really object to is the proposed remedy pro-lifers would enact, and not the reasons they cite for doing so.
If I invoked mythical Equality, rather than God’s injunction against murder, would it make any difference? Probably not. The difference, from my perspective, is that I am sure that God exists, while equality is a pleasant fiction, so if I am going to make an argument I should be trying to make what I think is the strongest argument. Objecting to a crime while not referring to relevant aspects of revealed truth makes no sense to me. I can understand the diplomatic or “image management” aspect of the question, but in the end not using religious arguments concedes too much. The assumption behind Parker’s suggestion is that a more secular argument would be a *better* argument, but I don’t see how that works. From a religious conservative perspective, the better argument is one that makes the most compelling and true case. Find me religious conservatives who think that omitting God from the debate will make their argument more compelling.
I don’t think the rationale behind governance should “simply” be blanket appeals to rights or equality, which is what, if one boiled down the contrary arguments, they usually are on the other side. Of course, the arguments on both sides are far more elaborate and take into account a great many other things beyond core assumptions. So the rationale is never “simply” that “God says so,” nor is it “simply” an appeal to rights or equality. Except for short-term political advantage, perhaps, why religious conservatives should not refer back to their core assumptions remains unclear.
“Real” Conservatives now want to move on from the anchors they’d tied themselves to to attain power. Film at 11.
The one single thing that will always ensure abortion is available is that the Republican Party requires that issue to exist in order to be viable.
That’s not an appeal to God, that’s an appeal to power. There’s no there there.
“… but let reason inform one’s public arguments.”
That reason alone is to inform “public” arguments and religion is to be a purely private affair is a tenet of … um … err … well … liberalism.
So liberals everywhere agree with the “conservative” Ms. Parker.
This suggests that it might not matter whether or not one tries to make arguments more “attractive†to some people by abandoning explicit religious references.
From my perspective, I’m not demanding that religious conservatives “abandon” explicit religious references. What I’m saying is that for me – I am not a religious conservatism – those religious references, religious rationales are not enough and are never going to be enough.
So there must be a rationale beyond “God said so” in all cases, as far as I’m concerned. There must be a logical/secular argument in addition to the faith-based argument. Often there is, though it’s tortured – see how gay marriage somehow “undermines” traditional marriage.
But those tortured rationales are put forth as mere cover; because I think (some, at least) religious conservatives realize that they need to have more than “God said so.”
Two significant problems with your rendering of the nature of public discourse, I think:
You’re suggesting that public debate consists of evaluating a participant’s conclusion, deciding whether you like it, and based on that determining whether you’ll pay attention to your arguments. Obviously, this is completely backwards.
Now, I won’t deny that that happens a great deal. But it’s nothing to be proud of and we should certainly not redefine it as an inevitable depiction of American moral debates. After all, if you believe it really works that way than why are you interested in having moral debates at all?
If, as I suspect, you recognize that while your description may hold for a group of hardliners, there is a persuadable middle group, then you need to engage in debate (for your own sake) that will actually successfully persuade them. And I think that’s the crux of Parker’s argument.
Leading to #2:
The strongest argument by whose standard? The case most compelling to whom? The problem is that you’re advocating making the case most convincing to the proponent, not the case most convincing to the audience. Until you recognize the difference between the two, you won’t be able to get over the fact that ‘You musn’t do X because the bible says not to do X’ is a losing argument to the bulk of America.
Any garden-variety lawyer can tell you your job is to convince the jury, not yourself.
I think Daniel’s point is best served if we make a distinction among three things: conclusions, the reasons for those conclusions, and the grounds for those reasons. So, a religious conservative concludes that abortion is immoral (conclusion), she concludes it because she thinks fetuses have the same moral worth as rational, adult humans (reasons for her conclusion), and she thinks there is such a thing as moral worth in the first place because of God’s commands, or because of God’s nature, or whatever (grounds for the reasons).
In any public discourse, it’s possible that a person’s conclusions, her reasons for her conclusions, and the grounds for her reasons, will be mentioned. And it would indeed be unfair for us to try to maintain a standard according to which God is never supposed to be mentioned as a ground or a reason for anything, even in public discourse. It would amount to telling the religious conservative that she has to pretend she has another ground for her reasons besides God, even though she finds that ground completely unconvincing, and even blasphemous to maintain.
At the same time, religious conservatives can go too far; their reference to God could appear too early, let us say, for effective persuasion. If she says that abortion is wrong simply because God says so, then not only is that not going to convince the atheist, it’s further not going to convince the theist who wonders where God says abortion is impermissible, and it’s further not going to convince the person of indeterminate religious beliefs who cares about abortion but is not used to bringing up God at all.
The thing is, I think few religious conservatives, in reality, actually often say “we ought to endorse public policy X because God says so.” (Though the ones who do say that will surely get media coverage.) Even religious conservatives who are God-intoxicated enthusiasts can recognize that things like “it causes pain”, “it makes people happy”, “it violates people’s rights”, etc., are reasons for or against doing things.
God is true but equality is not? Jesus is reputed to have said “Love thy neighbor as thyself”, which IS a statement of the equality of “self”. And in a very real sense, and argument that can be made that stands equally well for you as for me is one that has a chance to be persuasive. Arguing from God is not persuasive to me, however much it might be to you.
I have to assume two things to permit your argument: 1) that God exists, and 2) that you have heard him correctly. I have to assume those things to be true even though there is no evidence that either one actually is true.
Whereas my argument on abortion goes like this: 1) a woman is an independent being in full possession of her physical being, 2) only she has the right to chose (when a choice is to be made) what happens to her physical being, 3) a fetus has no rights to the mother’s body that the mother does not permit. I use the example of twin brothers, one whom has no kidneys and will die sooner rather than later if the other twin does not donate a kidney. Even if the healthy twin caused the loss of the kidneys in the unhealthy twin, we have no legal or scriptural expectation that the healthy twin MUST donate a kidney. As human beings, we might think he should, but it is his choice – it is HIS kidney, a part of his physical being over which he has complete sovereignty. It is no different for a woman’s uterus. It is HER uterus, her physical being, and a fetus resides there on sufference.
To hold any other position is to say that women are not fully human and therefor not entitled to full equality with men. Personally, I find repugnant the idea that women are not “equal” to men in the sense of being fully human.
“and a fetus resides there on sufferance”
Jake, that kind of philosophical nonsense is rank barbarism. An infant requires it’s mother’s milk. Does the mom have a right to withhold it? It’s her body. Her precious little baby has a claim on it only on her “sufferance.” Of course this is absurd and revolting suggestion. Not all obligations are voluntary. In all of human history, across time, place, tribe, religion, etc. nothing has been so universal and primal as the mother child bond. And that bond/obligation IS NOT VOLUNTARY. It is a duty. A responsibility. It is owed. Your sophistry notwithstanding.
Daniel, I don’t know about you, but I am becoming increasingly pessimistic. I think we may have passed a point of no return. In the past, Christianity could be appealed to without all these objections from the secularist/irreligious peanut gallery. Even those who were not believers took it for granted that most of their fellow countrymen were (at least nominally) and the common Faith as a basis for public order was controversial only for troublemaking cranks. This was true even as little as 50 years ago.
This modern secularist tide is of relatively recent vintage on a mass scale. It has always been a truism that Revival would have to precede any genuine societal or political recovery, but this is becoming increasingly obvious to me.
I wonder if there is not some tipping point beyond which it would behoove Christians to start worrying less about an increasingly (and rapidly so) irredeemable mass culture and worry more about cultural secession and self-preservation. Of course Revival is an act of God, and we always can have the hope that He will intervene, but barring that, I am afraid we are on the fast train to post-Christian, secularist Hell.
It has always been a truism that Revival would have to precede any genuine societal or political recovery,
Please.
It’s been a truism to believers. The bottom line is that this is becoming a more pluralistic society, and “Christianists” (Sullivan’s term) see their position in that society – at the head of the class – threatened.
No one is taking away their rights. No one is denying them the same priveleged accorded to others. But in this more pluralistic society, Christians and Christianity now have to duke it out in the marketplace of ideas – no longer do they get the free pass they once got.
No longer do they have the unquestioned cultural superiority they once had. And that is what grieves them so. Whaddya mean, we gotta get in line like everybody else?
Well – yes. And if the solutions are good and legitimate solutions, even if they are “godly” solutions, then let the cream rise to the top.
RedPhillips,
I say this irrespective of my own opinion on abortion, but I’m afraid your disagreement with Jake doesn’t rise to the level of a counter-argument. Also, it’s not fair to call his argument sophistry; it’s an argument which I believe he’s presenting in good faith, and an argument is not sophistic just because one disagrees with it.
I think the fundamental problem is that you object that some people perceive there even to be a need to present an argument for abortion being an evil; for you it’s an irreducible moral perception, and I imagine that most if not all arguments to the contrary would quickly strike you as sophistry.
I’m not saying your irreducible moral perception has no validity or should not be adduced — much has been written about the “wisdom of repugnance,” etc. — but it’s a categorically different way of approaching the issue.
As for your final paragraph, do you read Rod’s blog? Tons of stuff there about secession, the “Benedict Option,” etc.
-Oss
BTW, is the title of this post a sly reference to Basil Fawlty’s “Don’t mention the war!” I keep smiling when I see it. I think I’ll assume it is, since I’ll take opportunities to smile where I can find them.
“BTW, is the title of this post a sly reference to Basil Fawlty’s “Don’t mention the war!—
That was the idea. I’m glad someone picked up on it.
In all of human history, across time, place, tribe, religion, etc. nothing has been so universal and primal as the mother child bond. And that bond/obligation IS NOT VOLUNTARY. It is a duty.
Infanticide has been practiced in just about every society not influenced by Judaism or one of its offshoots. Complicating the picture a bit, it was usually not at the option of the mother but of a male family head.
As a liberal democrat, I would like to encourage religious members of the GOP to speak out, and I encourage them to insist on making loud and clear their intentions to govern by religious moralism and scriptural inspiration. I can’t think of a better way for them to lose election after election, and for us to win in perpetuity. So while I can sympathize with Parker’s desire to discipline the ranks and censure religious speech, I would prefer Daniel’s viewpoint to prevail, since it would set the GOP on a path towards the same bottom-dwelling status as the Constitution Party. But Daniel has a weakness for tilting at windmills and lost causes that I find admirable, if not terribly enviable.
I would also point out that this is a free country, and people who wish to govern by religious principles and morals should be free to say so openly, and try to garner political support for that cause. There’s a long and mostly disastrous history for this in the United States, it’s not anything new. I’d point to our messianic foreign policy as an example of this religiousity run amok, which Daniel decries but doesn’t see the connection between its world-changing crusader mission and the very Christian religious voice he wishes to encourage. This seems rather self-defeating to me, but maybe Daniel can explain how it works for him. Likewise, religious moralism has led to such disasters as prohibition and the ongoing war on drugs, which is really another religious war in law-enforcement’s clothing. Daniel seems to decry these things as well, but he can’t seem to face up to the fact that they are manifestations of this religious moral crusade he thinks is a great and good thing, and something that shouldn’t be criticized or suppressed. I agree that one shouldn’t suppress one’s real feelings, and the origins of one’s politics, but that doesn’t mean one shouldn’t examine what a disaster they have been for the country.
When Daniel says that only certain “progressive” religious notions are permitted, I’m guessing he’s referring to such things as the civil rights movement, which had a definite religious theme to it, and literal religious involvement from the time of the abolitionists onward. What he neglects is that the principle of equality is what our nation is founded on, so it’s not exactly a foreign intrusion on the secular state to argue for the religious morality of equal rights, when the nation was to a fair degree inspired by that aspect of Christian religious teachings (as well as secular, pagan, Greek and enlightenment thought on the subject). Whereas there’s nothing foundational about the religious crusade to outlaw drugs and alcohol, or to prohibit abortion, regardless of whether you agree with the morality of such things.
In any case, such arguments are actually made less persuasive, generally, by founding them in religious speech, so I’m with Daniel in encouraging people to do so, since I oppose most of what they want to do. People don’t change their viewpoints on such matters very easily, except by massive and nearly endless failures, and I think that is what the GOP is going to require before it sheds this approach. Likewise, religious people themselves are going to have to examine the failure of their religious arguments to persuade people, and see if they can come up with a better method, or maybe a better religion, I can’t say which.
“There is apparently a non-reducible core of people who simply will not accept the idea that the unborn are human and deserving of full legal protection and will continue to oppose extending those protections to them. After all, what pro-choice people really object to is the proposed remedy pro-lifers would enact, and not the reasons they cite for doing so”
It’s both, Daniel. Pro-choicers like me not only don’t like the conclusion (abortion is murder, therefore it must be prohibited by law), they don’t like the presumptions or the argument itself. Beleive me, if we really did see fetuses as human beings, we would have no problem extending legal rights to them and prohibiting abortion. It’s not that we have some hunger for killing babies, or some rabid desire for personal autonomy and sexual freedom that overrides or blinds us to the murderous injustice of abortion, it’s simply that we don’t see the basic situation as you do. It isn’t even a religious matter. I’m a religious person, and in my personal life quite “conservative” in lifestyle. Certainly more conservative than Newt Gingrich or Barry Goldwater. I’ve never had a child aborted, nor do I think I would choose that option, but it’s not because I consider a fertilized egg to be a person, a human being, a soul, etc. I simply don’t have the particular religious moral viewpoint that pro-life people have, and that’s it. If I could be convinced on the core arguments, I would adopt a pro-life stance, but frankly I find those presumptions not only wrong, but rather inapropriately dogmatic. I’m sure you would disagree, but please don’t presume that pro-choice people are being somehow dishonest in their arguments because they are wedded to a particular conclusion, any more than anyone else is, at least. This just shows a lack of understanding and empathy for one’s opponents.
Perhaps the reason “even non-Biblical arguments” against legal abortion fail is because your initial premises aren’t persuasive. You start with the premise that fetuses – hell, even fertilized eggs and blastocysts -have the same person-value as humans outside the uterus. This is a non-persuasive premise because it has no basis in scientific, medical, and/or biological fact.
There is a reason the Enlightenment happened. Europe had nearly a millennium of rule by state-sponsored, state-enforced Christianity and had unending international wars, civil wars, pogroms, plagues, persecutions, book-burnings, people-burnings, intellectual stasis, medical and scientific backwardness, and near-universal illiteracy to show for it.
The philosophers of the 16th-18th Centuries (most of whom were scientists as well) considered it imperative to develop systems of ethics that could stand on their own, without recourse to religious principles that changed whenever expedient, dependent on the whims of Kings or Popes or Archbishops.
The principles of democracy, political and personal liberty, socio-economic mobility, scientific inquiry, and even medical science are based on precepts of the Enlightenment. Not only were those principles developed apart from religious doctrines, they were developed in opposition to religious doctrines.
I have never, and will never, understand why so many people in America are intent on undoing the Enlightenment.
“An infant requires it’s mother’s milk. Does the mom have a right to withhold it? It’s her body.”
Yes, she does have the right to withold her milk. Many do. They choose instead not to breastfeed, but to use formula. Are you saying that the infant can sue in court for their right to be breastfed? Really? Now, of course if the woman refuses to feed her child altogether, the state can take the child away, and feed it, but the state has no right to force the woman to breastfeed the child. Isn’t this obvious? In the same sense, the state has no right to force a woman to give her uterus to the fetus for its use against her will, even if you think the fetus has individual rights of some kind.
“Infanticide has been practiced in just about every society not influenced by Judaism or one of its offshoots. Complicating the picture a bit, it was usually not at the option of the mother but of a male family head.”
Mr. Tomlin, exposure has been practiced, but it was usually in the case of deformity and in times of need (draught, famine, etc.). And it was felt to be for the benefit of the family, clan, etc. It was not because the mother felt the child was going to inconvenience her. The fact that the mother generally resisted proves my point. We have become a society of monsters.
Also, it is not necessary for abortion to be equivalent to murder for it to be proscribed. We proscribe by law a lot of evil acts that are less than murder. All but the coldest pro-abort advocates recognize abortion as not a morally neutral act whether they think it is murder or not.
“You start with the premise that fetuses – hell, even fertilized eggs and blastocysts -have the same person-value as humans outside the uterus. This is a non-persuasive premise because it has no basis in scientific, medical, and/or biological fact.”
Well, by what basis can science determine “person”? Person is an ontologically loaded term. Is person and rights determined merely by being outside the womb? If so, how does science know that being outside the womb or inside it does or does not determine a person? On what basis does science know that any of the commenters here are persons? Personhood is one of those spooky things, I think modern science would rather stay away from.
If your bias is toward some sort of Enlightenment based scientism, try to be consistent and actually dump all those ontological constructs that those medieval witch doctors came up with.
And speaking of science and personhood, give this a watch, what do you have to be scared of, it’s just a bunch of blastocysts?
http://www.silentscream.org/
Larison points out that stripping religious conviction from a political argument weakens the argument. This is only half true. An argument based on faith is strong to people who share your faith, but not very impressive to those who don’t.
The idea that advocates have an obligation to make only secular arguments is ridiculous, but I rarely see serious people make that argument.
The idea that religious advocates are smart to make their arguments in secular terms is not ridiculous. It is often no more than good politics in a pluralistic democracy. Religious arguments are extremely powerful to a minority. That is great if you want to be a well-funded interest group, but not so great when you want to win.
Although Larison’s post is interesting, he is fighting a straw man. The real reason that many folks dislike religious arguments on public issues is because religious arguments tend to be political losers. These people often profess a deeper principle, but I think the the politics are the engine of this debate.
Abortion is the best example. Religious arguments sway the religious, and abortion is powerfully opposed by many religious people whose faith teaches abortion is wrong. The problem is that religious arguments fall flat on the secular and those whose faith does not disallow abortion (Jews, for example).
Secular arguments can be pretty damn good. I am not religious, yet secular arguments persuade me to oppose Roe v. Wade and 3rd trimester abortions under most circumstances.
There’s virtually nothing new to be said about this issue, and the commenters on this thread do a fine job of articulating the main points.
That said, I’ve got something to add about the importance of “personhood”:
The pro-life community wants to use the legal system to prevent abortions from occurring. As the Constitution protects “persons” (see the 5th and 14th amendments), the critical legal question is when a thing becomes a person. “Personhood”, then, is ultimately a legal issue. While science, philosophy and religious revealed truth can inform the issue, the only conclusion that anyone really cares about is the one made in law.
Note: It is possible to imagine a world in which an unfertilized egg was a “person”. That essentially is the world established in “The Handmaid’s Tale”. Women would then have an active obligation to try to become pregnant.
Morally repulsive? To me, yes. But then again, once a woman becomes legally subservient to her uterus, the distinction between trying to become pregnant and trying to avoid being pregnant becomes increasingly artificial.
Further note: While I’m a lawyer, not a biologist, my understanding is that current research is revealing that the early stages of pregnancy are far more plastic and complex than was once known. There is no one specific moment when an egg becomes fertilized. Instead, there is an ongoing process for the fusion of the DNA strands.
To me, this indicates that defining personhood as of the moment when a unique person exists is increasingly difficult. I suspect, however, that religious individuals may view this information as attaching personhood to any egg that’s essentially in the presence of live sperm. Of course, that’s exactly the message of The Handmaid’s Tale.
Final point: The problem with relying on revealed truth is that opponents can claim that their revealed truth states precisely the opposite. What Christian is in a position to state that my claim that the Flying Spagetti Monster said that personhood attaches at birth is false?
“The problem with relying on revealed truth is that opponents can claim that their revealed truth states precisely the opposite. What Christian is in a position to state that my claim that the Flying Spagetti Monster said that personhood attaches at birth is false?”
Much of modern thought has delegated all things intangible to a subjective state. Thus the best answers to the subjectivists are convincing them of objective truth on a personal level. The Christian is in a place to say, that your Flying Spaghetti Monster is an idol that will ultimately lead you to death, insanity, and despair. Follow your Monster at your own peril. Turn away from your idols, turn away from the worship of your own delusions of autonomy, and look to the Triune God. That is if you really are in search of the good, the true, and the beautiful.
As for personhood, any deontological-rights based approach will fail to find a consistent or coherent answer. The positve law alone, standing on the heads of jurists cannot find a consistent answer for personhood. However, the positive law can be informed by the natural law, in finding a richer, more complete answer to the personhood.
Where is some of this evidence of the natural law, written on the hearts of men? Look no further than the Oath of Hippocrates.
“I will give no deadly medicine to any one if asked, nor suggest any such counsel; and in like manner I will not give to a woman a pessary to produce abortion.”
There is no one specific moment when an egg becomes fertilized. Instead, there is an ongoing process for the fusion of the DNA strands.
If fertilization is understood as the combination of egg and sperm into a new entity, then there is a specific moment–it is not defined narrowly with respect to the physical proximity of the chromosomal contribution of each. Anyway, that would only touch upon the material of the conceptum, and does not really affect its formal identity.
You don’t have to believe that a fetus is a person to believe that it has the same moral worth as a person. You can always rely on the following argument from Don Marquis:
People can expect to have a future full of enjoyable mental states, or at least mental states that they take to be valuable. The reason we find killing people (i.e., adult, rational human beings) wrong is that it deprives people of that future full of valuable mental states. For short, we can say that killing deprives people of a “Future Like Ours” (FLO). This explains why we find the death of a 20-year old to be a greater tragedy than the death of an 80-year old. Moreover, similar intuitions explain why we find rape bad–not only does it violate a person’s legal rights, it also very much increases the likelihood that she will have a future much more full of unpleasant mental states than before. So:
1. Killing people is seriously wrong because it deprives them of a FLO;
2. Most fetuses have FLOs;
3. Therefore, it is seriously wrong to kill most fetuses.
Parker says: “How about social conservatives make their arguments without bringing God into it? By all means, let faith inform one’s values, but let reason inform one’s public arguments.”
Assume for the moment that God’s existence and a few more theological details can be proven by the use of public reason. Therefore, to exclude reference to God is to disrespect public reason.
Among her other rhetorical tricks, Parker is trying to set agnosticism or fideism as the orthodoxy, eliminating more rational forms of religion.
One of Parker’s howlers in her first essay, which I didn’t see anybody pick up on, was her statement “But, like it or not, we are a diverse nation, no longer predominantly white and Christian. ”
Well, by all polling, the nation is both majority white and Christian. While such Christianity is hardly uniformly orthodox or substantial, her definition of “predominantly” must be a bit more eccentric than mine.
Why should the scruples of atheistic and agnostic pundits and comment box writers silence the majority of Americans?
Writers like Parker complain about God being mentioned too much, and then turn around and complain about how superficial American Christianity is. How can the quality of American religion in public life be improved by barring religious arguments and discussion?
Further, most political positions have religious beliefs lurking in the background. Liberal Christians back liberal social stands, and have been major forces behind both permissive abortion laws and gay rights.
*Refraining* from discussing these background religious beliefs is a sure way to make debates remain intractable and mutually incomprehensible.
Larison writes that Christians cannot in good conscience leave out reference to God or religious teachings. While this is so first of all because of our duties to God, it is also fundamentally dishonest to speak purely on a secular level and to omit one’s deepest motivations in conversation with one’s fellow man.
(I see my comments are largely putting Larison into my own words, but I hope they add a bit to the discussion)
Brilliant post, Daniel. Attempts to delegitimize the role of religion in political discourse and to oust religion from the public sphere altogether essentially treat non-theism as normative, denying believers the ability to participate in political discussion without cloaking their arguments (which are mostly informed by religious values) in secular language, as if theism wasn’t the basic condition of most of mankind for centuries. I suppose the tendency of religious conservatives in America to so readily adopt rights-based arguments on issues like abortion is partially due to the fact that much American religion, particularly of the Protestant variety, has sacralized Enlightenment values to the degree that any argument that doesn’t involve conceptions of rights or individual liberty seems impossible.
As far as abortion is concerned, I have yet to hear a consistent and reasonable definition of a human person that includes a newborn infant but excludes a fetus, or even the same infant 5 minutes before its birth. That a fetus is a human being shouldn’t really be in question; it’s certainly not a dog, or a fish, or a duck. Yes, it’s a “collection of cells”, as the fetus is so derisively termed by pro-abortion types. So is an adult human being. So is every living being on earth. It’s a living organism with a full, unique set of human DNA, which seems to me the most rational definition of a human being (and one to which a fertilized egg or a zygote would apply). As far as personhood goes, most of the pro-abortion arguments are based around the “fact” that a fetus before a certain amount of time is unviable outside of the womb (many fetuses can survive outside the womb, even as early as 22 weeks) and thus, because it is incapable of surviving independently, must be considered as “property” of the mother. This ignores the fact that infants cannot survive without the care of a parent or older guardian, and I would like to think legal abortion advocates are not generally in favor of infanticide.
“There’s a long and mostly disastrous history for this in the United States, it’s not anything new. I’d point to our messianic foreign policy as an example of this religiousity run amok, which Daniel decries but doesn’t see the connection between its world-changing crusader mission and the very Christian religious voice he wishes to encourage. This seems rather self-defeating to me, but maybe Daniel can explain how it works for him.”
Our “messianic” foreign policy is only superficially similar to the need for Christians to evangelize and make believers of all nations because it is part of a religion, just not the Christian one – the American civil religion. The belief that democracy and human rights are necessary and normative for all human beings and that awakening people who have not yet realized that they have rights and freedoms they must claim is morally imperative isn’t a Christian one, but one which is a result of the Enlightenment, which was mostly a reaction AGAINST Christianity, and revealed religion in general. It’s a belief that’s thrived among our elites in spite of Christianity, not because of it. You may notice some of the most vehement supporters of the neocon crusades are, err, less than pious. Hitchens, Brooks, Podhoretz, etc. Christians support this democratic jihad only insofar as they misunderstand Christianity – Protestants and their cultish offspring, Mormons and Jehovah’s witnesses, are guilty of this the most. To put it another way, the democraticist ideology promises heaven on earth, whereas Christianity understands that true peace and joy is only to be had in the Kingdom of God.
[...] Larison thinks Kathleen Parker has not thought through her assertion that social conservatives should “make their arguments without bringing God into it”: [...]
I think you are incorrect in asserting that one particular Biblical interpretation is “Christian” in general. People can be religious without using evangelical Bible-parsing as the basis for a political argument. Christians themselves disagree on certain Biblical interpretations, so why should one particular interpretation be consider “the” legitimate one to support a particular political or public view? And so too, why should criticizing that argument be framed as anti-Christian or secular? The Bible does not make one’s position immune from criticism, and disagreeing with a particular parsing of said Bible does not make one anti-Christian.
Bobcat,
Your “moral argument” is interesting, but I think it’s an example of how far you have to stretch things to make a legal anti-abortion argument without relying on religious beliefs. It really doesn’t make sense if you examine it more closely. The idea that murder is wrong doesn’t rely merely on the idea of “robbing future happiness”, it means destroying a present, fully living human being. Your argument leads to the notion that even birth control is murder, because it prevents potential babies from being born. It leads to the notion that producing any fewer than the maximal number of babies our planet can sustain is murder, because we are robbing potential human lives of their future. It means that every woman should be having sex as much as possible, and getting pregnant as much as possible, so as not to rob those potential lives of their full future. It means that “every sperm is sacred” and should be used to fertilize every possible egg. In other words, it means nothing at all. Human lives cannot be lived as an obligation to future potential, they have to be lived by our actual choices in the present.
One of the basic facts about child-bearing and abortion that studies have shown is that women tend to have the same number of children, regardless of the number of abortions they have. Abortion merely decides when and with whom they will have children. Women who have abortions will tend to have more children later in their life, while women who don’t will tend to have less future children. So in a very real sense, a young single mother not having an abortion is “killing” some future child she might have had at a later date otherwise, and probably with more advantages (a more prosperous married life, for example). So your argument isn’t really an argument against abortion, it’s an argument in favor of it.
grigory,
If you haven’t heard a good argument for why a fetus isn’t a human person, it’s because you haven’t defined what a human person is. You seem to think a human person is a “unique set of human DNA”. But that’s clearly a false definition, in that twins have the same DNA, but we don’t define them as a single person. Likewise, a cancer cell in our bodies has unique DNA that has been altered from our original DNA, and it is clearly human as well, so why not consider a tumor growing in our bodies to be human, with rights of its own not to be murdered?
There are all kinds of definitions of personhood we could propose, but the legal definition remains that of a “living, born human being” for very sound reasons. A fetus could certainly be called human, in the same way that my stomach is human, but it doesn’t have the legal rights of personhood, because it has not actually developed into a person. Where does our DNA confer personhood? Every cell in my body has the same DNA, exactly the same as my original fertilized egg, but I don’t see where it produces a “personhood” protein, or have a “personhood” gene in it. My personhood is an emergent phenomena, like consciousness itself, not found in either the DNA or the material mechanism. The legal definition of personhood is a very different thing from what we might want, because it has to take into account many things other than “unique DNA”, which is a canard to begin with. Human life is a process of development, and a fetus is a highly undeveloped human life, the loss of which is simply not comparable to the loss of a child or an adult, because it has not yet developed into a “person”, both by legal standards and by many people’s personal standards, even religious standards. My owh religious views are probably different than yours, but I don’t consider the DNA to be our “soul”, and the fusing of the parent’s DNA does not create a soul, the life of which is then somehow killed in an abortion. But that’s immaterial to the legal argument in any case. I don’t wish to legislate against your religious beliefs, and force women to have abortions against their conscience or will, but you do. That’s the problem I haven’t found a good argument against by anti-abortionists.
As far as abortion is concerned, I have yet to hear a consistent and reasonable definition of a human person that includes a newborn infant but excludes a fetus, or even the same infant 5 minutes before its birth. That a fetus is a human being shouldn’t really be in question; it’s certainly not a dog, or a fish, or a duck. Yes, it’s a “collection of cellsâ€, as the fetus is so derisively termed by pro-abortion types. So is an adult human being. So is every living being on earth. It’s a living organism with a full, unique set of human DNA, which seems to me the most rational definition of a human being (and one to which a fertilized egg or a zygote would apply). As far as personhood goes, most of the pro-abortion arguments are based around the “fact†that a fetus before a certain amount of time is unviable outside of the womb (many fetuses can survive outside the womb, even as early as 22 weeks) and thus, because it is incapable of surviving independently, must be considered as “property†of the mother. This ignores the fact that infants cannot survive without the care of a parent or older guardian, and I would like to think legal abortion advocates are not generally in favor of infanticide.
Oh, fishsticks. I left your original post at the end of my reply. Disregard that last paragraph.
Where is some of this evidence of the natural law, written on the hearts of men? Look no further than the Oath of Hippocrates.
“I will give no deadly medicine to any one if asked, nor suggest any such counsel; and in like manner I will not give to a woman a pessary to produce abortion.â€
That phrase actually doesn’t appear in the Hippocratic Oath. The earliest papyrus of the Hippocratic oath is fragmentary, and the section you quote was incorrectly restored by a 19th-century scholar.
grigory,
You are right that our American “civic religion” is not Christian in name, but it is very much so in style, which is only natural, since we are still a largely Christian nation, and even those who are not Christian are stronly influenced by its sentiments. Which is why even Jews and atheists sign onto it. They may not believe in Christ, but they like the evangelical fervor of Christians, and they have been very adept at selling their neocon idealism to Christians because it does so neatly fit into certain aspects of evangelical idealism. I would point out that even the fervor of enlightenment idealists, and even socialists and communists, is also very “Christian” in its way, very much influenced by the Christian style of our western culture. The general idea of Christianity, that if you have the truth, you should “share” it with the whole world, even by force, is the very basis of the American civic religion as if pertains to foreign policy, which is why it has been promoted by so many Christian leaders. Even the more secular types felt this motivation, as evidenced by Ike’s “Crusade in Europe”, the title of his WWII memoirs and history.
The notion that democracy and freedom as we have conceived of such things is the universal truth for all people is a very clear extension of the Christian style into our own civic religion. The notion that we, like good Christian soldiers, have an obligation to go to war and invade “infidel” nations who do not share our ideals and practices, is also very much based in the history of Christianity. I would say that this resemblance is more than superficial. Particularly of late, the notion of spreading Democracy abroad has often been combined with the idea of promoting Christianity abroad. Ask George Bush what he thinks.
[...] 6, 2008, 3:13 pm Filed under: morality, philosophy, politics, religion John Cole responds to Daniel Larison on the issue of religious reasons in public discourse: Until social conservatives can understand [...]
The concern that anti-abortionists profess for zygotes, blastocytes and fetuses is trivialized by their lack of christianity/humanity involving all the other things involved with childbirth and upbringing. I never see any action about healthcare and support for mothers. If pregnancy is so blessed, shouldn’t they offer to pay for the medical services and housing for mothers contemplating abortion, and provide them an income? It would seem a more Xtian use of those six figure pastor’s incomes.
Also, practically every vocal opponent of abortion is also against contraception, and they perform incredible philosophical feats to justify it. Which makes it looks like that what they really are against is all these people running around having sex without concern of the class/racial/income/religion imprimatur that that makes them comfortable, and keeps woman in box they approve of.
So if your living life the way Jesus told us to, caring for the poor, protecting the weak, going into your closet to pray and basically living a life of humility you most certainly can say abortion is wrong and I’ll listen to you. But it’s more likely your among the other 99% that are sanctimonious twits that cherry pick from their faith to validate their wishes.
Somewhere out in the south pacific an native climbs a hill in the morning to throw clams to the sun god, halfway around the world at the same time a stadium is full of people acclaiming that a collection of oral histories collected into a book is the unaltered word of a uniquely supreme being,
Which one is the more rational?
“Perhaps that is the most telling thing of all, in that it acknowledges that we do not recognize appeals to God or obligations to God as being in any way authoritative, but we invest appeals to the self and the rights of the self with tremendous weight, which is a function of a culture that is egocentric and decidedly not theocentric.”
Wait, you mean like described in the Constitution?!?
Obligations to God are authoritative over those who recognize his authority (exactly as it should be). Thankfully, the authority of the Constitution gives me the freedom to disregard “God” as I please. And you can’t suggest that’s a bad thing, can you? Not legally?
conradg,
Your response to Grigory doesn’t really answer his question. You assert that personhood is an emergent phenomena that divides human beings with rights from those that don’t. Does this personhood emerge suddenly at birth? How? If personhood, like consciousness, is something that emerges over time, then why isn’t Peter Singer correct? Why not infanticide?
Secondly, for the vast majority of this country’s history, the law in every state in this country used to acknowledge the personhood of fetuses in that every state used to proscribe abortion. The chief way of acknowledging the personhood of a class of human beings is to pass laws prohibiting their unjust killing. The laws you refer to came about through judicial fiat, and do not have the force that just laws hold.
Thirdly, the right to life was one of the foundational beliefs of this country, as it is the foundation of every just society and government.
@M. jTh,
Exactly; that theocrats believe that the choice is between an ego and god.
Where as it seems more likely that it is egocentric of man to believe that god gives a sh!t about man. 500,00 thousand species with a notochord but humans are the important exception.
RedPhillips,
Since you are becoming increasingly pessimistic I’d be interested to know what might be your tipping point to start worrying less about an increasingly irredeemable mass culture and worry more about cultural secession and self-preservation?
What if your hoped for Revival has already come in a form you have failed to recognize? What if that Revival specifically entailed a post-Christian world?
You couldn’t ask for a better venue, or a better caliber of participants, for yet another rehashing of this insurmountable issue. What a subject to clearly illustrate the limitations of persuasion. After much thought over the years, I’ve decided that the substance of the dispute over abortion does not reach my threshold for verifiable information I find necessary to form the basis for an opinion, so I refuse to have an opinion on it.
There is too much irresolvable ambiguity about the status of ‘personhood’ for example, (demonstrated by the distinct variety of opinions, the lack of common ground between them, the intractability of disagreement and irrelevance of evidentiary proof) to escape a fundamental arbitrariness, which renders the whole debate rather pointless. I really dislike arbitrary opinions, especially when they serve as a foundation for public policy of enormous implications for personal liberty and human health.
Daniel is right on when he says that the meat of this conflict has less to do with the substance of an abstract argument, than with the real-world implications of the legal adoption of one point of view over another. Given the indistinctness of any “right†answer on the abortion question in any objective sense as it relates to human rights popularly understood, I find it absolutely reprehensible that one arbitrary viewpoint or another be utilized as justification for a policy of legal retribution normally reserved for the demonstrable initiation of major aggression by one person against another.
Imprisoning a woman, or a doctor, or executing them for murder in the first degree (as would be compelled by certain moral premises in the interest of consistency) is an actual, verifiable brutality of the state against verifiable human beings; a brutality which we might hope should never be acceptable on such infirm assumptions as opinions regarding the morality of abortion.
The comment that “no one specific moment when an egg becomes fertilized” reminds of Roe itself:
“Substantial problems for precise definition of this view are posed, however, by new embryological data that purport to indicate that conception is a “process” over time, rather than an event, and by new medical techniques such as menstrual extraction, the “morning-after” pill, implantation of embryos, artificial insemination, and even artificial wombs.”
Anyway, Kathleen Parker notes she is from God country, so knows about the passion of the people she speaks about here. Her argument appears to be largely pragmatic. As one comment noted, from the other side, continuing God-focused rhetoric with lack of broad public support can be very useful for the other side.
Parker cites Nat Hentoff (an atheist libertarian sort/Nader supporter, who also wrote in support of Bush v. Gore, against affirmative action, for the Iraq War … so not my prime model personally) as someone who promotes the pro-life side (though he did oppose Rust v. Sullivan and so no practical means to stop use of the abortion pill) on secular grounds.
Also, his “slippery slope” take simply doesn’t convince me on this issue. Doubt it would convince many others either. Push comes to shove, I doubt even he follows that line. IIRC, he doesn’t want to put women who abort in jail. Not the case for those who kill their born children, I reckon. Some slippery slope in practice!
Anyway, I don’t think one can necessarily say that those who don’t believe in God necessarily make “non-religious” stances on this issue. This is an issue of conscience so is probably broader than religion, but either way, religion is broader than God.
P.S. As to Hentoff, he’s a useful tool I guess, but the truth is he is atypical.
A core reason why many don’t use a “secular” line is that it isn’t why they are so “pro-life” to begin with. It’s like defending slavery by saying not everyone who wants it to remain legal is a racist. Just the vast majority, surely those making the most noise. The same applies for most of the “culture wars,” and it is dishonest to try to elide past the fact. So, no sale.
Indeed they do, but that is not nearly powerful enough and once again accepts–as most public pro-life rhetoric already does–that we must speak in terms of individual autonomy and individual rights. Perhaps that is the most telling thing of all, in that it acknowledges that we do not recognize appeals to God or obligations to God as being in any way authoritative, but we invest appeals to the self and the rights of the self with tremendous weight, which is a function of a culture that is egocentric and decidedly not theocentric.i>
Or that the majority (perhaps not with respect to the country as a whole, but at least among those who participate in such discussions) are not really Christian. Such egocentricism is characteristic of original sin and alienation from God, and is to be expected as a result. Without conversion there is no way to go except farther down.
Sorry. This is to close the italics tag.
“The idea that murder is wrong doesn’t rely merely on the idea of ‘robbing future happiness’, it means destroying a present, fully living human being.”
But why is it that destroying a present, fully living human being is wrong? One of the hidden premises (or enthymemes) of this argument is that the only things of value in the world are certain enjoyable mental states (this may look implausible, but if you deny it, which many people do, you have to come up with an account of why things that are not intrinsically enjoyable mental states–trees, tigers, rocks, etc.–are valuable. Would they be valuable if there were no sentient beings that had any mental states? If so, why? Is it just your intuition that they’re valuable?). If you accept this enthymeme, then the reason murder is wrong is that it brings about lots of intrinsically unpleasant mental states for the person murdered, it brings about lots of such states for the people who love that murdered person, and it robs the murdered person of a future of enjoyable mental states.
“Your argument leads to the notion that even birth control is murder, because it prevents potential babies from being born. It leads to the notion that producing any fewer than the maximal number of babies our planet can sustain is murder, because we are robbing potential human lives of their future. It means that every woman should be having sex as much as possible, and getting pregnant as much as possible, so as not to rob those potential lives of their full future. It means that “every sperm is sacred†and should be used to fertilize every possible egg. In other words, it means nothing at all.”
First of all, if my argument (and it’s not really my argument; it’s Don Marquis’s argument) led to or meant all of those things, then it would of course mean something, and would certainly not mean “nothing at all.” Second, of course the argument does not mean any of those things. Non-existent beings do not have FLOs because non-existent beings do not exist–there is nothing around to have an FLO. Sperms and ova do not have FLOs, because a sperm not united with an ovum, as well as an unfertilized ovum, have futures very different from our own. The future of a sperm is to die in a very short time without enjoying any mental states at all; the future of an ovum is to be flushed out without enjoying any mental states at all. The future of a blastocyst, by contrast, is very similar to our own.
But why is it that destroying a present, fully living human being is wrong?
Historically, it was to put an end to clan warfare. Seriously, the first public prosecutors only pursued property crimes, on the grounds that all property ownership derived from the king. Crimes against persons were to be settled privately; they came within the purview of the state much later.
The point, which is relevant to the discussion today, is that most people base most laws on consequentialist grounds. Abortion is legal because the consequences of trying to prohibit it outweigh the harm caused by its legalization.
Note that the pro-life community here and at Culture11 (two conservative sites I visit regularly) never much discuss the consequences of their preferred legal framework (rich women flying to Montreal; poor women dying at the hands of unlicensed abortionists). Debating morality in the abstract is much easier.
Note that the pro-life community here and at Culture11 (two conservative sites I visit regularly) never much discuss the consequences of their preferred legal framework (rich women flying to Montreal; poor women dying at the hands of unlicensed abortionists).
Probably because the writers are not consequentialists.
Debating morality in the abstract is much easier.
Not necessarily easier–but the intrinsic morality of the act itself is first thing to be considered.
JBraunstein,
For someone who does not have an opinion on the issue at hand, you have a lot to say on the matter. And the last paragraph and a half of your post come perilously close to an opinion.
Francis,
It’s also easier for the rich to hire contract killers because they have more money, but that doesn’t mean the Supreme Court should invent a Constitutional right to the practice so that poor people can take out inconvenient people as easily as the rich can. And poor women would not die at the hands of unlicensed abortionists. According to the CDC, 39 women died of illegal abortions in 1972–the year before Roe was handed down–while 24 women died of legal abortion that same year. Eleven women died of legal abortion in 2000. The development of effective antibiotics has made the abortion procedure relatively safe (for the mother), and overturning Roe would not mean the overturning of antibiotics–even for unlicensed abortionists.
Besides, it’s not as if there have been no negative side effects to abortion on demand: higher STD rates, a factor in the disastrously high illegitimacy rates in poor black communities, abortion clinics ignoring statutory rapes laws, and of course, the intentional destruction of tens of millions of innocent human beings.
in a world where fertility awareness and a more coherent understanding of female reproductive health existed, the abortion debate would look very different simply because you’d be faced with women having the option to prevent conception entirely without government approval or disapproval. it doesn’t mean abortion disappears entirely as a medical procedure, only that it is much more possible in such a world to discuss the conflicts between fetal and maternal rights when nearly all abortions would be due to unpreventable acts of intercourse (rape) or medical triage.
tedschan: Everyone’s a consequentialist. Did you vote? Speed on the way to work, but only to a point? Have a drink? Stopped after a couple? Get household errands done over the weekend?
99.9% of your voluntary actions taken every day are attributable to the consequences of performance / nonperformance, not some focus on “intrinsic morality”. (Although, as an atheist, I find your reliance on intrinsic vs. extrinsic morality interesting. The Bible isn’t a source of revealed truth to me, but it is to most conservatives here.)
torourke: Correlation does not equal causation. Also, your analogy sucks, unless you are proposing that the US exercise extra-territorial jurisdiction over women’s bodies. Abortion in Montreal is legal. Rich women who get abortions in foreign countries would not, therefore, be violating any law unless you apply the current crop of anti-terrorism laws to them and find that they can be punished in the US for engaging in acts that are legal in countries in which those acts occurred.
Francis: Regarding your universal statement–no.
Consequentialism
That it may seem that 99.9% of quotidian decisions are decided on a ‘consequentialist’ basis is due to the fact that most daily actions are intrinsically good or at the least neutral, so the first step of moral evaluation is passed over rather quickly.
Mr. Larison,
Unfortunately, you are correct that “secular” arguments are similarly a waste of time because Parker and her ilk (including those posting here) are not interested in “secular” arguments. What they really mean is, as you point out, a debate that is constrained to enlightenment principles of individualism. They have no other argument to support any of their viewpoints (whether on abortion or the oxymoronic “gay marriage”) except the triumph of the individual. Of course, one can refute individualism from reason as well, as has been done over centuries. As you point out, they don’t accept those arguments either.
I’m not Catholic, but, for example, the notion that Catholic opposition to abortion is based only on faith is silly. I won’t put on the pretense of being able to sufficiently treat it, but I think it is fairly characterized as being based on “right reason”, reason informed by faith. And the Aristotelian influence on Catholic theology (which Ratzinger claimed was the disagreement in the Reformation between Catholics and Protestants–he’s wrong about that, but that’s beside the point) is millenia-old.
Parker’s argument is, as you accurately point out, nothing more than an effort to constrain debate to accepting modernist prescriptions about “individuals” and “rights.” Christians of many stripes (admittedly, markedly less so among Protestants Fundamentalists and Evangelicals) reject these prescriptions. It is that disagreement that Parker really objects to because it repudiates the entire liberal enterprise, in which she is most definitely a participant.
“The notion that democracy and freedom as we have conceived of such things is the universal truth for all people is a very clear extension of the Christian style into our own civic religion. The notion that we, like good Christian soldiers, have an obligation to go to war and invade “infidel†nations who do not share our ideals and practices, is also very much based in the history of Christianity. I would say that this resemblance is more than superficial. Particularly of late, the notion of spreading Democracy abroad has often been combined with the idea of promoting Christianity abroad. Ask George Bush what he thinks.”
Universalism is largely a Christian concept, yes. That Enlightenment philosophers secularized the Christian doctrine of universal salvation and extended it to refer to political or economic salvation is no fault of Christianity, or Christians in general. Meliorism like this isn’t specific to Christian nations, only Western nations, for the same reason that the Enlightenment was specific to Western culture. Obligations to invade other countries in order to spread the invading country’s beliefs and cultural practices has been going on for centuries before Christ and is not specifically Christian, nor does it have a comparatively significant presence in Christian history.
“If you haven’t heard a good argument for why a fetus isn’t a human person, it’s because you haven’t defined what a human person is. You seem to think a human person is a “unique set of human DNAâ€. But that’s clearly a false definition, in that twins have the same DNA, but we don’t define them as a single person. Likewise, a cancer cell in our bodies has unique DNA that has been altered from our original DNA, and it is clearly human as well, so why not consider a tumor growing in our bodies to be human, with rights of its own not to be murdered?
There are all kinds of definitions of personhood we could propose, but the legal definition remains that of a “living, born human being†for very sound reasons. …”
It appears the problem is that we don’t agree on the meaning of organism. First of all, twins do not have exactly the same DNA (see http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/health/355062_reality17.html). Second of all, while a cell is an important part of an organism, and there are organisms which are composed of a single cell, a cell itself does not make an organism, iirc, so your tumor analogy doesn’t quite work. You still have not explained what makes a post-natal human being of more worth than an unborn one.
About personhood.
We are this close to, and maybe past, the time when we will be able to clone a human being from somatic cells. Not germ cells (ova and sperm) but skin cells or blood cells, whatever kind of cells. What do we call a blastocyst formed from such a process? Does that mean that we must treat all parts of our bodies as sacred (not that we shouldn’t, at least in some sense, already)?
And what does it mean about life itself, that we can create a new being totally artificially? Not just in vitro fertilization, but no fertilization at all, just cloning. Is the clone a human being?
Personhood is not something granted with fertilization. It comes with maturity, even including in utero maturity. Clearly there is a nascent person in every baby.
When one considers that nature destroys something like 2/3s of all blastocysts long before we are aware of them, claiming that the survival of a few more or less is some kind of moral choice is a hard argument to make.
Nature is profligate and early destruction for most is certain. Whether you believe that to be God’s plan or not, those are the facts.
Chimps are more sentient than new-borns, yet we feel little compunction when we destroy them for research purposes. We are all to ready to destroy a nation of fully sentient beings – what does that say about us, that the already sentient are necessary casualties, but the not-yet sentient are to be preserved at all costs?
But at it’s heart, my argument does not rely upon non-personhood. The fetus is an interloper. It has no rights the mother does not grant. Even if that means the death of the fetus.
@Jake – butnottheone:
“But at it’s heart, my argument does not rely upon non-personhood. The fetus is an interloper. It has no rights the mother does not grant. Even if that means the death of the fetus.”
Why should I believe this? My guess is that you rely on Judith Thomson’s argument that, even if the fetus is a person, a mother still has a right to abort it. Personally, I’ve never had this intuition for a moment. What I always imagine is that the fetus is a person–that is, a little human being that can think, has desires, has beliefs, a self-consciousness, etc. I can’t imagine that, in this case, it would be OK to jettison this fetus to its death, even if it were a person who begged you, “please, please don’t kill me!” Yet Thomson (and you?) thinks this is OK.
And what is the intuition on which she (and you?) bases this claim? That the mother’s body is her property, over which she has absolute authority?
Assuming I’m right about you (and I know I’m right about Thomson) I find this curious, because few people actually think that people own their bodies as they own property, such that they may do with it what they will with impunity. I mean, if they did think that, there would be no debate about euthanasia or the legalization of drugs.
Moreover, you seem to go farther than Thomson. Whereas she says that the mother has merely a right to get the fetus out of her body, you say that it has no rights that the mother does not grant. So not only does she have the right to her fetus being flushed out of her, she has a right to a dead fetus, if she wants.
Finally, what if the mother engages in unprotected sex–invites this interloper in, as it were–and then gets pregnant? Does she still have absolute authority over the fetus, even if it’s a person? And if so, does this mean you think a person should be able to invite someone else on his property and then kill him for trespassing?
Francis,
You want causation? I got your causation.
Writing in the Journal of Legal Studies (vol. 32/June 2003–if you are interested) researchers Jonathan Klick and Thomas Stratmann found that the legalization of abortion was responsible for up to a quarter of all incidence of syphilis and gonorrhea–STD’s which have increased in numbers since 1973.
Writing for the Quarterly Journal of Economics in 1996, researchers George Akerlof, Janet Yellen, and Michael Katz found that abortion on demand had resulted in a more men abandoning the women they impregnate because of the availability of abortion. They write:
“Today women are more free to choose, but men have afforded themselves the comparable option. ‘If she is not willing to have an abortion or use contraception,’ the man can reason, “why should I sacrifice myself to get married?’ By making the birth of the child the physical choice of the mother, the sexual revolution has made marriage and child support a social choice of the father.”
Furthermore, the abortion rate and the illegitimacy rate rose in tandem until 1990, and then fell in tandem after this point, suggesting that the two are connected.
For evidence of abortion clinics ignoring statutory rape laws, see the most recent case where a nurse in Indiana was suspended for counseling a girl to work around the local child abuse laws.
And finally, the abortion rate exploded after Roe v. Wade. I doubt this was a mere coincidence.
As for the contract killing analogy, I think it holds up pretty well. Rich people have an easier time of getting around the law because they have more resources at their disposal. Had O.J. Simspon not been rich and famous, he would undoubtedly be in jail now for capital murder. That doesn’t mean we should strike down laws against murder because the rich have an easier time of working around them. Post-Roe, rich women would still be able to fly to Montreal for an abortion, but the abortion rate would most likely decrease as states tightened restrictions on the practice. You may see that as unfair for poor women, but I see it as a good thing for the unborn children of poor women, who would face better odds of not being killed in the womb.
Jake,
Your argument–that because many embryos die in utero naturally, then abortion should be generally allowed–is really bad. It is simply a version of the naturalistic fallacy. Old people die of natural causes all the time, but that doesn’t make it okay to burn down nursing homes.
And I’ve never really understood the force of Judith Jarvis Thomson’s argument. She seems to be saying that because the fetus is trespassing on the mother’s uterus, then the fetus can be aborted. Do people who hold this view generally favor the death penalty for all cases of trespassing? Or just this particular case?
@ torourke:
“And I’ve never really understood the force of Judith Jarvis Thomson’s argument. She seems to be saying that because the fetus is trespassing on the mother’s uterus, then the fetus can be aborted. Do people who hold this view generally favor the death penalty for all cases of trespassing? Or just this particular case?”
In fairness to JJT, she doesn’t say that if you are careless, have unprotected sex, etc., you should be allowed to abort the fetus (though I think she does believe that, but only because she thinks, at the end of the day, that the fetus is not a person). Rather, she thinks that if you take all reasonable precautions, and you still get pregnant, then you may abort the fetus even if it is a person (this is the baby-spores example, not the violinist example, which seems to me to be an attempt to show that you should be permitted to abort a fetus in cases of rape, even if the fetus is a person).
There is no debate in my mind about euthanasia or about drugs or about suicide.
Laws about euthanasia may be mostly about preventing elder abuse. If you call it assisted suicide, then I think the state has no stake in the issue. Who has a stake in the issue are those affected by the death. The dead person is simply dead.
I haven’t read Thompson, but it is quite possible that my path to my current understanding of abortion was affected by her writing. I don’t know who has read what, and I didn’t come to this position without conversation with others.
But I would disagree with her if she says the circumstances are critical to the right. The right is absolute. There may be censure, but the right itself can not be subject to revocation based upon circumstances.
Naturalistic fallacy? Not at all. My point is that if a blastocyst is a person, then we have 10s of millions of accidental blastocyst deaths every year but I hear no outcry to save all those people. It is part and parcel of the fuzzy thinking of anti-abortionists that the logical conclusion of their positions consistently escapes them. Even though blastocysts are spoken of as people, that fact that 2/3s of all blastocysts die troubles no anti-abortionist.
Jake,
Every death, even death at the earliest stages of life, is regrettable. But the distinction between natural death and unjust killing seems lost on you. Many elderly people that I do not know will die naturally today, which is a sad part of life. But if the Supreme Court suddenly invented a Constitutional Right to killing old people, I suspect pro-lifers would react the same way they have to Roe v. Wade. No one is arguing that we need to take every full measure to “save” every person who may die naturally. We are simply arguing that it is unjust to kill innocent people, even if many of their cohorts die of natural causes.
Natural death is not an issue? We lose 1000 people in a Hurricane (certainly a natural event, leading to natural deaths) and we mourn them, but lose 10’s of millions to early pre-birth deaths, many of which may be preventable were we to study them more, and that is not an issue?
A philosophy that says that deaths due to natural causes are not a problem is not one I would admit to, not is it one that carries much logical or ethical gravitas.
No, it is simply another kind of fuzzy thinking. Deaths are deaths. If a blastocyst is a person, then we owe those persons our efforts to reduce the death rate.
On the other hand, if they are not persons, which is in fact how we treat them, then aborting them is not an issue.
“A philosophy that says that deaths due to natural causes are not a problem is not one I would admit to, not is it one that carries much logical or ethical gravitas.”
It helps if you actually understand the argument the opposing side is making, fyi. Nobody said natural deaths weren’t sad or unfortunate, only that they’re an inevitability of human existence.
Yes, nobody said they weren’t sad, and as you say, it helps when you understand the opposing side, say, for example, where I said that since we do NOTHING to prevent these unfortunate millions of deaths, that means we don’t actually care. Those who believe that blastocysts are people give lip service and NOTHING else. Their actions (or lack thereof) give the lie to their words.
Words are cheap. Actions are expensive. Follow the actions (to twist the old saying about follow the money).
I realize I am coming way late to this, but hopefully someone can still address my question.
When I studied ethics in school I found the Catholic perspective on reproductive issues to be the most persuasive, i.e. sex and its consequences should not be disconnected by humans (I’m not Catholic by the way). And I am entirely persuaded by those who argue that rights based arguments are not really compatible with christianity. So my question is, do others who think this way really see this as compatible with our constitutional traditions? I can’t see it and I really can’t see how persuasive it could be with society as a whole when its not even persuasive at my church.
torourke,
“You assert that personhood is an emergent phenomena that divides human beings with rights from those that don’t. Does this personhood emerge suddenly at birth? How? If personhood, like consciousness, is something that emerges over time, then why isn’t Peter Singer correct? Why not infanticide?”
Because there is a difference between any moral definition of personhood and a legal definition. Roe and Casey attempt to deal with this matter by drawing various lines in the sand to take into account various notions of “personhood”, such as the principle of viability outside the womb used in Casey, which takes precedence over Roe. Legal definitions by their very nature require the drawing of lines in the sand, such as being able to vote on one’s 18th birthday. It’s an arbitrary line, and we can’t say that one is suddenly mature enough to vote on that date. Many people aren’t!
With abortion, we have a general consensus outside of religious theology that a fertilized egg is not a person, and that a live-born infant is. Where the line gets drawn in legal terms between conception and birth may not be the same line you would draw in personal terms. That is why abortion is a complex moral choice, even where it is perfectly legal. WHich is why it should be up to the woman, and not the state, to make that complex moral choice, at least prior to the independent viability of the fetus.
“Secondly, for the vast majority of this country’s history, the law in every state in this country used to acknowledge the personhood of fetuses in that every state used to proscribe abortion. The chief way of acknowledging the personhood of a class of human beings is to pass laws prohibiting their unjust killing. The laws you refer to came about through judicial fiat, and do not have the force that just laws hold.:”
This simply isn’t true. We have laws against abusing or killing animals, and they are not conferred “personhood” by those laws. Laws against abortion are not, and never have been, based on the notion that the fetus was a person who had legal rights. No such law has ever been passed to my knowledge. There’s a proposed constitutional amendment that would confer personhood at conception, and this would of course not be necessary if it were already the legal precedent. It clearly is not.
“Thirdly, the right to life was one of the foundational beliefs of this country, as it is the foundation of every just society and government.”
The right to life is conferred only to “persons”, which is defined as born individuals, not fetuses. No signatory to the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution claimed that it conferred personhood on the unborn. So this just has no relevance to the debate on abortion.
Grigory,
“It appears the problem is that we don’t agree on the meaning of organism. First of all, twins do not have exactly the same DNA (see http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/health/355062_reality17.html). Second of all, while a cell is an important part of an organism, and there are organisms which are composed of a single cell, a cell itself does not make an organism, iirc, so your tumor analogy doesn’t quite work. You still have not explained what makes a post-natal human being of more worth than an unborn one.”
Interesting findings about the DNA of twins. Even so, let’s say that their DNA were exactly the same in every respect – I seriously doubt you would consider them to be the same person, would you? Of course not, because we don’t see personhood as being defined by DNA, but by functional independence. Twins are functionally independent of one another, so they are distinct persons, regarldess of their DNA similarities (even when perfect matches).
Well, that’s exactly the issue with a fetus. As long as it is not functionally independent of the mother, it’s not a distinct person. Personhood is a developmental issue, defined by independence, rather than some a priori matter like DNA. We grow into our personhood, even well past birth obviously. It’s at birth that we become legal persons, achieving a basic functional independence. But even then, our functional dependence on our parents limits our legal independence, until we turn 18.
A fetus begins with zero functional independence, and only very slowly, and relatively late in pregnancy, begins to achieve it. The issue of “worth” is subjective, but to the degree that it is not, it refers to functionality. A blastocyst is of relatively little worth, because it is so utterly undeveloped. It’s worth increases as it develops, like money gathering interest in the bank, although in this case exponentially. Which means for a long time, its value is very low. It increases dramatically towards the end of the cycle, however, as it truly develops the independent functions required of “personhood”.
This is not the same as “moral worth”, however. A woman may treasure her unborn child greatly from the very beginning of this process, and yet, even here I think it is clear that an early miscarriage is not experienced as a severe loss in the same way that a still-born birth would be, much less the loss of a child of five. Worth grows as part of the developmental process, and the formation of attachment by the woman (and father).
My tumor analogy is not meant to be taken seriously, but just as an example of the ridiculousness of trying to define “personhood” by one’s DNA, rather than developed human functionality.
conradg,
“Because there is a difference between any moral definition of personhood and a legal definition. Roe and Casey attempt to deal with this matter by drawing various lines in the sand to take into account various notions of “personhoodâ€, such as the principle of viability outside the womb used in Casey, which takes precedence over Roe. Legal definitions by their very nature require the drawing of lines in the sand, such as being able to vote on one’s 18th birthday. It’s an arbitrary line, and we can’t say that one is suddenly mature enough to vote on that date. Many people aren’t!
With abortion, we have a general consensus outside of religious theology that a fertilized egg is not a person, and that a live-born infant is. Where the line gets drawn in legal terms between conception and birth may not be the same line you would draw in personal terms. That is why abortion is a complex moral choice, even where it is perfectly legal. WHich is why it should be up to the woman, and not the state, to make that complex moral choice, at least prior to the independent viability of the fetus.”
Again, you’re not answering the question. I fully understand that the legal definition of personhood that pro-choicers prefer does not flow from their philosophical definition of the word (to the extent that they are able to define it.) I fully understand that this results in an arbitrariness with respect to when they define personhood legally. That’s why I am asking you, conradg, why you are not pushing for a legal definition that flows from your philosophical definition of personhood. After all, it’s not as if a baby ceases to depend on its caregiver (the mother in the vast majority of instances) after birth. And if the mother were to undergo some sort of financial reversal in the days after giving birth, and conclude that she would not be able to raise the baby, then why is it that the state is able to tell her that she may not kill her baby? Why shouldn’t she, and not the state, make that decision given that the baby has not achieved personhood by your own definition? In other words, where is the courage of your convictions?
It seems to me that if your legal definition of personhood is freely-acknowledged as arbitrary, then you might want to recalibrate your philosophical definition of the word (or at least stop imposing this arbitrary definition on the entire country through the courts). After all, in denying ten year olds the right to vote, to use your analogy, they are not being treated unjustly, because the right to vote depends on a certain maturity and understanding that a particular age is seen as bestowing. We also deny the right to vote to felons and illegal immigrants, yet most people do not see this as unjust. But it is impossible to deny someone the right to live without treating that person unjustly, as the right is the foundation of all other rights. That’s why the arbitrariness of the legal definition of personhood is much more weighty than any arbitrariness with respect to when we grant the right to vote.
“This simply isn’t true. We have laws against abusing or killing animals, and they are not conferred “personhood†by those laws. Laws against abortion are not, and never have been, based on the notion that the fetus was a person who had legal rights. No such law has ever been passed to my knowledge. There’s a proposed constitutional amendment that would confer personhood at conception, and this would of course not be necessary if it were already the legal precedent. It clearly is not.”
This is simply astonishing. The unborn were not considered persons under the law for most of this country’s existence? Then why were they afforded the most basic legal protection of the law if they were not considered human persons? Why was abortion against the law in every state of the country prior to 1967? The existence of such laws is the legal precedent that you claim has never existed. Blackmun tried, and failed miserably, to show that the unborn were not considered persons under the Constitution, and struck down the democratically-enacted laws in all fifty states giving the unborn the same basic legal protection we give all human persons–the right to not be killed.
“The right to life is conferred only to “personsâ€, which is defined as born individuals, not fetuses. No signatory to the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution claimed that it conferred personhood on the unborn. So this just has no relevance to the debate on abortion.”
And no signatory of the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution claimed that the unborn were not persons either, so your argument from silence doesn’t get you anywhere. The problem conradg, is that you are foisting your philosophical view of personhood not just on people who disagree with you today, but on people who would find this debate to be surreal decades/centuries ago. You and other pro-choicers make a distinction between living human organisms and human persons entitled to rights as if that distinction is obvious, rational, and the long-standing view of this country. None of this is true. It’s only over the last few decades that this view, and the irrational body/self or body/consciousness dualism that it reflects, has gained prominence thanks to Roe forcing it on the whole country. The Founding Fathers did not think that living human organisms could be separated from the notion of personhood and its attendant rights, which is why they did not bother with legal or Constitutional definitions of personhood. That’s why the laws in this country were tightened as we began to understand fetal development over time, realizing that living human beings were present even before quickening. The current legal definition of personhood is therefore not only a relatively recent legal construct, but it has established a dualistic view of the human person as the operating philosophical view of the human person.
Regarding the first argument, about lines in the sand, I thought I had made it clear that I don’t think personal morality should be made into law, so my own personal views about when a fetus becomes a person is not relevant. It’s quite clear that personhood is a developmental matter, and that as one develops the law protects one’s person accordingly, by drawing lines that are not arbitrary, but are not perfect either.
The first line drawn is at birth, when the fetus legally becomes a person. There have of course been laws against abortion for many years, but none were based on any legal foundation that states that the fetus is a person. Where is such a law written down, in the Constitution or otherwise? As far as I know, there isn’t such a law, or we would be able to declare our fetuses as dependent tax deductions, and that has alwasy been the case, even when there were laws against abortion.
Yes, you are right that the Constitution nowhere states that a fetus is not a legal person. It doesn’t declare that cats and dogs and horses are legal persons either. It doesn’t have to, it relies on the basic definition of a citizen as someone born in the United States, or otherwise naturalized. Since fetuses are by definition unborn, and no naturalization process has been undertaken by them, they are neither persons nor citizens. You can of course pass laws defining fetuses as citizens, but it is not the default position either in law or custom.
The drawing of lines about when abortion is legal are not purely based on notions of legal personhood, because if they were, the only meaningful line would be at birth. Instead, they attempt a compromise based on a number of factors, primarily the ability of the fetus to survive on its own outside the womb. Because this is dependent on changing medical technology, even this is hard to define directly. Again, the basic legal right to life is not the basis of abortion laws, and never was prior to Roe. Abortion can certainly be regulated, even outlawed, without invoking the fetus’ right to life or personhood. Past laws against abortion were based on moral attitudes, in the same way that laws against prostitution or drug use are. Legislatures felt no need to declare grand principles at stake, they just passed laws based on moral attitudes, quite common in those days.
In case I didn’t make myself clear, the reason a mother is not allowed to kill her born baby, is that we have more than a philosophical attitude to based the baby’s legal personhood on, we have an independently functioning body separate from the mother, breathing its own air, circulating its own blood, eating its own food. So it is not arbitrary to consider that baby a legal person. It has been born, and that fulfills the objective legal definition of a person. Of course, if it gets sick and falls into a coma, with no brain waves detectable, the mother does get to kill it, by pulling it off life-support, with full legal protection, because the law no longer considers that baby a “person” anymore. But that’s another issue.
conradg,
“Regarding the first argument, about lines in the sand, I thought I had made it clear that I don’t think personal morality should be made into law, so my own personal views about when a fetus becomes a person is not relevant. It’s quite clear that personhood is a developmental matter, and that as one develops the law protects one’s person accordingly, by drawing lines that are not arbitrary, but are not perfect either.”
This is very confused. The question of whether a human fetus qualifies as a person with rights is not a moral question, it is a philosophical one.
In asserting that human fetuses are not persons with rights, you are arguing under a dualistic view of the human person as if it were obviously correct–and it’s not. So you cannot hide behind the notion that you are not imposing any personal views in this debate by dressing up your opponents’ non-dualistic view of the human person as a merely moral or personal view.
From my perspective, your second sentence directly contradicts the first one. Your personal views do not matter at all, but then you immediately define personhood based on the personal view that body/consciousness dualism is the proper way to think about the human person. For example, you write that the law can protect “one’s person,” which strikes me as an odd statement. There are highly debatable philosophical assumptions you are making in these statements. In the abortion debate, you have competing philosophical views of what constitutes a human person, not one side ramming its own morality down the throats of the other side. Given the way your side has resorted to use the courts to thwart any sort of democratic give-and-take on this issue, then it seems to me that it is your side that is imposing its personal philosophical viewpoint on the rest of the country.
“Yes, you are right that the Constitution nowhere states that a fetus is not a legal person. It doesn’t declare that cats and dogs and horses are legal persons either. It doesn’t have to, it relies on the basic definition of a citizen as someone born in the United States, or otherwise naturalized. Since fetuses are by definition unborn, and no naturalization process has been undertaken by them, they are neither persons nor citizens. You can of course pass laws defining fetuses as citizens, but it is not the default position either in law or custom.”
Under this logic, illegal immigrants and permanent legal residents are not persons under the Constitution either, so I guess we can deliberately kill them, right? Again, you are operating under the notion that there is a distinction between a living human being and a human person, a distinction that has gained prominence since Roe. Past legislators and the Founding Fathers did not operate under these assumptions, so when they passed laws protecting the unborn from unjust killing, they did so because they thought the unborn were persons deserving of the most basic protection of the law. The notion that the living human beings could not meet the definition of human persons did not occur to them, which is why they did not define personhood legally. You are imposing a modern legal construct and its philosophical underpinnings on the past to justify a present injustice.
“Past laws against abortion were based on moral attitudes, in the same way that laws against prostitution or drug use are. Legislatures felt no need to declare grand principles at stake, they just passed laws based on moral attitudes, quite common in those days.”
Wow, this is glib. And profoundly wrong-headed. Past laws against abortion were based on “moral attitudes,” specifically the moral attitude that killing innocent human beings is unjust. The only way you can justify lumping abortion into the same category as drug use and prostitution is if you assume that the human fetus is not a person with rights. And again, past legislators did not feel the need to legally define who was a person and who wasn’t, because the notion that a living human being could not qualify as a person with rights was alien to them.
“In case I didn’t make myself clear, the reason a mother is not allowed to kill her born baby, is that we have more than a philosophical attitude to based the baby’s legal personhood on, we have an independently functioning body separate from the mother, breathing its own air, circulating its own blood, eating its own food. So it is not arbitrary to consider that baby a legal person. It has been born, and that fulfills the objective legal definition of a person.”
But that objective legal definition of a person is based on a subjective and arbitrary notion of what constitutes a human person. Not many people think that a human fetus in the ninth month of pregnancy is a not really a human person with any legal rights, yet that is how they are defined legally. And your views on the relative dependence of born human persons are pretty arbitrary. They are no longer receiving nutrients and oxygen from their mothers in the womb, but they are still dependent on their caregivers (usually the mother) for survival. How receiving nutrients from an umbilical cord is enough of a difference from receiving nutrients from breast milk to go from being a human non-person to a human person in the eyes of the law is really quite arbitrary.
I’m not sure how much farther we can take this. I’ll give you credit for expressing your views in a civil manner, but to me you are straining to rationalize the unjust killing of innocent human beings, and since we approach the human person from different perspectives philosophically, I’m not sure there’s much more to be gained from this back and forth.
Cheers.
Yes, we’re reaching a dead end. I was hoping this wouldn’t degenerate into parsing words, so let me clarify. If you think the issue is better described as a philosophical question rather than a moral one, I will also say that I don’t think the law should reflect personal philosophy any more than it should reflect personal morality when it comes to subjective notions of personhood. That is why the law uses a non-subjective standard – live birth – to legally define personhood. This is not the imposition of some arbitrary personal standard upon the law, it is a simple objective measure that has been relied upon for a very long time, since the begining of human civilization at least, to define a “person”.
Prior to birth, the law can protect fetuses, if that is what you wish to do, quite well without resorting to declaring the fetus a person. All you need at this point in the US is a constitutional amendment declaring abortion illegal. It need not specify fetuses as persons in order to do so, just as laws previous to Roe did not specify fetuses to be persons either, regardless of what you believe the philosophical basis of those laws was. It may be your personal philosophical beleif that fetuses are people, and that is fine, but there’s no reason to mess the law up with your personal philosophical beliefs.
The law can’t be based on subjective philosophical or moral notions, it has to be grounded in empirical evidence that can be observed by everyone. Since “personhood” as you speak of it cannot be empirically observed, it cannot be the basis for law. Instead, we can continue to define personhood in legal terms simply by birth itself, which can be empirically observed, as has always been the custom in virtually every legal system known to man.
My personal views, philosophical and moral, are not the same as my legal views, so I don’t see how you can assume that I am imposing them on the law. We could, if enough people desired, outlaw abortion without declaring fetuses persons, just as we can outlaw organ transplants, if we so desire, without declaring the our organs to be legal persons.
In fact, your way of outlawing abortion seems even less likely to pass muster with most people than the more direct method. Relatively few people see a fertilized egg as a legal person having the same rights as born human beings. I guess you are one of those few, and have a hard time recognizing what a stretch that is for most people.
And yes, you are right that my argument about the Constitution is flawed, in that it doesn’t allow for foreign citizens. The general point holds, however, that the legal custom of the time recognized only born human beings as legal entities with rights under the constitution. You can challenge that if you like, by filing suit in court for a fetus’s rights, but I don’t think you will find many legal experts who will support your idea, and judges, well, forget about it.
I do understand that you believe I am justifying the killing of innocent human beings, and I hope you realize that I don’t see undeveloped fetuses as human beings, but rather as potential human beings, and that interrupting that developmental process at an early stage is not the loss of a human being, any more than an unfertilized egg being wasted due to contraception is the loss of a human being, rather than merely a potential human being.
Philosophically, I am not a materialist who identifies either personhood or the soul with physical bodies, nor do I think God sees things that way. That doesn’t mean I see murder as acceptable either, so if I could be convinced that the early stages of pregnancy were just as human as the born life, I could be persuaded to your side of the argument, at least philosophically or morally. But legally, I don’t see any basis for it.
What can be objectively observed about human bodies is that they are a developmental process, the early stages of which are very hit and miss, and highly disposable. Over 70% of all conceptions end in early miscarriage. If we ascribe that to God, we can’t say that God places much importance on the fetus, so why should we? There really isn’t much that we could call human about an early stage fetus, other than DNA. It’s more like a small fish. I’m certainly willing to entertain empirical discussion as to at what stage of the process this creature develops into a genuine human being, and at what point abortion becomes inappropriate, but as for it being the murder of innocents, no, that emotive phrase doesn’t move me.
conradg,
The hell with it, I can’t let some of these statements go unanswered, so I’ll reply, even though you probably think I’ve signed off for good.
“Yes, we’re reaching a dead end. I was hoping this wouldn’t degenerate into parsing words, so let me clarify. If you think the issue is better described as a philosophical question rather than a moral one, I will also say that I don’t think the law should reflect personal philosophy any more than it should reflect personal morality when it comes to subjective notions of personhood. That is why the law uses a non-subjective standard – live birth – to legally define personhood. This is not the imposition of some arbitrary personal standard upon the law, it is a simple objective measure that has been relied upon for a very long time, since the begining of human civilization at least, to define a “personâ€.”
But the idea that the laws restricting or outlawing abortion in all fifty states pre-Roe were all subjective and then objective Roe comes along striking them down is pure nonsense. You think birth is some objective stance to confer personhood because it is empirical. But there is nothing objective about this. Being a living member of the human species was objective enough for legislators throughout the common law and throughout American history to outlaw abortion for hundreds of years. Again, there was no need to define a fetus as a person, because the idea that a living member of the human species was not a person, was simply not the operative philosophy throughout Western Civilization. Passing laws criminalizing abortion was enough to register their thoughts on whether a fetus qualified as a human person. Why would they offer the most basic protection of the law to beings they did not consider persons? The common law and past American legislators never did as much with animals. Even today, in our much more animal-rights oriented culture–pets and strays are routinely euthanized and wild animals are hunted. The only restrictions placed on the killing of animals occurs when they are in danger of extinction, so there is nothing analogous here with abortion law throughout history.
“Prior to birth, the law can protect fetuses, if that is what you wish to do, quite well without resorting to declaring the fetus a person. All you need at this point in the US is a constitutional amendment declaring abortion illegal. It need not specify fetuses as persons in order to do so, just as laws previous to Roe did not specify fetuses to be persons either, regardless of what you believe the philosophical basis of those laws was. It may be your personal philosophical beleif that fetuses are people, and that is fine, but there’s no reason to mess the law up with your personal philosophical beliefs.”
The reason why the laws pre-Roe did not specify fetuses as human persons was because there was no need to. Again, why offer the most basic protection of the law to unborn children if you don’t consider them persons? You earlier replied that it was because they were just legislating their morals. But the moral teaching in question–that unjust killing is wrong–makes no sense if they didn’t think that the fetus was not a human person. Past legislators didn’t pass laws saying you couldn’t destroy rocks or kill cats because they didn’t consider these things human persons. They did with fetuses.
“The law can’t be based on subjective philosophical or moral notions, it has to be grounded in empirical evidence that can be observed by everyone. Since “personhood†as you speak of it cannot be empirically observed, it cannot be the basis for law. Instead, we can continue to define personhood in legal terms simply by birth itself, which can be empirically observed, as has always been the custom in virtually every legal system known to man.”
Blackmun’s ruling was the subjective one, suggesting that living members of the human species did not qualify as persons because of arbitrary characteristics. (I realize that he wrote the “We need not settle the question of when life begins” nonsense, but that was incredibly disingenuous given that he was striking down the laws in all fifty states affording legal protections to the unborn. He was clearly stating as such that life did not begin in the womb.)
Look, you are the one that continually hedges about what constitutes a person, and whose legal preferences do not consistently flow out of your ill-defined philosophical views, so you can’t accuse the other side of being the subjective one. And your repeated statement that birth has been the dividing line between legal persons and those living human beings without rights does not address the fact that abortion was illegal throughout common law and throughout most of American history.
“My personal views, philosophical and moral, are not the same as my legal views, so I don’t see how you can assume that I am imposing them on the law. We could, if enough people desired, outlaw abortion without declaring fetuses persons, just as we can outlaw organ transplants, if we so desire, without declaring the our organs to be legal persons.”
I realize that your legal views are not consistent with your philosophical views, but you really need to stop acting like you are being completely objective about this and everyone else is being subjective. And your organ transplant analogy makes no sense. Organs are not human beings, and a transplant is an attempt to immediately extend the life of someone else–precisely the opposite of what an abortion is attempting to do.
“In fact, your way of outlawing abortion seems even less likely to pass muster with most people than the more direct method. Relatively few people see a fertilized egg as a legal person having the same rights as born human beings. I guess you are one of those few, and have a hard time recognizing what a stretch that is for most people.”
My preferred method is to overturn Roe and let the states decide what sort of abortion policy they want. The Constitution simply does not mention abortion, and the people should be able to find some sort of democratic equilibrium on the issue. This would be infinitely more just than the current imposition of one side’s views on the rest of the country.
“And yes, you are right that my argument about the Constitution is flawed, in that it doesn’t allow for foreign citizens. The general point holds, however, that the legal custom of the time recognized only born human beings as legal entities with rights under the constitution. You can challenge that if you like, by filing suit in court for a fetus’s rights, but I don’t think you will find many legal experts who will support your idea, and judges, well, forget about it.”
But in admitting that the Constitution does not consider illegal immigrants persons, then you are conceding my entire point. We can protect people from unjust killing even if we don’t spell out the fact that the people we are protecting are actually people. It seems bizarre and redundant to actually spell this out, which is why your repeated claim that the unborn were never considered persons under the law makes no sense.
“I do understand that you believe I am justifying the killing of innocent human beings, and I hope you realize that I don’t see undeveloped fetuses as human beings, but rather as potential human beings, and that interrupting that developmental process at an early stage is not the loss of a human being, any more than an unfertilized egg being wasted due to contraception is the loss of a human being, rather than merely a potential human being.”
Look conradg, I know you are arguing in good faith and I don’t consider you some sort of moral monster, I just think your views are wrong. And I am doing my best to set you straight:) With respect to an unfertilized egg, no human being has existed at all, so no injustice can occur. A human embryo on the other hand is a human being at the earliest stage of development. Embryologists do not equivocate on this matter. We can disagree on whether being a living member of the human species is enough to confer human rights, but we shouldn’t confuse being a living human organism and not being one.
“Philosophically, I am not a materialist who identifies either personhood or the soul with physical bodies, nor do I think God sees things that way. That doesn’t mean I see murder as acceptable either, so if I could be convinced that the early stages of pregnancy were just as human as the born life, I could be persuaded to your side of the argument, at least philosophically or morally. But legally, I don’t see any basis for it.”
No I wouldn’t consider you a materialist either (neither am I nor are most pro-lifers). But the materialist position and the dualist position are not the only options. Aristotle’s view, that the human person is the unity of a physical body and immaterial soul is the correct one, and has been the operating view of the human person throughout most of Western Civilization.
“What can be objectively observed about human bodies is that they are a developmental process, the early stages of which are very hit and miss, and highly disposable. Over 70% of all conceptions end in early miscarriage. If we ascribe that to God, we can’t say that God places much importance on the fetus, so why should we? There really isn’t much that we could call human about an early stage fetus, other than DNA. It’s more like a small fish. I’m certainly willing to entertain empirical discussion as to at what stage of the process this creature develops into a genuine human being, and at what point abortion becomes inappropriate, but as for it being the murder of innocents, no, that emotive phrase doesn’t move me.”
But this is a repeat of the naturalistic fallacy that I answered above. Over a hundred thousands people died in the tsunami that struck Indonesia a few years ago, so should we conclude that God doesn’t care about them and that we can kill a few more? And this statement is hard to square with your earlier one claiming that you are not imposing your personal philosophical views on others.
And there’s plenty we can say about the human embryo or human fetus. It has the radical capacity to develop into someone who can laugh, paint, think, and do all the things that make a human being distinct from a small fish. Even having the radical capacity itself is enough to distinguish it from a small fish, since small fish will never develop the ability to do anything distinctively human.
Human embryos and fetuses are unable to do those distinctive things immediately, but neither can infants, and neither can people who are unconscious, or in reversible comas, or who are severely hampered mentally, so it seems arbitrary to deny some human beings the right to life because they cannot immediately exercise their innate capabilities.
Using size, age, and the ability to immediately exercise one’s innate capabilities as a reason for denying a living human being the most basic protection of the law strikes me as unjust, and similar to the cases in history when we used other arbitrary qualifications (race, sex, sexual orientation, etc.) to deny other living human beings the most basic protection of the law.
I don’t know if you’ll even read this, but I had to get it out there.
I’m surprised you’re still here. Let me answer your main objection as succinctly as I can.
If prior to Roe, the law had considered fetuses to be persons, there would be no need for abortion laws at all. Instead, abortionists (and women having abortions) would have been tried under existing homocide laws. The existence of abortion laws, distinct from homocide laws, is an obvious admission that fetuses are not legal persons, that their death is not an act of murdering a legal person, but falls into some completely different category. In fact, the laws did allow doctors to perform legal abortions when medically necessary, which further undermines any claim that they were legal persons. We are not allowed to kill legal persons just because it might improve another person’s health.
Furthermore, the punishments and pursuit of abortionists was nothing like the punishments and pursuit of murders. Why? If the basis for abortion law was that fetuses were legal persons, there would be no difference in the punishments or the intensity of the pursuit of such criminals. The law did not have lesser punishment for the murder of infants or children than it did for adults, nor did the legal process pursue such crimes with less passion and resources – quite the contrary. So why did the law and the law enforcement community have such an entirely different standard in all respects for abortionists and the women who paid them to kill their fetuses?
I really don’t see how your position is defensible. I also don’t see why it is necessary. As I’ve said, you can obviously pass laws or constitutional amendments that declare fetuses to be persons, in which case we won’t need any laws to cover abortion, it will be well-covered by existing homocide laws. Or, you can simply pass laws or amendments against abortion, without declaring the fetus a legal person.
You seem confused by the rationale some people may have had for passing abortion laws, and what the laws they passed actually state. Some people may indeed have passed laws against abortion because they thought the fetus was a person. But most clearly did not, or they would have made the laws identical to the laws against homocide. Clearly, they did not view fetuscide as the same as homocide, meaning they did not consider the fetus to be the same as a homo, or “legal person”. They clearly considered the fetus to be some much lesser form of life, not a person covered by homocide laws at all. In fact, while it’s clear that abortion laws were meant to protect the fetus, it’s not at all clear that such laws are any different in kind from laws meant to protect the welfare of animals or parkland, but rather merely to prohibit a practice they found either morally repugnant or bad for society in general.
Now, you are right that a human fetus has a greater developmental potential than a fish. But potential is not the measure by which we make laws. If I destroy a collection of acorns, it is not the same as burning down a forest. Every egg in a woman’s body has the potential to grow into an adult human being. Should we charge any doctor performing an hysterectomy with mass murder? I think not. She we charge every masturbating adolescent boy with mass murder, because each of his sperm has the potential to impregnate an egg and grow into an adult human? I think not.
A fetus is a little further down the road towards a fully developed human being than an egg or a sperm, but not by much. It’s still little more than a small fish. Interrupting its growth at that stage is akin to the killing of a small fish, regardless of its potential. It can easily be replaced with a new fetus, and often is, when the woman is better able to handle the demands of pregnancy and child-rearing.
I understand your desire to extend the protections of the law to fetuses. It’s not that you lack compassion. I simply don’t see the legal divide between a fetus and a born child to be the same as between races or sexes. In the case of races and sexes, there is no developmental distinction between the two. If there were, if women or blacks were the developmental equivalent of animals, then I could understand making a legal distinction. But they are not. Whereas with fetuses there is a clear, and huge, developmental distinction that cannot be ignored.
One really does have to draw a line somewhere, which I assume even you do at the level of unfertilized eggs and sperm. I just draw the line at a different place, a place I think makes plenty of sense in the overall picture. I don’t agree with you that in some biological sense, an egg isn’t “human”. It is certaily alive, it is certainly composed of human flesh, it is a “human being” in that sense of the word, and it has no purpose whatsoever except to grow into a fully developed human being. It exists solely to be fertilized by a sperm and develop its human nature fully into another human being like you or me. Destroying such eggs is to destroy the potential fully developed human being that they would naturally grow into, in not interfered with and given the right conditions. So no, I don’t see any real distinction in potential between an egg and a fetus. Both are merely potential human beings in the developmental sense, but they are certainly human beings in the technical sense. The egg may lack some chromosones, but the fetus lacks a great many things as well. The natural order of things for which both were created was to grow into fully developed human beings, there really isn’t any question about that.
It’s not really relevant to the legal issues, but for what it’s worth I generally agree with the Aristotelian view that “the human person is the unity of a physical body and immaterial soul”. I simply do not believe that this unity is accomplished in the physical process of conception, nor do I think it is accomplished overnight. I think that the soul only very gradually begins to associate with the fetus at a much later stage of its development, in the latter period of its growth in the womb. Furthermore, I believe that God knows which fetuses will mature and be born alive, and that God would very rarely, and then only for specfic reasons, allow a soul to merge with a fetus that is going to die before birth, whether by natural causes or by intentional abortion. Furthermore, I also believe in reincarnation, in that we as souls attach ourselves to many bodies in succession as we learn to develop not only those bodies, but our souls themselves, by God’s Grace. This is legally meaningless, and only partially of moral significance, in that a human fetus is a living thing regardless of whether it has a soul attached to it, just as a fish is, and we should respect all living things as best we can. But I don’t place an absolute moral code on living things either. I’m not a jain, who refrains even from breathing in microbes that it might kill in the process. I consider the deaths of living creatures, including fetuses, to be part of the process of life, and not to be overly valued in the scheme of things in absolute terms. The play of human souls fully attached to human bodies is what this life is about, and much of the rest is merely landscape. I’m sorry if that sounds insensitive or humanly narcissistic, but that’s the way I see things.
conradg,
“If prior to Roe, the law had considered fetuses to be persons, there would be no need for abortion laws at all. Instead, abortionists (and women having abortions) would have been tried under existing homocide laws. The existence of abortion laws, distinct from homocide laws, is an obvious admission that fetuses are not legal persons, that their death is not an act of murdering a legal person, but falls into some completely different category.”
Nice try, but no. As medicine improved throughout the nineteenth century, abortion–which to that point was a nearly suicidal act–became less dangerous (although still very dangerous indeed), and thus more common. Lawmakers, alarmed by these developments, crafted tighter laws and punishments to address the issue, and in many cases grouped these laws in the same category as child murder. A completely different category? Seriously? Passing laws against abortion–including the threat of jail time to people who kill the unborn–is itself proof that the victims were not considered human persons? This argument is bewildering. Look, past legislators did not pass such legislation with respect to animals, or rocks, or plants, because they were not human persons. They did with the unborn, because they were considered human persons. Period.
“In fact, the laws did allow doctors to perform legal abortions when medically necessary, which further undermines any claim that they were legal persons. We are not allowed to kill legal persons just because it might improve another person’s health.”
Sure we are, it’s called justifiable homicide. I can kill someone who is threatening my life. It happens quite often. I read of an incident in Cleveland last year where a man killed a 16 year old who was attempting to rob him with a gun. The man was not prosecuted because he felt his life was in danger. Does this mean that the 16 year old was not a person? Of course not.
“Furthermore, the punishments and pursuit of abortionists was nothing like the punishments and pursuit of murders. Why? If the basis for abortion law was that fetuses were legal persons, there would be no difference in the punishments or the intensity of the pursuit of such criminals. The law did not have lesser punishment for the murder of infants or children than it did for adults, nor did the legal process pursue such crimes with less passion and resources – quite the contrary. So why did the law and the law enforcement community have such an entirely different standard in all respects for abortionists and the women who paid them to kill their fetuses?”
I would like to see your evidence for a lot of these claims, as I’m not sure the standards were as different as you are asserting. Women were typically not charged with seeking an abortion because they were seen as the second victim of the crime. Abortion was a dangerous procedure, and the woman who sought it was usually thought to be suicidal, and so the force of the law was brought to bear against the abortionist who did not have the excuse of being in dire straits. And we hand out different punishments all the time considering the variables in each situation. A doctor who aborts out of a misplaced sense of compassion for the struggling woman is not as guilty as the person who murders a business rival out of greed. Punishments can vary along these lines while still affirming that innocent humans have a right to not be killed.
“You seem confused by the rationale some people may have had for passing abortion laws, and what the laws they passed actually state. Some people may indeed have passed laws against abortion because they thought the fetus was a person. But most clearly did not, or they would have made the laws identical to the laws against homocide. Clearly, they did not view fetuscide as the same as homocide, meaning they did not consider the fetus to be the same as a homo, or “legal personâ€. They clearly considered the fetus to be some much lesser form of life, not a person covered by homocide laws at all. In fact, while it’s clear that abortion laws were meant to protect the fetus, it’s not at all clear that such laws are any different in kind from laws meant to protect the welfare of animals or parkland, but rather merely to prohibit a practice they found either morally repugnant or bad for society in general.”
You are greatly exaggerating the force of this argument. If past legislators did not consider the fetus to be human, they would not have passed any laws giving it the most basic protection humans deserve. Where did they pass similar laws with respect to animals or parkland?
“Now, you are right that a human fetus has a greater developmental potential than a fish. But potential is not the measure by which we make laws. If I destroy a collection of acorns, it is not the same as burning down a forest. Every egg in a woman’s body has the potential to grow into an adult human being. Should we charge any doctor performing an hysterectomy with mass murder? I think not. She we charge every masturbating adolescent boy with mass murder, because each of his sperm has the potential to impregnate an egg and grow into an adult human? I think not.”
No, because in performing a hysterectomy, you are not killing a living human being. You are failing basic embryology here. You, conradg, were never a sperm cell or an egg cell, since those were genetically and functionally parts of your father and mother respectively. You were once a human embryo, or a human being at the embryonic stage of development. Fertilization marks the beginning of each human being as a genetically-distinct member of the human species (please don’t make me bust out the quotes from embryology textbooks). At the embryonic stage of development, you had your own unique DNA, you maintained your organic unity throughout time, and your development was directed by your own genetic template through the embryonic stage, fetal stage, etc. A sperm cell and an egg cell on their own don’t do any of this.
“A fetus is a little further down the road towards a fully developed human being than an egg or a sperm, but not by much. It’s still little more than a small fish. Interrupting its growth at that stage is akin to the killing of a small fish, regardless of its potential. It can easily be replaced with a new fetus, and often is, when the woman is better able to handle the demands of pregnancy and child-rearing.”
Again no. A human fetus is a human being at the fetal stage of development, while an egg cell or a sperm cell is not a human being at any stage of development, making this a difference in kind and not one of degree.
“I understand your desire to extend the protections of the law to fetuses. It’s not that you lack compassion. I simply don’t see the legal divide between a fetus and a born child to be the same as between races or sexes. In the case of races and sexes, there is no developmental distinction between the two. If there were, if women or blacks were the developmental equivalent of animals, then I could understand making a legal distinction. But they are not. Whereas with fetuses there is a clear, and huge, developmental distinction that cannot be ignored.”
I don’t really see the difference between living human beings that allow one to be killed and one to be protected in law. Setting up development (which is another way of saying size) as a qualifier for the right to life is no more arbitrary than setting race, sex, or sexual orientation as a qualifier. By the way, since you seem to think that size is an important marker in personhood, does the right to life accompany it? Do really big people have a stronger claim on the right to life than midgets? That would seem to be logical endpoint of your argument.
I appreciate your views in the last paragraph, and will only state that for human rights and human equality to mean anything, then they need to be extended to all living human beings. If they are not, then it is hard to argue that we as a society take human rights and human equality seriously. We may have approached another end point, so I may sign off for good here. I respect your views, even if I think they are wrong, and again commend you on the civility and thoughtfulness of your arguments.