Anyway, I want to offer a humble corrective to Megan's comparisons between abolitionists and pro-lifers today:
The question of personhood is not definitionally religious, even if the only people interested in expanding society's definition of personhood are religious. Blacks are people, and those of us without any particular religious convictions are able to apprehend this, even if 150 years ago the only people much interested in prosecuting their claim to personhood were ministers and their flocks.The fundamental question in the abortion debate is, "When does life begin?" Slaveholders and abolitionists were quite clear that slaves were alive. What they doubted was that they were actually human and thus equals. The debate wasn't over the personhood of blacks--but, quite literally, over their humanity. This may seem like nitpicking, but here is why it's important. Moreover, if religion is to take the credit for abolishing slavery, it has to take the weight for helping enshrine it in the first place:
Indeed, though I myself am pro-choice and mostly irreligious, it seems more likely to me that the main effect of faith is to spur people to embrace causes that are personally and socially inconvenient. Slaveowners didn't need religion to motivate them to defend slavery; they had a powerful financial interest in doing so. Similarly, the pro-choice movement, at least in my experience, gets most of its activist energy from reproductive-aged women who have a strong interest in being able to terminate an unwanted pregnancy.
Well yeah, in the name of religion, people often do take positions that are inconvenient. But at least as often, people use religion as cover for what is manifestlt in their self-interest. Thus the conquistadors weren't brutalizing the native population of the Americas, they were bringing them civilization and Christianity. Slaveholders weren't simply coldly pursuing profit, they were fulfilling The Book, which had long ago decreed that blacks--by divine order--were destined to be slaves. The whole reason abolitionists had to use religion was, A.) Because there simply was no other real tool for making a popular argument and B.) Because the slave-holders, themselves, had made the case for slavery, largely, on religious grounds.
UPDATE: Several commenters have noted that "alive" question really isn't up for scientific debate, thus giving credence to comparison. I concede the first half, not the second. The claim that undergirded slavery--and really Jim Crow--wasn't simply that blacks lacked "personhood" it was that they either weren't human, were sub-human, or were a lower order of human. This wasn't simply an ethical debate--whole reams of bad science sprung up to back up this notion. Eventually, better science prevailed. I'm arguing that that's a lot more cut and dry than abortion, and that religion was a constant on both sides, and basically dominant among those who defended slaveholding. Science, which rose above the level of alchemy, on the other hand, was not.
Blaming slavery on religion doesn't hold much truck with me--but neither does giving religion the credit for emancipation. "The power of the church" was never behind abolition or the civil rights movement. In the case of abolition, the Quakers hardly represent "the church" in antebellum America. Likewise, the power of the black church was behind the civil rights movement--and even then, the black church was split on that question. I'd also add that those in the black church who were pro-CRM weren't acting out of total benevolence--indeed, they were part of an oppressed middle class that wanted access to the same world that the white middle class wanted.
In that sense, those who suspect something more at work besides religion in the arguments of pro-lifers, those who note the strange correlation between homophobes and pro-lifers, between those who think the home is the proper place for wimmen-folk and pro-lifers, between anti-birth controllers and pro-lifers, aren't crazy. Correlation isn't causation, and surely there can be a pro-life position that cleaves to none of those previously mentioned beliefs. But it's not insane to see the parallels.
One last point--confining the debate over slavery to religion actually understates how wrong the system ultimately was. To understand slavery you have to understand that it was justified by religion and by psuedo-science. Put differently, those who believed in slavery weren't simply people who were on the wrong side of God's law--they were on the wrong side of science itself. This is an important distinction between slavery and abortion. The biological theories about black people weren't ultimately defeated because of a belief in the beneficence of all God's children--they were defeated because they were bad science.
Thus it's now laughable, for instance, to argue that blacks as the missing link between ape and man. I don't think any such relief is coming to the abortion debate. There is a tangible scientific answer to the question of whether blacks are homo-sapiens. Is there really a scientific answer to whether life begins at conception?
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
There could be. But a great many debates are won or lost based on how things are defined at the outset, and there is disagreement (both within and outside of science) on how to define "life." If "life" means only "has a distinct set of chromosomes," then life does begin at conception (or pollination, or however bacteria or other microbes reproduce). If part of the definition of life is, "has a distinct set of chromosomes and can survive independently," then no, it doesn't begin at conception.
Well argued, but...
"Is there really a scientific answer to whether life begins at conception?"
Actually, yes. It's debatable as to whether a fertilized ovum is "alive" prior to implantation, but there isn't really any question that an embryo is alive after implantation. What it isn't, yet, is an autonomous human being. So I would argue that the parallels to the slavery debate are actually stronger than most people give them credit. The difference being that black people obviously really are human beings.
The first part of your corrective is wrong, and megan's comparison is apt. Pro-lifers and pro-choicers are also both clear that the fetus is, in fact, "alive." The issue really is when it has (or of what portion it enjoys) the rights of living people, or if you will, to what extent the fetus is a person. That resembles in some ways the issue of how one was to view racial minorities in pre-abolition society.
If I believed that not accepting Christ condemned people to an eternity of torture, I'd be an unrepentant zealot.
To quote one of them, I think speaking for many: "Okay, I do think you're going to hell. But I'm not happy about it."
Megan seemed to miss this too, though her commenters were on it--living in a civil society that tolerates religious diversity is good for one's religion. People can understand that. Being tolerant needn't mean that you go all the way to everyone's religious ideas are equally valid and reflective of the truth, and one's own religion is simply the boat that works for oneself. It is logically consistent to believe
a) I am right, and everyone outside my religion is in deep trouble
b) I would hope to bring as many people with me as I can, but I will show them through my acts, not by endless hectoring that causes everyone to tune me out*
c) My religion addresses my own conduct. I can't force that code of conduct on the rest of society without opening the door for them to impose their contradictory beliefs on me.
You can zealously believe in your religion and let it permeate your life (think the Amish) without needing to hector your non-Amish neighbors about their beliefs.
Is there really a scientific answer to whether life begins at conception?
To tweak the question more, the question is when does a conceptus become a person with equal rights under the law. An embryo is a living thing; so is algae. So are violets. And e coli.
Most people will agree that a viable fetus 2 weeks from its due date is pretty much a person. And a large number, myself included, think that a single cell lacking a brain or spine or any of the apparatus to think and feel is not a person. We put the personhood somewhere in the middle of that gestation, which means it will be a little arbitrary whatever date we pick. I'm okay with mid-second trimester, when the nervous system is getting hooked up, ymmv. I think the broad cross-section of the electorate falls into 1st trimester = mother's business, 2nd trimester we're not sure, 3rd trimester we're uncomfortable with abortion that doesn't have a strong medical need.
Historically, the Catholic church differentiated between abortions--it was a much greater sin to abort after quickening (when you feel the baby moving, which coincidentally is mid-second trimester) than before, and it was a serious sin to abort to cover up the mother's loose living, a more minor sin to abort because a poor woman couldn't feed the children she already had.
*The Bible addresses this in the Pauline letters with the instruction to socialize and eat with your heathen neighbors, but if they sacrifice a calf to Ba'al don't eat the meat or drink the blood.
"The fundamental question in the abortion debate is, "When does life begin?" Slaveholders and abolitionists were quite clear that slaves were alive. What they doubted was that they were actually human and thus equals. The debate wasn't over the personhood of blacks--but, quite literally, over their humanity. This may seem like nitpicking, but here is why it's important. Moreover, if religion is to take the credit for abolishing slavery, it has to take the weight for helping enshrine it in the first place:"
No, Megan's formulation is much better.
Everyone with any scientific knowledge whatsoever will agree that even as small as a 16-cell zygote, it is 'alive'. Plankton is 'alive'. Mold is 'alive'. Your strep throat bacteria is 'alive'. But we don't give personhood rights to any of those things. Also there is no scientific question about whether or not a fetus is 'human'. It absolutely is.
So Megan's question is exactly right: the question is "at what point do we give the fetus protectable rights that we give persons". It is exactly the same question that was asked of slaves: "at what point do we give black people the same protectable rights that we give persons". It was expressed slightly differently at the time of the civil war (i.e. blacks are not fully 'human') but the meaning of the term 'human' as used in those debates and 'person' as used here is analytically identical.
Now that doesn't dictate the outcome. Some forms of life are pretty clearly not persons. We don't give full personhood rights to certain obvious 'humans' at the late stages of life (see brain death). But Megan is right about what the key question is.
History has shown that, even without God, people have no problem exuding homophobia, sexism, racism, xenophobia etc.
Really? History has shown that? When, exactly? There aren't exactly a large number of historic examples of societies that rejected religion. There's basically two? And even those examples are problematic; there's every reason to consider Soviet and Chinese socialism religion in another form, inappropriately adopting the mantle of "atheism." (For the most part, the "atheism" label was used to denigrate those movements by believers, not really something those movements adopted themselves.)
So Megan's question is exactly right: the question is "at what point do we give the fetus protectable rights that we give persons".
Is the right to take up residence inside another human being, and draw on their body's resources for sustenance, one of those protectable rights that we give persons?
If not then isn't personhood a bit of a red herring? Whether or not the fetus is a person or not is basically irrelevant if it's unlawfully trespassing.
So here's my take on the whole mess.
First I believe that man isn't a rational animal. Man is a rationalizing animal. Basically most people don't start off with a question and find a logical answer that fits the facts. Most of us start off with an answer and then seek reasons to justify that answer.
Religion as a human institution evolves over time, and the debates that once sparked thousands of people to take up arms or to write pamphlets defending predestination or consubstantiation vs transubstantiation don't have much of an apeal to an educated modern reader.
The real debate isn't between types of religions but between enlightenment values and religious values. Religion sees no need for the enlightenment and the enlightenment sees no need for a moral order based on a omniscent god when they have atoms and Darwin.
This debate is at least as old as the Ancient Greeks if you want a good description of it that still touches the modern mind read Aristophanes' the Clouds.
With regards to slavery, I personally believe that the theories justifying the inferiority of African Americans only gave way when the political system changed. Without slavery and jim crow there was no reason to rationalize the so-called "inferiority" of another group of people. When political or social systems change the rational that upholds the system ultimately gives way to another system of social mores. The new social mores are oftentimes no more reasonable than the old but they represent a new political reality.
Like I said we wish to believe that people are rational creature but all too often we act on emotions and then seek reasons to justify that behavior. The abortion or the gay marriage debate is no different than the civil rights or the abolitionist debate of earlier times. Those who are pro-life may have logical reasons for believing life begins at conception but at base bottom ground zero they feel that abortion is murder and thus they seek to justify their position.
The gay marriage debate is similar. Those who wish to ban gay marriage feel that Homosexuality is a deviant lifestyle and so they invoke whatever justification that they can to find a rational that justifies their worldview.
As a pluralist I believe that the world is big enough for everyone. We have to allow the bigots enough rope to hang themselves on the trees of public opinion. We cannot however dictate to people concerning what they should think. Else we become no better than the intolerants.
"Really? History has shown that? When, exactly? There aren't exactly a large number of historic examples of societies that rejected religion. There's basically two? And even those examples are problematic; there's every reason to consider Soviet and Chinese socialism religion in another form, inappropriately adopting the mantle of "atheism.""
While Nazism did talk about religion and have some religious overtones, they made it clear Hitler and the state in their worldview were more important than any concept of god and religion. It's clear the Nazis were anti-Semitic, homophobic and racist. The Anti-Semitic League in Britain was founded by an atheist. After all, not every country with a majority of religious people is like Afghanistan under the Taliban or much of Europe and Catholic countries' colonies (like Goa) under the Inquisition. Individuals can be irreligious in a predominantly religious society. However, the in group / out group dynamic of religion has often led to racial homogeneity within certain religious communities (such as the majority of Frenchmen being both Catholic and French for centuries), thus helping to further spur bigotry.
"So Megan's question is exactly right: the question is "at what point do we give the fetus protectable rights that we give persons". It is exactly the same question that was asked of slaves: "at what point do we give black people the same protectable rights that we give persons". It was expressed slightly differently at the time of the civil war (i.e. blacks are not fully 'human') but the meaning of the term 'human' as used in those debates and 'person' as used here is analytically identical."
Reading over the personal writings of both slaves and slave owners, it does seem a bit apparent that slave owners knew on some level black slaves were human. Jefferson's children saw some of his slaves as almost family and when as adults they would write to him, they made sure to mention to say hi to those slaves. Slave-owners often would rape slaves and I doubt these slave-owners considered themselves in favor of bestiality. These rapes often led to children and you can't have children by raping a cow, which they obviously knew. It was no secret the White House was designed by a former slave. Slave owners took great pains to ensure that slaves couldn't learn to read to prevent them from becoming educated and self-empowered. All in all, the idea that slaves weren't human seems more like a justification thought up after-the-fact to deal with the obvious ethical contradictions and guilt.
Sanjay nailed it. the issue is when does individuality begin, when does that piece of the mother and father's bodies become a separate and individual thrid person with his/her own rights.
The issue becomes a problem only in a moral system that sets individual rights above the good of the tribe.
"The biological theories about black people weren't ultimately defeated because of a belief in the beneficence of all God's children--they were defeated because they were bad science."
As a caveat to what I said earlier I would say that the bad science only gave way after the civil war had removed the social order which upheld the use of the bad science to begin with.
Still even then it was a hard slog, and attitudes didn't begin to change among some people until the 1960's.
Vis à vis the corrections above, it is certainly true that religious people found labored justifications for slavery in the Bible. But first, I would emphasize still more than you do that there were no shortage of putatively "scientific" justifications for slavery and servitude within the secular Enlightenment as well. Second, the broader story of Christian opposition to slavery includes much more than the Quakers, from the work of an Evangelical Christian like William Wilberforce in England (working with both secular and religious allies) all the way back to Pope Paul III's Sublimis Dei in the sixteenth century, which condemned slavery and upheld the notion that all human beings were rational beings with souls.
As Paul III's bull suggests, the conquistadors were not heroes of the Church. Bartholomé de Las Casas (a Catholic bishop), famously denounced their cruelty, and devoted his life to convincing the Spanish monarchy to place limits on their depredations.
Given that slavery was everywhere in the Ancient World and was almost never questioned, nor castigated as immoral or unnatural; that slavery became very marginal and even altogether absent from large parts of medieval Europe; that Christians long gave very forceful and active condemnations of slavery in both early modern and modern Europe-- for all the grievous flaws of Christians, I would actually give Christianity (and assumptions drawn from Christian thought about a universal humanity in which all individuals are equal in the eyes of God), substantial credit for giving the West, if nothing else, a very bad conscience about slavery that it simply hadn't had before.
As for abortion, while Deborah is right that there was a kind of sliding scale in Christian thinking about abortion, at no point was it considered anything other than a moral wrong-- it simply became more wrong as the pregnancy moved closer to term. Given that we now know that a fetus is clearly alive (something that premoderns were less sure about, given their very limited scientific knowledge), these distinctions have less meaning now. In this way, within various paths of moral and theological thinking, the abortion question has has been changed by scientific investigation, as you observe once happened with racism-- but not in a way that favors the pro-choice side (so that, as several posters have said, the debate now turns on the beginning of personhood).
Shorter TNC:
Personhood isn't the same as literal humanity. The 19th and early 20th century was a hotbed for all sorts of racial quackery and "science" on how human black people actually were. That stuff--as much as religion--undergirded slavery and Jim Crow. Science ultimately settled the "humanity" question of black people.
Moreover, whereas large swaths of devout Christians consider themselves pro-life--the line from those guys to folks organizing in the black church to the abolitionists is dubious. Most southern devout Christians in the antebellum America weren't abolitionists. Ditto for the Civil Rights movement--it's not like masses of white evangelicals were backing King in the 60s.
Also, man you should read up on Bartolome. It's true he argued against the brurtalization of Native Americans and slave labor in particular. One guess as to who he thought should replace the Indians as slave labor. You know where this goes...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartolom%C3%A9_de_Las_Casas
It is fascinating how the biological and theological descendents of the Christians who opposed abolitionism and civil rights have now claimed the mantle of abolitionism and civil rights. I'm not sure whether "appeasing a guilty conscience", "projection", or "chutzpah" is the most accurate description of this behavior.
The Anti-Semitic League in Britain was founded by an atheist.
The what?
Science does reveal one tricky problem for the belief that life begins at conception: monozygotic twins. A single sperm fertilizes a single egg, but two individuals come from that zygote. Here's an example of how the Catholic church approaches this problem:
http://blog.purepistos.net/index.php/2007/11/18/the-problem-of-the-ensoulment-of-identical-twins/
Chet, from what I can remember about it from an article in The Nation from like five years ago, the Anti-Semitic League was an active hate group starting in 19th-century Britain with the goal of ethnically cleaning Britain of Jews. I may be getting the name wrong, but I do remember the author of that article did mention the founder was an atheist (why this was mentioned I can't really remember).
"Several commenters have noted that "alive" question really isn't up for scientific debate, thus giving credence to comparison. I concede the first half, not the second. The claim that undergirded slavery--and really Jim Crow--wasn't simply that blacks lacked "personhood" it was that they either weren't human, were sub-human, or were a lower order of human. This wasn't simply an ethical debate--whole reams of bad science sprung up to back up this notion. Eventually, better science prevailed. I'm arguing that that's a lot more cut and dry than abortion, and that religion was a constant on both sides, and basically dominant among those who defended slaveholding. Science, which rose above the level of alchemy, on the other hand, was not."
I guess I don't understand where you think the non-cut-and-dried confusion on the science is.
On the point of life, the fetus is definitely alive. Slaves were definitely alive. Science has no confusion in either case.
You seem to be stuck on a question like "is the being we are talking about biologically the same species as people we normally give rights to or is this being of some lesser species" as if it turns out differently for slaves and fetuses. In the slave case there was some psuedoscience that pretended the answer was "lesser species". But the clear scientific answer is "same species". The same is true for a fetus. There is absolutely no doubt whatsoever on that matter.
I wonder if you aren't getting stuck on the term 'personhood' because it is being used in its somewhat technical sociological 'term of art' sense. Is that the problem? Personhood in this sense means that the question turns on societal definition rather than a scientific one.
It does. The question isn't scientific. The scientific questions are relatively easy. When does the life of that genetic individual begin? Answer, conception. Is it of the same species as humans? Answer, yes. When is it a person enough to get rights? Answer, that isn't a scientific question. That is a moral question.
Yes--the broader argument about religion's role in emancipation and the CRM aside--that is my hangup. Again, I think people understate exactly how much 19th century science argued that blacks were either not human or sub-human. But it offered a rather clear line for refutation.
But this is where the bigger problem lies for me. If you extend this of "personhood," I'd argue that the "power of the church" in fact wasn't on the side of establishing black personhood. The black church was on that side. It wasn't like beneficent white people sat around debating this and then a conclusion was reached. More accurately blacks--in the main--applied pressure from the time of emancipation up through the 60s and the walls slowly fell. During that time, the power of the dominant religious communities in this country weren't much help. We've kind of forgotten that before Falwell authored the religious right, he was a segregationist.
OK, but one rejoinder: it is a bad idea to assume that the historical or cultural associations attributed to a given group of people is a useful guide to the rightness of their convictions about this or that discrete question. To have been or to be right on one question doesn't mean you're right about others, or will be right in the future.
In this way, through much of nineteenth century Europe, anti-imperialists were often associated with reactionary conservatives, with good reason-- but on this question at least, with all their nostalgia for the ancien régime, etc., they were right. The same is true for a given group of people's present political views: the American advocates of women's suffrage were right about suffrage, but those that argued for women's suffrage as a way to preserve Jim Crow were obviously wrong. In the nineteenth century there were plenty of New England, Thomas Nast types who were laudably progressive on race but also anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic bigots of the first order. There were some progressive Americans in the early to mid-twentieth century who had all the right ideas about race and social justice at home, but some truly awful ideas about Stalinism abroad.
The acceptance or rejection of a position by historical/political association leads to some bad places; better to judge each issue on the argumentative merits rather than by the associations of (some of) the people making them.
I think that it's a question of echoes.
While there isn't a whole lot of overlap between the whole issues of abortion or slavery, the arguments against the arguments against both have echoes.
That is to say, the responses to "you are doing something wrong here" have overlap.
The discussion of right/wrong becomes discussions of property rights and the limitations of the state to infringe upon property rights. It ceases to be an argument about the rightness/wrongness of abortion/slavery, but about the "right" of you to say "you can't do that!" and certainly about how much power should be given to prevent such things.
There actually used to be quite the vibrant debate about this on the left (think The Nation)... but then I guess they looked at their bedfellows and, like so many debates, positions were picked not on their merits, but by who was on the opposing side.
The claim that undergirded slavery--and really Jim Crow--wasn't simply that blacks lacked "personhood" it was that they either weren't human, were sub-human, or were a lower order of human. This wasn't simply an ethical debate--whole reams of bad science sprung up to back up this notion.
I'm still not buying this. What could be the meaning of a debate about whether blacks "weren't human, were sub-human, or were a lower order of human" if not an ethical debate about personhood?
TNC claims the debate was also about science, in addition to the ethics. But the science (so-called "scientific racism") was *obviously* an attempt to offer an ad hoc rationalization for a prior commitment to the view that blacks weren't fully persons in the moral sense.
The real debate was about the ethical questions. The rest was (and is) window dressing.
Chet, from what I can remember about it from an article in The Nation from like five years ago, the Anti-Semitic League was an active hate group starting in 19th-century Britain with the goal of ethnically cleaning Britain of Jews.
I can't find anything on the internet about such an organization in Britain, and I've never heard of it. There was a French organization by that name, but it was started by a pagan, not an atheist.
I'm aware that there were quite a few anti-semitic organizations in 19th-century Britain, but the ones I know about were predominantly religious and probably thought just as poorly of atheists.
As pointed out by Stephen Jay Gould's "Mismeasure of Man" - separating 'good' science from 'bad' science is easier said than done. The science that demonstrated that some races were inferior to others is no less 'modern' or 'enlightened' than science today. Comparing it to alchemy belies the fact that, despite its appearance of purity, science is still very much subject to biases and implicit assumptions. In this way it is hardly different from other fields of knowledge, from economics to social sciences.
The discussion seems to miss the uncomfortable middle in ante bellum America--the many people who thought slavery was an evil but saw no practical way to end it. Religious impulses, whether Quaker, Calvinist, Unitarian, or Transcendalist, were a major force in emphasizing the evil. While few were ready to do away with the Constitution, many became ready to resist on the day to day level. (Might compare it to people today who eat meat but rally to vote for initiatives requiring humane treatment of animals.) And there was no conflict between science and religion, one examined the wonders of God's creations to draw closer to him And one had a moral duty to understand the world and to use the understanding to improve the world, whether by fighting slavery, promoting public education, spreading the word of God, fighting vice, or giving equal rights to all humans.
(FWI - Bill, I actually started this before I read your post.)
I may be Christian but I’m certainly no Conservative. I do consider myself Pro-Life but I strive not to be a militant about it. I don’t demonize those with sincere Pro-Choice views. And if I was a politician, I would seek to reduce abortion rates though sexual educations programs, (I.E. Free birth control), pre-natal assistance and related post-birth health care, long before I tried to eliminate them entirely though changes to the law.
What I would find interesting would be to take some of those members of Warren's Saddleback Church and ask them this hypothetical scenario. I mean, since esoteric questions were already in abundance Saturday night, (Defeating evil?!?), this one wouldn’t be too out of place.
You are present during the debates of the drafting of the constitution. Once it’s all drawn up, do you advocate ratification as is? If you do, you endorse slavery, at least tacitly. If you don’t, due to your objections over the immorality of slavery, you almost certainly contribute to dooming the chances of America’s existence.
Since you can’t really have American without the Southern colonies, you can’t have America without slavery, at least way back in the 18th century. And even by this early time, there are plenty of enlightened people who realized that Africans, at least have the potential, to be equal to Europeans in terms of their mental faculties.
Now even those framers like Patrick Henry and Alexander Hamilton, who knew slavery to be wrong, chose their country over their morality. So, what do you do Mr. and Mrs. Conservative Christian, what do you do?
Ta-Nehsi:
Slave holders thought slaves were alive and human, but they did not think they were equal. They thought of them more as children (after all, we think today that children are alive and human but not equal to adults).
Most of the pro-slavery literature in the day was paternalistic.
And there is a reason they call it "emancipation".
I recommend "Roll, Jordan, Roll" as a good insight into the reality of slavery.
Joel, thanks for the interesting link to the ensoulment discussion in the case of monozygotic twins. I see there is no official doctrine, but the writer believes that since God knows the original fertilized egg will split, he installs two souls at the moment of conception.
Which leads me to thoughts about an even rarer scenario. If the writer is correct about the process, does God install two souls when he knows that the fertilized egg will split, but one twin will be partially absorbed by the other, creating a headless parasitic twin? So a soul is released at the moment when the parasitic twin is no longer a person? Possibly when the brain no longer functions? The concept of a soul sure leads to some nutty possibilities.
Full disclosure: I am a devout deist, but I greatly admire Christians who work for peace and justice.
Often, religion masks conflicts which are really about power. Who believes that the Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland where really fighting over, say, whether having two sacraments is better than having seven. And I have read that the suicide bombers are not necessarily the most pious Muslims (see Robert Pape). Two of the 9-11 bombers were drinking in a tittie bar the night before they committed their heinous crime.
Now to put on my Pedantic Dick Hat: I lived in the mountains, so I know the expression is *cut and dried* because it takes firewood at least a year to dry out after being chopped down.
Yes, I realize that I made two typos in that post in case anyone else wants to get out his Pedantic Dick Hat.
so like totally down,
If I get what you are saying in a nutshell is that you believe religion is politics by other means.
If by politics we mean power-relationships between groups.
That's a good way of putting it, Scorn.
I would say that religion is OFTEN politics by other means because I don't want to offend some very decent people who are doing wonderful things in THIS realm like the Friends and the good people at the Church of the Brethren.
Just to let you know Ta-Nehisi, I posted to Megan McArdle's reply to this subject, made what I thought was a reasonable if pointed response to some of her claims and the following happened: she misread something I said, claiming that I said the opposite and, having done that, called my references to the history of the abolitionist movement a "10th grade history gloss" (while assuring me that she didn't mean to be insulting), then blocked me from further responses.
Guess I won't be readin' her blog no mo.
Chet:
*Whether or not the fetus is a person or not is basically irrelevant if it's unlawfully trespassing.*
The obvious response to this is that the mother (assuming she wasn't raped) chose for the fetus to take up residence inside her.
To push an analogy way too far, you aren't unlawfully trespassing if I drag you onto my lawn while you are unconscious.
Ninja Zombie: that's a rather silly gloss on human biology. Even people who *want* to get pregnant don't *choose* to get pregnant. They might choose to not prevent pregnancy, but that's a different ball game. You can't will a sperm to fuse with an oocyte and fuse to uterine wall, it just happens given certain highly contingent circumstances. And it happens like less than 1% of the time people get it on. And you have to be jerk to assert that women aren't allowed to be human and have sex without having babies.
My guess is Chet is paraphrasing Judith Jarvis Thompson's 1971 essay "A Defense of Abortion." It's the bee's-knees if you can handle analytic philosophical ethics. I still haven't seen an adequate response to it.
http://spot.colorado.edu/~heathwoo/Phil160,Fall02/thomson.htm
The basic thrust of her argument is pertinent to TNC's post: even if you agree that a fetus is the full moral equivalent of an adult human being, that still does not settle the question of whether the woman is obligated to keep it alive in her body. So all this hullabaloo over 'life' and 'persons' and 'humanity' is a semantic dance around the real question of whether or not we ought to morally and legally require women to provide another living body access to the basic life support provided by her body. I think the answer is clearly no. We don't do it anywhere else and we shouldn't do it with pregnancy.
Which is why I think it's a rather ridiculous conflation to connect abolitionists and anti-choicers. Such an analogy only makes sense if you get the moral and political contours of abortion dead wrong, which we almost always do in our fine country. Anyway, if you want to make a connection between the two, then it should be between pro-choicers and abolitionists. Lifers and slavers think that one person's body is rightfully controlled by another person in arbitrary circumstances. Choicers and abolitionists don't. End of story.
The obvious response to this is that the mother (assuming she wasn't raped) chose for the fetus to take up residence inside her.
Clearly not, if she wants to get an abortion. I mean, isn't that self-evident? That a woman who wants an abortion doesn't want a human being living inside her?
I see there is no official doctrine, but the writer believes that since God knows the original fertilized egg will split, he installs two souls at the moment of conception.
So if God knows the woman is going to get an abortion, why bother ensouling the fetus? And therefore, how is it murder?
Some points on person-hood/Humanity. I really don't understand TNC's distinction between the two and don't think it matters. Bluntly:
The Africans who sold other Africans to Europeans and Arabs over the course of centuries probably thought of those being sold as " persons" and " humans"; they just didn't think of them as equals.
Again, its hard to understand that outside of the Christian world practically nobody objected to slavery prior to the 18th century. Africans, Asians, and Arabs continued to practice slavery right into the 20th Century, and ceased to do so only through Western ( specifically Christian) pressure.
It was the genius of Christianity that it took seriously the idea that you should love all people, even "sinners" and "enemies" - which is the lesson of the parable of the Good Samaritan. That is the basis of the Christian case against slavery, which first had to be made against other Christians, then eventually against the whole world.
Its a measure of how far we have come that TNC assumes the case against slavery was obvious. It certainly wasn't -even in Africa, the home of most of TNC's- and my- forbears .
If rights imply responsibilities, what exactly are a fetus's responsibilities?
"The whole reason abolitionists had to use religion was, A.) Because there simply was no other real tool for making a popular argument and B.) Because the slave-holders, themselves, had made the case for slavery, largely, on religious grounds."
Actually, this gets it almost exactly backward. At first, Europeans had no idea how to justify the pracice of slavery, which they had ALREADY begun to practice absent a moral justification. The main problem was that they had an oblgiation to try to convert their slaves, but that, under then prevailing Christian law, a Christian could not hold another Christian in slavery. Their answer -- at least in the American colonies -- was a theory of racial supremacy.
Some did do through resort to biblical passages as justification. The idea that black people originated with the "curse of Ham" became popular (and likely originated) only in 17th and 18th centuries AS A RESPONSE TO the slave trade that by then had already begun.
But most slaveowners were wealthy Episcopalians and Presbyterians, who were not Bible literalists in the requisite sense and did not engage in this sort of cherry-picking to support slavery. Others, such as Baptists, started out being opposed to slavery (or at least in favor of equality of races within the church for purposes of membership, voting, etc.), but gradually adopted the dominant racial theory without which no Christian could have supported slavery.
The whole story is well told in Winthrop D. Jordan's The White Man's Burden.
Is there really a scientific answer to whether life begins at conception?
Scientifically, biological life begins at conception. There is no doubt about that. Your life began when you were conceived. You cannot skip this step and become a walking, breathing, human being.
However, we (and I'm generalizing here) don't necessarily care much for biological life. Protozoans aren't high on PETA's protection list. This kinda frames the scientific part of the abortion question: when does the pre-human biological specimen (zygote, embryo, etc..) become a "human" (i.e. a homosapien)?
This definitely happens in the first-term of pregnancy, so pretty much after that point you are terminating the life of a human being. Human neurological development begins at this stage, along with development of feet, fingers, lips, eyes, etc...Brain waves have been recorded as early as the second month of pregnancy. So, again, there really is no (scientific) debate about this.
Here's where the rub is, and here's where religion plays a big role. When does this new human being develop an identity (or spirit, if you will)? If you believe that we are all imbued with individuality and the rights and freedoms associated with that, this is an important stepping stone. The scientific part of the debate is over; after the second month of pregnancy, the biological being you are killing is a sensory human being. The philosophical debate (legal and/or religious) is just beginning.
That's why I think most Americans, if pressed on the issue, would say that they feel 2nd and 3rd term abortions should be outlawed unless it is a life-or-death decision between the mother and the child (in this case, we leave it to our medical professionals to help determine the best course of action). "Life-or-death" meaning if a mother does not terminate her pregnancy she will die from associated trauma, infection, or other disease being caused by her fetus. "Life-or-death" not meaning the mother just doesn't want the baby and we find some reason to excuse the abortion. The question then becomes: legally (constitutionally) can this type of a mandate be written into law? Roe supporters say no, though nearly any honest legal scholar will tell you that Roe was a complete legal overreach. So that's where we are stuck, and most likely will be stuck for eternity...unless another abortion case is heard by SCOTUS and a new precedent is set.
Re: The fundamental question in the abortion debate is, "When does life begin?"
No it isn't, because that question is absurd on the face of it. There is never a moment when "life begins". Sperm and egg are indisputably alive and they do not die and resurrect anytime in the reproduction process. Life began about four billion years ago. Period. The question before us is who should have the various rights of personhood and at what stage of their existence. We've managed to do a pretty good job of defining that boundary at the end of life (though not so good a job that we were spared the Terri Schiavo circus), but we've been unable to agree at the other end of things.
Re: The debate wasn't over the personhood of blacks
Enslaved Blacks had no personhood: they had no rights whasoever that were legally enforceable. Free Blacks did have some of the rights of persons, though the extent of this varied by jurisdiction. (Women of course were also deficient in being denied some rights). Meanwhile no one doubted Blacks were human-- the very fact of what polite society called "yellow babies" proved that they were the same species as their masters.
Re: Really? History has shown that? When, exactly? There aren't exactly a large number of historic examples of societies that rejected religion.
There have been plenty of instances of people who evince bigotry, of various sorts, without it having any religious aspect at all. Surely the good old profit motive is not free of blame here-- quite often it's very much in people's self-interest to hate "The Other" and keep him/her under their thumb. Meanwhile expanding the boundaries of religion to include any negative ideology (like Naziism or Maosim) is cheating. The Nazis and the Communists were political movements, pure and simple. There was nothing religious about them.
Re: And there is a reason they call it "emancipation".
Cute folk etymology, but the "man" in that word is from Latin "manus" for hand: A slave is released from his master's hands.