If abortion truly is what the pro-life movement says it is -- if it is the infliction of deadly violence against an innocent and defenseless human being -- then doesn't morality demand that pro-lifers act in any way they can to stop this violence? I mean, if I believed that a guy working in an office down the street was murdering innocent and defenseless human beings every day, and the governing authorities repeatedly refused to intervene on behalf of the victims, I might feel compelled to do something about it, perhaps even something unreasonable and irresponsible. Wouldn't you?One argument, I guess, is that a moral prohibition against all murder guides the pro-life movement. Hence taking a life, to save a life is just as wrong. Of course we know that many pro-lifers don't actually believe that, because that would require religious conservatives to be both pro-life and anti-death penalty.
I think this is a solid point--if you truly believe abortion is murder, that it's the wanton destruction of human life, than violent action really seems like a sensible strategy.
But once you accept that there is a such thing as justifiable murder, how much distance is there between that position and the killing of abortion doctors? One could argue for fealty to the law, but to a law that condones the murder of children? In that context, why does law even exist?
What I suspect is that many pro-lifers may well believe that a fetus is a "life," but in their heart of hearts, they actually have a qualitative range. I don't know that they actually believe that aborting a three month old fetus is exactly the same as murdering a three month old baby. "Abortion is murder" seems like a slogan meant to whip up your own, and attract attention. But in truth, do pro-lifers really believe it? Can they truly morally maintain that all abortion, all the time, is murder? If so, I don't know how you really condemn someone for killing George Tiller.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
The rhetoric of the anti-abortion crowd qualifies them to be marginalized. They are in the same category as the KKK and other domestic terrorist groups who advocate violence against law-abiding citizens as a solution to a difference of opinion.
They will try to run away form the actions of this simple, unstable man who murdered a doctor. But their words empowered him to act, and they should be held accountable, if only in the court of public opinion.
If one believes that the Death Penalty is murder (as I do) can one justify not killing cops, judges, prison guards, etc? I sure hope so.
I agree with you. Innocent and defenseless civilians are killed in wars, too, but that doesn't mean it follows that anti-war activists should kill soldiers -- or even the murderous bastards who get us into aggressive wars.
It is never possible in giving an argument to spell out all of the assumptions because it would simply get too tedious. Your response seems to be missing the flow of the argument Coates is making because he did not spell it out fully.
The idea is not that anyone who believes in the death penalty must support killing anyone who is responsible for taking a life. It might be possible to have such a simpleminded view, but one hopes Coates is not assigning that view to his ideological opponents.
Rather the argument works something like this: Linker's argument is that abortion is such a great horror that people must be justified in killing someone who performs a great number of them. Linker's argument has an obvious weakness in it, someone might believe that killing is never justified even in response to a great horror like killing innocents. To fill this gap, Coates notes that many on the anti-abortion side cannot hold that view since they support the death penalty. And so Coates has made Linker's argument stronger.
If you believe the Death Penalty is murder that would actually seem to commit yourself to the view that killing cops, judges etc. is unjustified, so you not only could have that view you would seem committed to it.
The problem with the Linker view even as improved by Coates, is that one can have the view that murderers deserve to be put to death, but that punishment cannot only be meted out by God or a legitimate civil authority. So there is still a consistent position for thinking abortion is morally equivalent to murder, supporting the death penalty, and yet opposing the vigilatism of the guy who killed Tiller.
I have difficulty with the idea that if you see something as a sin, the correct response is to join in the sin.
I can only attribute this to a belief that this heinous act is the lesser of two evils. The conclusion I'm coming to is that the individual who does this sees themselves almost as sort of a bodhisattva, postponing their own salvation to help others attain it, or more broadly, sacrificing themselves to save others. (I'm mixing my metaphors/belief systems really badly, here, please bear with.)
But I'm grossed out by the comparison and more likely to believe that this person sees it as no sin at all, which is more cognitive disconnect than I'm prepared to deal with before I've had my coffee.
if it is the infliction of deadly violence against an innocent and defenseless human being -- then doesn't morality demand that pro-lifers act in any way they can to stop this violence?
If you take those words and apply them to just about any war this country has fought in my lifetime, wouldn't the same apply? In the late 60's, early 70's, some people thought it was their moral obligation to stop the murder of innocent Vietnamese and started bombing.
Seen the Weathermen doc? One of the reasons its so compelling is for this very reason. In some ways (emphasis on some) they were the logical extension of much of the left rhetoric regarding Vietnam.
I haven't seen it, but I do remember you recommending it. I never really finished my thought on my example. It was mostly to state that while such actions may seem like the logical end for true believers, the actions in many cases hurt the cause. In the Vietnam era, a majority of the country grew to despise the war before the sixties ended, but an even larger majority had a negative view of the anti-war protesters. This has led some to theorize that actions such as those of the Weathermen led to the prolonging of the war instead of ending it.
Same with this murder. According to recently polling, the pro-life identification has expanded over the past few years. ( I know not to completely trust polls and abortion polls are often contradictory even within the same poll) I would guess that any gains in the pro-life movement have been eliminated and more than likely reversed with this act.
But what if you believe that Roe is never going to overturned? What if you believe that, over the long term, the country just isn't going to outlaw "baby-killing?"
I posted on a similar line below. I think it's a good parallel, but the answer is far simpler: Most people are genuinely afraid to make the sacrifice. Call it selfishness, hypocrisy, whatever, but there are millions of people in the US who were against the war in Iraq from the beginning. Who see the hundreds of thousands of casulties, the millions displaced, and say that the US has perpetrated one of the great national crimes of our time, but how many have done anything remotely extreme about it? Even something mundane, like a refusal to file federal income taxes? Why do so few people take real action? Forgive me if I don't accept that we just fear that real action will do harm to the cause. That's a rationalization. The truth is, we're afraid to lose everything. We don't want to go to prison and we don't want to die. We want to live our lives, we want to hold our principles dear, but at a distance.
But what if you believe that Roe is never going to overturned?
Perhaps this is why this guy chose now to kill the doctor, he saw another justice recommended to the Supreme Court who, according to best guestimation, would continue Roe as the status quo.
What cause would you die for and what cause would you kill for is a tricky question. Especially since in a democracy (in theory), the will of the majority is supposed to be largely followed (with exceptions for things that are basic human rights).
But what if you believe that Roe is never going to overturned? What if you believe that, over the long term, the country just isn't going to outlaw "baby-killing?"
Even then, there are ways to gain public sympathy for your views and hopefully persuade people not to have abortions. This isn't it. This has galvanized people to donate money to pro-choice groups and funds that pay for abortions. It has ensured that it will be that much harder for nonviolent prolifers to gain an audience. It will probably result in more abortions in the long run, not fewer.
But what if you believe that Roe is never going to overturned? What if you believe that, over the long term, the country just isn't going to outlaw "baby-killing?"
Even if you believe that, there isn't an rational way to be certain.
The most generous possible reading of this murder is that its vigilante justice. So as long as one doesn't support vigilante justice it makes sense not to support this murder, or to act similarly yourself, no matter how strongly and certainly one thinks that abortion is murder.
Moving from objections rooted in ethical principles, to consequential objections -
1 - As a practical political matter murder of abortion doctors hurts the pro-life cause, and so helps keep abortion legal.
2 - Actions like this murder may even, to a small extent at the margin, help make abortion seem more acceptable, by painting its opponents as violent irrational extremists; and cause a slight, probably very slight number of abortions to occur that otherwise would not have happened.
Agreed. The prolife movement is done.
Prolife sentiment was trending up in the polls, Obama opened a door to compromise, even though 68% of the electorate supports Roe.
Scott Roeder just slammed that door shut.
Two months ago Dr. Tiller was found not guilty of the last of a series of over 50 bogus trumped up charges brought against him by the refuglican body politic of Kansas. Probably that precipitated that murder.
The magical thinking of the right. Polls lie, crooked lawyers let the guilty free, differentiated cell clumps can think and feel, if their splendid superior conservative memes could just get through the media stopband filter to the electorate they would be returned to power in heartbeat.
strangelet re: "even though 68% of the electorate supports Roe"
Sort of. Ask people if they support Roe and you get an answer like that, but ask them if they would support specific restrictions on abortion that would be disallowed under Roe and the cases following and based off it, and you would get percentages notably larger than 32%, even majorities.
Which would imply that many people who "support Roe", don't really know what they are supporting, and support the name more than the actual principles and stipulations of the decision.
Since we're recommending things. This whole tragedy brought to mind Clousplitter, Russell Banks' (Affliction, The Sweet Hereafter) book about John Brown. Because for a certain type of person, the rhetoric gets to the point that the nonviolent approach is also a form of treason and the violence is as much about spiritual purging as it is about the achievement of certain ends.
+1
great, epic (768 pages) read
Thank you, I was going to bring that up. There are many examples of men similar to Brown who have thrown themselves wholeheartedly into a movement when their efforts to do anything else have failed.
For those who opposed the Viet Nam war on the grounds that it was a bad war, rather than simply because war, itself, is immoral, the issue of opposing it with violence does not represent a self- contradiction.
However, in those days because we were still close in time to the examples of Ghandi and King, there was a very large part if the antiwar movement that really believed in non-violent activism both in ends and means, which sadly appears to have hit the dustbin of history. I do not remember anyone who opposed war on the grounds that war itself is unnacceptable who opposed it with violence.
During that same time, there were two figures in the popular American imagination whose, perhaps more down to earth, but willing to engage violence, whose ideas have also become part of the fabric of the American view of dealing with injustice: Malcolm X, who stated that injustice must be resisted "by any means necessary," and Barry Goldwater who averred that "extremism in defense of liberty is no vice."
However, it strikes me that quite often those folks who commit acts of socalled political violence--Oswald and McVeigh, from opposite ends of the political spectrum come to mind, may not always be explained away simply by their politics.
This reminds me of a thought experiment I heard about a while ago. Lets say you're in a IVF clinic or something and a fire breaks out. You can either grab a few trays of test tubes and run out of the building, or one four-year-old child. Can't get both. Which do you do? If you believe that an embryo is a human life, it obviously makes sense to save dozens of embryos vs. a single child... but I'm willing to bet almost all 'pro-lifers' (and almost all human beings) would choose to save the child. Just shows that they are not serious about their beliefs.
Qua? It shows nothing of the kind. Acting in the fashion you describe is not evidence of unseriousness of belief but of being serious about an incoherent belief.
I don't think this necessarily shows that they are not serious about their beliefs. You could take a similar example and say you are in a late-stage care nursing home with lots of people who are comatose or in advanced stages of alzheimer's, along with one healthy 4 year old kid, and you can either save a bunch of invalids or the kid. Plenty of people would choose to save the kid, but it doesn't mean that they don't believe the old people are "human beings" or wouldn't still consider it murder if someone intentionally smothered one of them. Similarly, you can sincerely believe that abortion is murder, but killing a walking, talking adult with an innocent wife and children who care about him is a WORSE kind of murder. I think this is the opinion of many of the people who think abortion is murder, but killing abortion doctors to prevent it is not justified.
Fair enough, but it seems to me you are talking about gradations of life . To quote from the blog post:
What I suspect is that many pro-lifers may well believe that a fetus is a "life," but in their heart of hearts, they actually have a qualitative range. I don't know that they actually believe that aborting a three month old fetus is exactly the same as murdering a three month old baby.
The point is that they don't actually believe that 'abortion = murder' and it would be helpful to the public debate if they acknowledged this.
No, I think it's pretty clear that they do think that "abortion=murder," but many of them believe that some murder is worse than others. It isn't hypocritical at all to say "murdering a fetus is horribly wrong; murdering a middle aged doctor is even more horribly wrong," just like it is not hypocritical to say "letting 200 embryoes die is terrible; letting a healthy 5 year old die is even more terrible." It's not even a weird way to think: the law has always recognized different degrees of murder, but you go to jail for all of them. If you disagree, that's fine, but that doesn't make people who believe otherwise insincere.
Nope, they are fakers.
If the prolifers really believe embryos are "human life" where is the outrage over the fullscale manufacture of "spare" embryos for fertility therapy?
Thousands of "innocent human lives" doomed to a frozen death-by-use-by-date.
Where is the OUTRAGE over the genocide of those thousands of differentiated cell clumps doomed to the icy holocaust of terminal cryostasis???
haha
The are fakers.
Its all about power and sex, like absolutely everything in the wide wide world.
I think in this case you have to look at the big picture. It isn't as if there was some sort of low level cover up or corrupt official, Tiller was acting within the law as established by debates at the national level.
This is a political dispute and to engage in political violence due to what is deemed an unjust law is to attempt to start an insurgency. Can such an act be justified in some situations? I'd say yes, the country was founded by a revolution. Similarly, while I'm uncomfortable with some of the acts committed by John Brown during Bloody Kansas, I have no problem with slave revolts in general and think that the attack on Harpers Ferry could probably be justified by may well have been imprudent.
I favor reproductive rights, so it is no surprise that I oppose such an insurgency. However, I think Damon Linker has the question wrong. This wasn't a heat of the moment decision, it was a deliberate assassination. Even if you view abortion providers as murders in some cases, it would not automatically mean that a breakdown in society's prohibition against political violence could be justified. Particularly since the reproductive rights activists aren't going around assassinating their opposite numbers.
If you think that abortion providers are murders in all cases, that there is an ongoing holocaust, then going to violence is probably a straightforward choice. Of course, political violence is a two way street and leaders might be making a logical strategic choice to keep it in the civil arena. Finally, one may adopt the fairly pacifistic logic that there are other options that have yet to be exhausted and that blooding ones hands is unacceptable except perhaps as a last resort or in certain narrowly defined circumstances.
There's one major religion that opposes both abortion and the death penalty. Roman Catholicism. As in the group that makes up 1/4 of the US population and that is soon to be 2/3 of the Supreme Court.
I know what the official position of the Church is but every poll I have seen on this indicates that opinions of Catholics on these issues tracks pretty closely to the way opinions split in the general population.
I'm a pro-choice, anti-abortion, anti-death penalty catholic. i think there are a lot of us out there
Yes, there are. I have moral problems with the pro-choice and pro-life movements. And I've taken my pastor to task for playing favorites with this sin or that.
If so, I don't know how you really condemn someone for killing George Tiller
I am not sure how to interpret "condemn" in that sentence. If it means to express a moral disapproval, then I don't think its so difficult, especially with respect to the types of medical procedures that Tiller did. Their moral defect is that either don't know or don't care that the life of both mother and fetus were at terrible risk without Tiller's intervention. Perhaps the question is more complicated in the more typical abortion scenarios but again, there is a very arguable moral defect in this overwhelming concern for the life of the fetus when unmatched, as it usually is, by any knowledge or concern about the quality of life of the woman involved or of the child she might eventually have.
If "condemn" means something more legalistic, then its really pretty easy. The law is obviously not always moral and violating it is not always immoral but it is not as if the anti-choice contingency has run out of avenues to win this battle on legal terms and must now turn to violence.
"Perhaps the question is more complicated in the more typical abortion scenarios but again, there is a very arguable moral defect in this overwhelming concern for the life of the fetus when unmatched, as it usually is, by any knowledge or concern about the quality of life of the woman involved or of the child she might eventually have."
Your comment here captures perfectly what I would consider the most untenable aspect of the pro-life (sic) position, especially in this context. The ideologues seem to refuse to engage with the 'ever after' of an unwanted or unplanned pregnancy. There is not one thing in this world more heartbreaking and unjust as an abused or neglected child. Statistics with the Department of Health and Human Services, as well as common sense, indicate that the most frequent users of abortion services are those at low socio-economic strata who typically have few if any social and family support structures. Children born within these circumstances are at much greater risk of abuse or neglect, but, they're alive. I cannot accept 'life' per se as the better moral position if it means a child grows up in wretched and damaging conditions.
If the pro-lifers were serious about protecting life for children, then why don't I see a glut of pro-life sponsored and funded adoption agencies to assist those women or families unable to care for the child they chose not to abort? Why are they not clamoring to assist children without safe homes, or enough to eat, or physical and emotional safety? What about pro-life sponsored and funded public campaigns for healthy foster care? Until this happens, the pro-life movement remains simply 'anti-choice' and ideologically pure, but realistically cruel.
And the fact that Dr Tiller's killer marched into a place of worship and used a well-researched and reflected-upon shot to the head to advance his own morally-based needs strikes me as an ultimate irony.
"a moral prohibition against all murder guides the pro-life movement. Hence taking a life, to save a life is just as wrong."
That is the case for at least a portion of the pro-life movement. The Roman Catholic Church has been fairly consistent in opposing both the death penalty and abortion. Not all Catholics go along with the official line, of course.
I've always thought this way, this simplistic argument for "life" holds no bearing when applied in this manor. There are degrees, and stages of "life", in all its forms and this arguument pierces through the argument of those that condemnt the killing of Dr. Tilller. I've often used this argument to those I've encountered extolling the ills of meat, and sacredness of animals. My argument is that if meat, animals are innocent creatures deserving of a full life. Yet, vegetables and fruits and other living beings of this earth are ok to uproot and devour. Why, because plants have no face and feelings??? There are degrees, and complexities to this thing we call "life", and this argument that TNC and Linker present shoots all sorts of holes into their argument, and exposes the entire movement (pro-life) for what it is, disingenuous.
Forgot to add that Catholicism also opposes eugenics and euthenasia. The theory is that the right to life comes from God and isn't something that parents or the larger society have the right to control.
Isn't the "they" as in religious conservative is almost as broad a brush as the "they" as in "White" or "Black"? Just sayin'.
Also, I've notice several folks speculating that, in their heart of hearts, the anti-abortion crowd doesn't really believe fetus = human life. Um, yeah. Not so much.
pax,
Tap
You should quote and specify exactly what you object to. I don't think people in, all cases, object to using "they" to describe black or white.
If you object to something point to it, and tell us specifically why it's wrong. It's tough to respond, if we don't know what you're objecting to.
TNC, I'm not objecting to anything. I'm just asking a question. As with any blog that has a strong political orientation, there is a definite sense of "us" and "them". That's not an indictment in any way. But, as a "them", I often don't recognize the views that are supposed to be mine. Maybe that's just because I'm an odd bird. The fact is most of the folks I know - be they liberal or conservative - don't fit the canned description. I know you know that and have made the same point many times about what it means to be Black (and, perhaps more importantly, what it doesn't mean to be Black).
At the end of the day, without these broad labels, it becomes really hard to communicate without spending all your time equivocating. I get that. It's just funny to hear folks speculating about your motivation for belief as if you're an alien. And that's funny "haha" as opposed to funny you're making me cry on the inside.
BTW, this a great, thought-provoking blog. I really appreciate getting to hear your take on things. I hope I haven't gone too far off point.
"I hope I haven't gone too far off point."
Not in the least. I just wanted to hear more.
Also, I've notice several folks speculating that, in their heart of hearts, the anti-abortion crowd doesn't really believe fetus = human life.
Well most of those people offer plenty of reasons for why they believe that the anti-choice crowd doesn't really believe their own rhetoric. In particular, it is often quite common that when asked, abortion opponents do not favor imprisonment for women who have abortions. Indeed, it is an intregal part of the rhetoric in lage parts of the anti-choice movement that the women who have abortions are victims. How can this possibly be reconciled with the belief that these women are willfully engaging in acts of murder?
There is also the case based upon the fact when given the choice between saving a living, breathing human child and say 100 blastocysts, abortion opponents will typically choose to save the living child. These would suggest to me that at the very least, "in their heart of hearts," they do place less value on potential life as opposed to actualised life.
There are plenty of other arguments, but you get the point. "Um, yeah. Not so much" is not a very convincing counterargument. What is your evidence, other than the fact that they are very fond of saying it, that abortion opponents really and truly believe that abortion is murder. Is there, for instance, any significant faction of the anti-choice movement in America that favors criminal prosecution and incarceration of women who decide to have abortions. That is, for instance, how it is treated in Argentina and, even there, there are exceptions which would be inconceivable if abortion were considered anything like a precise analogue to murder.
To your examples:
1. I presume that the argument against imprisoning the woman goes something like this: women have been brainwashed by ‘pro-choice’ activists into denying the humanity of their child; they are victims long before they ever become pregnant. No woman in her right mind would knowingly kill her child, so by definition, any woman who does, is clearly not in her right mind, but is instead a victim of circumstance.
2. This scenario reads like the parable of the stone, which is to say that it’s a meaningless intellectual exercise that freshmen philosophy majors may find persuasive, but that has very little real world relevance. To say that a living child should be accorded greater rights than an embryo is not the same as saying the embryos are less human than the child. Let me give you as meaningless a thought experiment Spider-Man: There are two buildings on fire across town from one another. In the building farthest from you, there are two trapped children. In the building closest to you, there is only one. A third building, with a phone, is the same distance to you as the house with one kid, but to run toward it is to run away from both burning houses. If you run to the house with one kid, you’re certain you can save him. Likewise, you’re fairly confident (though by no means certain) that if you run to the house with the phone to alert the fire department, they will be able to save the two kids in the other house. But the fire department will only be able to get to one of the two houses, and there’s not enough time for you to run to the phone and back to the house with the first kid. The choice: Do you save the one kid, or do you sacrifice him for the chance that the other two may live? Keeping in mind that there’s a slight chance that the fire department won’t be able to arrive in time, and all three kids die.
Here’s what I have to say, as somebody who is (for lack of a better label) “pro-choice.” An abortion is the killing of a human being, every time. I do believe that it is, at the moment, a societal necessity, but I have no illusions about what the procedure is: the killing of a human being. Yes, I believe we have the responsibility to incorporate some kind of scale as to the degree of importance we ascribe to the life in question (i.e. while I recognize that a zygote is no less human than a fetus, 25 weeks in development, I would obviously place the health and safety of the fetus as a higher priority, and the life of the mother would always take precedent over that of the unborn), but it should not be a scale that obscures the basic truth that all abortions end in death. A real death. Not a hypothetical one. From that perspective, it’s fairly easy to understand how people of the “pro-life” perspective see abortion as murder.
The problem with your point 1 is that (statistically speaking of course) it is the pro-life people who are most likely to want to throw the book at mother's who kill their infants, and pro-choice people who are most likely to see them in the terms you are ascribing to pro-life people.
I suspect a better explanation of this phenomenon is that the part of the opposition to abortion that believes that abortion is murder is real, but comparatively small. And they have learned as a political matter that it is political death to call for punishing the mothers because they lose the rest of the abortion opponents, so the opposition to punishment is more strategic than ideologically inconsistent.
"The problem with your point 1 is that (statistically speaking of course) it is the pro-life people who are most likely to want to throw the book at mother's who kill their infants, and pro-choice people who are most likely to see them in the terms you are ascribing to pro-life people."
Of course, of the two, it would be the "pro-life" people who would judge the woman more often. I was simply putting forth a plausible reason for why they may object to criminalizing the actions of the mother.
"I suspect a better explanation of this phenomenon is that the part of the opposition to abortion that believes that abortion is murder is real, but comparatively small. And they have learned as a political matter that it is political death to call for punishing the mothers because they lose the rest of the abortion opponents, so the opposition to punishment is more strategic than ideologically inconsistent."
You're no doubt right that many people on either side of the argument frame their principle in the way they perceive to be more palatable to the public. Without a doubt, there are many people of the "pro-life" perspective who believe that women who get abortions will burn in hell, but fein compassion for the people watching at home. Still, even at times like this, I think we should be resisting the temptation to caracature them.
women have been brainwashed by ‘pro-choice’ activists into denying the humanity of their child; they are victims long before they ever become pregnant. No woman in her right mind would knowingly kill her child, so by definition, any woman who does, is clearly not in her right mind, but is instead a victim of circumstance.
Of course, that same argument can be made in the case of most cases that we all agree are actual murder. If the social circumstances that surround individuals and "brainwash" that person into committing murder are relevant, than very few real murders, including the ones where women kill their living breathing children, actually take place. That would be an extremely weak rationalization on the part of anti-choice proponents but -- fair enough -- I suppose one could plausibly make the case that they actually believe it. I simply doubt that would be willing to apply this btype of mercy and understanding in any other circumstance that they consider to be murder. I would add as an aside that the belief that women cannot possibly be responsible for their decisions in this context is not an especially palatable one.
To say that a living child should be accorded greater rights than an embryo is not the same as saying the embryos are less human than the child.
"Less human" is not perhaps the best formulation but, for certain, in making the decision to save the actual child, one has decided that the living breathing child has more value than the countless potential children.
The problem with your Spiderman scenario is that it does a lot of work to add complex factors to the central choice but that misses the point of the blastocysts scenario entirely. In your scenario, the decision comes down to a rumination of whether it is best to make the choice that is less likely to save the most people but would result in the better outcome or whether it is better to make the choice that is more likely to result in at least some positive outcome. Different people will answer that question quite differently but the ethical quandary is entirely different from what is being proposed in the IVF scenario.
That intends to get to a far more simple ethical question which is not at all meaningless: Does one believe that embryos are "alive" and a "child" in the same way that they believe that say a toddler is alive and a child? If one answers that they would save the toddler than the answer is clearly no. What that means with respect to the question of whether or not abortion is murder may be more complex but it is most certainly not meaningless as you suggest.
but it should not be a scale that obscures the basic truth that all abortions end in death. A real death
Death is a big word that means a lot of things in a lot of different circumstances. It is a much broader term than "killing" and a much, much broader term than "murder" and that is entirely the point of this debate. If one wants to substitute "termination of the fetus" with "death of the fetus" than you will still get some debate but it will be significantly less heated because, when it comes down to it, no one is really arguing about whether or not it is a death. If on the other hand, you would like to substitute "termination of the fetus" for "murder of the baby" than you will have a problem and that is precisely what is at stake here. Do they really believe that killing of a fetus is morally equivalent to murder of a baby? I think if they did, then they would behave differently and, for one thing, more of them would be out committing the kind of action that we saw yesterday in the murder of Tiller.
brent,
If I was unclear, I was not arguing that women had been brainwashed, just that it was a plausible reasoning for the “pro-life” community wanting to express compassion to women in these instances. Clearly, as I admitted before, there’s no doubt a political angle to it also. I don’t think it’s fair to create a monolithic reasoning structure. Not everybody supports abortion rights for the same reason, there’s no reason to assume homogeneity of reasoning when it comes to those who oppose it. As to whether it’s more or less palatable to imply women are the victims of effective marketing vs. women are of sound body and mind killing their unborn children by the millions, we can debate at a later time.
“’Less human’ is not perhaps the best formulation but, for certain, in making the decision to save the actual child, one has decided that the living breathing child has more value than the countless potential children.”
Everybody likes to get hung up on this potentiality designation. An embryo is a potential child, yes. I don’t think most “pro-lifers” would deny that use. But too often, the modifier is used in a way clearly put forth to deny the humanity of the embryo, and to objectify it. In the end, we’re all in a state of potentiality. An embryo is more rapidly changing than a child. A child is more rapidly changing than an adult. It’s in early adulthood that we peak, plateau, then begin the descent toward old age. But whether we’re a handful of constantly replicating cells, or billions of cells slowly deteriorating, regardless of whether or not we have any discernable consciousness, we are human beings in a stage of development. The day we die, we are the same organism we were the day we were conceived, but we are absolutely in a different state of being. This is not a “pro-life” argument, it’s a pro-science argument. I simply don’t think, even at times like these, that it does any good for people who are (like me) “pro-choice” to start spouting off the idea that the “pro-life” community does not believe something so fundamental (and true, by the way) that an embryo is a human life. Frankly, I’m “pro-choice” and I have a much more difficult time believing that you don’t in your heart of hearts believe a human embryo is a human life.
I understand the desire to call people with whom you disagree hypocrites. I simply do not believe it’s helpful. Nor do I think the example of the fire is remotely compelling. If I was in a burning building and was given the choice of saving my son or saving a thousand babies, I would save my son. I would do it multiple times a day if I had to. This does not mean that in my heart of hearts I do not value each and every one of those babies as a precious human life. It means I value my son more. Likewise, in your blastocyst example I don’t find it the least bit troubling or hypocritical that a “pro-lifer” would choose to save the child over a thousand embryos. They would likely save a child over an adult. Or maybe a thousand adults locked in a room in the building. Does that mean the “pro-lifer” did not value their lives in his heart of hearts? Or does it simply mean that, in life, we must make decisions between two bad options? As to your blastocyst example, most people, if they understand the IVF procedure, likely know that it far more often than not leads to something other than a live birth. That being the case, aside from the logistical complications associated with implanting a thousand embryos in hundreds of volunteer surrogates, the potentiality for the embryos to ever be born is called into question, which is not to say that each and every one of them is not a human being. It’s simply to say that the potentiality for any of them to ever become children, much less adults, is remote when compared to that of the child in front of you. As such, I’m not sure that the Spider-man scenario (which I prefaced by calling it useless) is overly complex. One can either take action with the knowledge that there will be something positive to come out of it, or one can forgo that act with the hope that some good may come out of it. I didn’t say it was a perfect parallel.
“Does one believe that embryos are ‘alive’ and a ‘child’ in the same way that they believe that say a toddler is alive and a child?”
First, if you are alive, you are alive in the same way anything is alive. You have vital functions that, were they to cease, you would cease to be alive. Even people kept alive by machines are alive in the same way you and I are alive. They simply have a different set of functions. Consciousness may not be one of them. As for an embryo being a child in the same way a toddler is a child, I’m not at all certain this is a fair standard. A child has a sort of specific definition. Categorically, an embryo is not a child. But a child was once an embryo. And an embryo is supposed to become a child. They are the same thing but in different stages of development. A child is not an adult. An embryo is not a fetus. But they are all the same thing. Trying to trick people with silly games may be fun, but all it does is betray that you do not take their concerns seriously. That you do not treat the question as being remotely worth asking.
“Death is a big word that means a lot of things in a lot of different circumstances.”
I guess there’s a figurative meaning to it, but from a biological standpoint, death is death. It is the state of being that occurs once function has ceased and cannot be restarted. Yes, killing and murder have different meanings. To kill is to deprive of life. To make dead. Murder is a term for killing that carries with it specific legal and/or moral implications. “Termination of the fetus” is a euphemism designed to avoid making the simple recognition of the fact that something with life has been intentionally deprived of life. In the end, it’s not even a proper use of the verb “to terminate” which simply means “to bring to an end.” More accurately, it is the pregnancy that is being terminated. The fetus is being killed. It’s really as simple as that. You’ll notice that I do not defend the argument that abortion is murder. I only acknowledge understanding of it. I do not argue that it makes for the most civil of debates. It clearly does not. Nor, for that matter, does the denial that a fetus is a living human being. So maybe both sides have a bit of soul searching to do if they really want to find common ground.
There's a broad range in the sprectrum of "pro-life" beliefs, from those who only object to late term abortions and those who have moral problems with the practice but don't want it actually outlawed, to those who believe once conceived the pregnancy should not be stopped for anything short of saving the life of the mother, period. I suppose if you truly viewed abortions as slaughtering of innocent life, then it would follow that preventing or slowing down such slaughter--even by killing doctors--is morally justified. Sort of like dropping bombs on death camps in WWII, or domestic terrorist acts against military industries during Vietnam.
and those who have moral problems with the practice but don't want it actually outlawed,
Um, that's pro-choice.
Not necessarily. Pro-choice implies a method by which it is determined who will and will not be allowed to take part in a legal procedure. One can easily be for keeping abortion safe and legal, but wish to impose severe restrictions on the procedure.
I think you're exactly right about the qualitative range. If pro-lifers truly believed that the abortion of a three-month-old fetus was identical to the murder of a three-month-old child, they would support severe criminal penalties (first-degree murder charges, to be precise) against women who choose to have abortions. From what I've read, however, the vast, vast majority do not.
In fact, some anti-choice activists themselves had abortions when they were younger, or have abortions even while they're anti-choice activists! If their cohorts really believed that they were murderers -- and murderers of innocent children, no less -- they'd want them imprisoned (or executed, I suppose), right?
We've all been guilty of creating hyperbole to strengthen our position on on subject or another. Problem with Pro-Life is that its arguments became hyperbolic a long time ago and are permanently stuck there.
I remember back in my teen days before I had tried pot, there were public service commercials where they would, say, juxtapose a joint and a tombstone. For someone uninitiated, it might have been a more powerful deterrent image, but ultimately the argument was untrue and disingenuous. And it made the whole movement look like a bunch of hand-wringers and idiots. The anti-drug messages that actually carried some weight with me were the ones that hewed closer to the truth of the matter. Those are the ones that still do.
"Pro-Life", on the face of it, seems sanctimonious and hyperbolic. They might reach more thinking people if they framed their argument in a way that showed abortion as morally and spiritually questionable, but not equivalent to, say, killing a child or a father of children. Certainly they've gained nothing this past week by killing in the name of Life.
(Yes, I'm on the Obama line on this one. I've always felt this way though. Happy that he's presenting this middle path.)
The response to Damon Linker, within a democracy, is to actively work to change the policies which you believe are antithetical to life.
Throughout our history, we have had folks who did so. People throughout our history have fought against war, capital punishment, abortion, forced sterilization. They have made their case.
To suggest that murder is appropriate, in any situation, is not acceptable in a nation of laws. Last I looked, we still said we were a nation of laws.
Linker's argument could be made only within the post-situational ethics era in which we now find ourselves. A very dangerous time that finds justifications for torture, murder, and illegal war. We have had enough of these things this past decade.
Linker has not done a service to our polity by suggesting there is a justification for murder. We don't need a John Yoo for the murderers of abortionists.
And I understand that Linker does not believe the argument he is making. I have read his original post and understand that he is not arguing that this murder is defensible.
But remember that fanatics are stupid. They don't need help in justifying their own ignorant, evil acts.
Have any of you watched Fox News lately? I mean watch an entire Glenn Beck or Hannity? Those shows have changed in the past couple of months. Fox used to be merely a propoganda machine for the fascist right (yes, there are degrees). Now some of their more extreme shows are openly pushing their own policies, Glenn Beck and Hannity in particular. The extreme ends of the network have gone beyond disinformation with a little asshole thrown in and moved into constant, everyday ridicule and hate. Its starting to remind me to a lesser scale of Hutu powe radio from "We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families" or the movie adaptation, "Hotel Rwanda". Scary.
The worst part about discussing abortion (if you're pro-life) or war (if you're of the opinion that most wars are unjustifiable) is that if you're right, it makes murderers out of the majority of your fellow men. That's a terrifying reality, and it's no surprise to me that some people who believe it go buggo.
But that isn't limited to abortion and war. It's also the case with regards to animal rights. It's arguably the case with carbon emissions and overconsumption of food and energy. Both those who argue for restrictions on trade with oppressive nations and those who argue for free trade claim innocent lives will be lost if we adopt their opponent's policy.
Like Emerson pointed out, we can never taste the blood that goes into making the sugar for our coffee. But if you add up all the people who believe that the majority of their fellow people are culpable for murder in some way or another, it would not surprise me if you ended up with a majority of the people. You could call this the bloodiest manifestation of Arrow's Impossibility Theorem.
I had to look up Arrow's Impossibility Theorem, but I am now enlightened. Thanks for making me educate myself.
You're right, and I think the potential of indirect responsibility for death produces much of the vitriol seen in free trade and environmental debates. But those consequences can sometimes be obscure to non-policy buffs (try explaining the "free trade causes death" argument to my grandma, for example). And with abortion, war, and the death penalty, you obviously get much closer to direct responsibility, and all the bloody pictures and shocking videos that come with it. I don't expect many people to become homicidal over America's consumption of 25% of the world's energy, but thinking that millions of babies are being butchered and half the country explicitly condones it? It's got to make the sky a hell of a lot darker.
Here's a modest proposal: They believe abortion is murder, from conception onward. But most are unwilling to face the consequences of acting violently to prevent it. They do not embrace vigilantism because, quite frankly, they are like most people unwilling to make the ultimate sacrifice for a cause. They have families. Or wish to have them some day. They will not kill doctors because they care too much about their own lives.
Here's a parallel: Anti-war protestors. Our country has been bombing poor Afghans, Iraqis, and Pakistanis for the past eight years. These are unquestionably people, yes? Whole villages leveled. Buildings fall on top of and bury children. Many of us were against it from the beginning. What have we sacrificed to stop it? How many people stopped filing their federal income taxes, for instance? How many people have risked their freedom to stop the innumerable atrocities that accompany every war? In the end, we like most fundamentalist "pro-lifers" have similar way of looking at the world: In the end, we value ourselves, and those closest to us (our lives and our freedom) more than we value that of others.
For many years, I have been discussing abortion with supporters and opponents. If a pro-lifer supports the death penalty, I point out the contradiction of their position and move on. If a pro-choicer supports the notion that the fetus is a part of the mother and she can decide, without restriction, to abort the fetus, that is the mother's "right," I ask them about whether the viability of the fetus to live outside the mother's womb is a determining factor. If that is not a concern to the pro-choicer, I move on. The inherent contradictions involved in driving these two ignorant positions ends any exchange of ideas as both are devoid of thought and have devolved into the realm of the faith of the unknown.
It is logical that some pro-lifers would murder a doctor who performs abortions, as they understand the doctor to be a mass murderer. It is just as logical that some pro-choicers would support the abortion of a fetus right up to the moment of birth. The majority of the people who have taken hard positions on the abortion issue span the spectrum between the extremes of the two "logical" decisions described.
The war between the two camps cannot go on forever. There is a third way: 1. The creation of a national data base of infants born to mothers who could gain abortion on demand under current law. The mothers receive free pre and post-partum medical care, and a stipend for six months after the birth. 2. The creation of a national data base for couples and individuals who wish to adopt infants. Of course, appropriate screening of adoptive parents would be required. 3. The two data bases would be used to match infants with adoptive parents. Adoptive parents would be eligible for a means formulated stipend. 4. If healthy fetus will be viable outside of the mother's womb, and the mother's health is not threatened, then abortion would not be an option. 5. Abortion cannot be an alternative to birth control.
Under this approach [and many other iterations on the basic idea] the war between pro-lifers and pro-choicers could end. It will cost us all money, but money pales in light of life and the joys of parenthood for those who for any number of reasons would be childless.
I don't think you really understand the difference in mentality between people who are very pro-choice and people who are very pro-life. Since the creation of Roe V. Wade there have been dozens of murders and attacks on doctors and clinic workers but I can't really think of a single pro-choice activist who has argued that a fetus could be terminated up till the time of birth or such a procedure having been performed by a trained OB-GYN.
I dont really understand your perfect solution also, how does this make abortion totally unnecessary again? How does it protect the privacy of pregnant women? How is this not telling a woman she should shut up do what the govenrment says, pump out a baby and take the money?
Bottom line, it's difficult to find a common solution with people who think they have Jesus on their side at all times.
In reality, the rights of parents to take leave upon the birth of a child in this country are disgrace without the added “would’ve had an abortion” designation. Women get six weeks disability, and another six weeks unpaid (if they so chose), and they are only guaranteed a job (not necessarily the job they had). Men can take twelve weeks without pay with the same stipulation of having some job when they return. The real way to begin to impact the number of abortions is to truly improve the educational structure in the country. And the need for better education cuts both ways: For instance the “part of the woman” argument is simply the result of a bad education. From conception onward, the zygote, embryo, fetus, baby has a unique genetic code; while the unfertilized egg was one of the woman’s cells and therefore part of her, at conception it became something fundamentally different from her. At that point it ceased to be a part of her and became a body unto itself that would, yes, become attached to her for sometime afterward.
"Something fundamentally different" does not necessarily mean a person, thats the distinction. What you're really arguing is the legal rights of a teenaged or adult woman are secondary to the rights of "something fundamentally different" whether its some cells or a developing fetus.
Calm down. I'm arguing nothing of the kind. I am arguing that if we're going to make scientific arguments, we should understand the science a bit better. If we're going to argue in favor of improving sex education, then maybe we owe it to ourselves to be more well educated.
As a matter of fact, I said nothing about a person anywhere in that post. I was stating quite simply that the zygote is not part of the woman. Nor is the embryo. Nor the fetus. Nor the unborn baby.
I have no interest in making an argument about "personhood." But scientifically, yes, zygote is an individual human being. Alas, sometimes the science just isn't going to be there to support your belief. That doesn't mean abandoning your beliefs. But it shouldn't mean the science shouldn't inform your belief all the same.
I`m calm and I know you didnt say person but the fundamentally different thing is not just a quiet tenant inside a woman's body. It is different from her yes, but its pressence can have huge impacts on her physical, emotional, and yes sometimes even mental state. I`m trying to argue that although we do need much better sex education and access to contraception there will still always need to be abortion available and women who have abortions do not always do so because of some tragic lack of access to birth control or education.
And I am not making an argument with regard to whether we can ever eliminate the necessity for safe and legal abortions. I do believe we can work hard toward making the procedure far more rare than it is. I believe that a good education, one that accepts the weaknesses of the dogma on either side of the debate is one that will lead towards fewer unwanted pregnancies. And more deliberation in the event that they do occur. My math goes like this: fewer unwanted pregnancies + more thoughtful deliberation = fewer abortions. I think it's an equation most everybody should be able to get behind.
From conception onward, the zygote, embryo, fetus, baby has a unique genetic code; while the unfertilized egg was one of the woman’s cells and therefore part of her, at conception it became something fundamentally different from her. At that point it ceased to be a part of her and became a body unto itself that would, yes, become attached to her for sometime afterward.
There is all kinds of stuff that is part of a body that doesn't share its genetic code. Everything from food we eat to the microorganisms that digest it. Mutated cells have unique genetic codes, nonetheless, cancers are still part of their victim's body. Donated organs have someone else's genetic code, but they are still part of the recipient's body. Prosthetic limbs have no genetic codes at all, but can still be a part of a person's body.
Biology has no fundamental concept of "something fundamentally different", "individual human being" or any of the concepts you seem to want to use. You could call a zygote a new organism. But then you'd have to do the same for gametes as well--some species like mosses spend most of their time as gametes.
A single body can contain multiple organisms. Biology is funny like that.
The food we eat: Nope.
To the microorganisms that digest it: Uh uh.
Mutated cells have unique genetic codes: Arguably, but the cells that have mutated are different due to an error in replication of your own DNA. It's not remotely the same thing as a zygote.
Cancers: This is a similar to the mutation argument as the DNA of a cancer cell is a genetic mutation of the hosts code, and not remotely the same thing as a completely different genetic code.
Donated organs: Not really, and certainly not initially. Prosthetic limbs: Sorry. No.
Actually, no, a zygote is fundamentally different from a gamete. A gamete is a sex cell and is therefore a part of the person who created it. (Every egg that exists in a woman’s ovaries, she formed while living in her mother’s womb, does that make her eggs part of her mother?) Gametes are undeniably alive, but in being essentially copies of one another, they are not individuals, and in being the end not the beginning of their development, they are not remotely like zygotes.
I honestly don’t want to get into a discussion of the semantics of the phrase “individual human being,” but one need not have a degree in biology or English to understand that it as easily applies to a zygote as to you or me. And it far more easily applies to a zygote than a gamete.
“A single body can contain multiple organisms.” That is pretty amazing, isn’t it?
By the way, I obviously never argued that a woman's body does not contain her fetus. Water is contained within a bottle. The water is not part of the bottle. Parasites are not part of their host (I was pretty surprised not to see that in your list of things that can go on inside somebody's body), but they are contained within the host.
I still stick by every example I listed, but in order for your argument to be true, you have to assert that every single one of them was false. You can't hedge your bets a little on donated organs--if donated organs can *ever* be considered part of the recipient's body, then your genetic definition of "body" completely crumbles. You would have to concede that "body" is not a genetic concept, it's a spatial/functional concept.
Gametes are undeniably alive, but in being essentially copies of one another,
Obviously false. They're haploids, you know. This point is not fatal to your argument, but if you're going to be so bold about who's educated and who's not, you'll have to get stuff like this straight.
they are not individuals,
Genetic distinction is neither necessary nor sufficient for individuality, otherwise twins would be a single individual.
I honestly don’t want to get into a discussion of the semantics of the phrase “individual human being,” but one need not have a degree in biology or English to understand that it as easily applies to a zygote as to you or me. And it far more easily applies to a zygote than a gamete.
Wrong.
Water is contained within a bottle. The water is not part of the bottle.
A bottle of water is composed of both water and bottle. But if your argument hinges on semantic distinctions like this (and it does), then your claim that this dispute is simply a matter of one side lacking education is obviously false.
“I still stick by every example I listed, but in order for your argument to be true, you have to assert that every single one of them was false.”
That’s a fairly interesting standard. I have to disprove every single outlandish example, while you don’t even need to bother addressing any larger question. If I neglected initially to outline the full point, forgive me. Let me expand: not only is the code new and unique, but it signifies the creation of a new INDIVIDUAL. In a nutshell, here’s the point: a zygote, from conception onward through stage after stage of development, is an individual organism that belongs to the species Homo sapiens sapiens. It is an individual member of the species. A human being. A whole body and a being unto itself. If these points were not implicit in my initial post, I apologize.
Now, to your examples:
1. Food, I would argue, when it is food is not part of the person who has eaten it, but is rather still part of whatever (vegetable or animal) it was previously. Components of the food are absorbed by the person, and incorporated into the person, yes, but the food itself, is not a part of the person.
2. Micro-organisms? Yeah, I’m not sure why I should have to prove how a complete organism of another species is not, technically, part of us. I’m pretty sure the burden of proof lies on you for that one.
3. Mutated cells, did I not address this one? Yes, they technically have a differing genetic code, but their code is resulting from something gone wrong in the replication process. Therefore the difference in their genetic code is insignificant. Also a mutated cell lacks individuality. It is alive, but it isn’t an organism. It IS part of the whole.
4. Cancer cells. (See: mutated cells)
5. Donated organs: I don’t think I’m hedging. I genuinely think it’s arguable whether or not donated organs or foreign implants of any kind ever truly become part of the recipient, but I’ll give it to you because the important (and obvious) distinction between the liver, or whatever, and the unborn human being is that the former is and will always be part of greater whole, whereas the latter is, well, whole already. Extract the zygote and it’s still a whole. A dead whole, but a whole. A liver is an organ. A heart is a muscle. They are parts of a person. The zygote is the whole kit and caboodle.
Indeed, they are haploids. As I am not sure what argument you’re schooling me on, I will concede whichever point you were making and continue onward.
Gametes are not individuals. They are, like brain cells, parts of a greater whole, I’m sorry if this point was not clear in my initial posting. They are absolutely special, but they do lack individuality. Identical twins are obviously special seeing as they were once an individual and then became two individuals.
“Wrong.” Nuh uh.
“A bottle of water is composed of both water and bottle.” Okay.
For the record I am not arguing that any one side lacks a strong educational foundation. I am arguing that BOTH sides have weaknesses in their educational standards. I am simply picking on "pro-choicers" because they (we) are the ones so often arguing in favor of better educational standards, while mistaking a philosophical argument for a biological one.
TNC, I understand your point, I really do. I think this is why the abortion debate will never be resolved in this country; if one side absolutely believes that abortion is murder, and the other side doesn't, what possible common ground can be found?
But I will never ever ever understand why a movement which is against murder would condone the killing of any human being. The support of so many pro-lifers for the death penalty, to me, invalidates their argument. They might respond that the death-row inmate does not have the same "innocence" as a fetus. But then they are applying their own sliding scale of justification to life and death, no different from those of us who believe that a 4-week-old fetus does NOT have the same right-to-life status as a born human.
And for someone who claims to be against murder to indulge in it WHEN IT SUITS THEM....again, this applies a moral relativism that they decry when used by others who use different measures than they.
I understand the position of opposing both abortion and the death penalty. (Opposing euthanasia also falls into this camp.) If you believe these things are outside the realm where humans get to decide, that's a consistent position.
I also understand someone who would permit both abortion and the death penalty. This position assumes that society, on both the large level of a judicial system and the small level of a family, can decide on matters of life and death for the benefit of the greatest number. It's Mr. Spock's "the needs of the many" argument.
I can even understand the position of people who would ban abortion but permit the death penalty. The murderer had a choice not to murder, after all, and he brought the problem on himself.
What I can't get, no matter how much I try, is why anyone would want to permit abortion (and perhaps euthanasia) but ban the death penalty for murderers. Once you accept that the members of society get to decide these things, why shouldn't murderers be the first to go?
Cause they aren't always murderers, ya dig?
In fact, they're often not guilty since death penalty cases always have a political/emotional background to them.
I also understand someone who would permit both abortion and the death penalty. This position assumes that society, on both the large level of a judicial system and the small level of a family, can decide on matters of life and death for the benefit of the greatest number. It's Mr. Spock's "the needs of the many" argument.
The whole point of the pro-choice positions is that society DOES NOT have the right to decide what to do with women's bodies. Individual choice and social choice do not imply each other, they exclude each other.
What I can't get, no matter how much I try
Try harder.
Your position fails to recognize that some of us just don't think that a fetus is a human being.
Thinking it doesn't make it any less false.
The close relation is to abolition, as in the John Brown example. If you think slavery is a monstrous evil and the law is complicit in the evil, then you can argue that you're justified in breaking the law.
The similarities with the abolition movement are quite deep. Very few abolitionists, for example, rarely imagined black people as actual people, people who might be your next door neighbor. They imagined slaves as abstract symbols of suffering. The suffering slave hundreds of miles away was one thing: a black neighbor with possibly a sense of grievance, with ambitions and and a family to feed, was altogether another. It's famous that Harriet Beecher Stowe could call up lots of empathy for slaves, but by the end of the book all the free black people are either dead, in Canada, or sailing to Africa to be missionaries. Pity the suffering slave, but I don't want any free colored people 'round here.
For pro-life people the fetus is not an actual person any more than most abolitionists regarded slaves as actual people. The fetus is a symbol: a symbol of "innoncence" and a symbol of being unwanted; a symbol of smarty pants elite technocracy and priviledge "getting away with it." It crystalizes, I suspect, the pain of feeling unwanted by one's parents. How many pro-life people would actually want to do anything for the fetus? That's the point, it's NOT a person, it's an abstract symbol. The fetus does not need health care, or public transportation, or jobs; it's not imagined as a political actor any more than freed slaves were.
The comparison to abolition is not as flattering as pro-choice people want to believe
Carey, who are you talking to? The overwhelming majority of religious pro-life organizations I've come across also have some connection with poverty reduction programs, housing programs, services for young adults or teens (those most at risk for unplanned pregnancy), pregnancy and/or adoption services, etc. Faith-based initiatives, in short. I'm sure the people staffing them would be very surprised at the notion that the fetus is just a symbol.
Now, we can argue all day about the charitable model vs. government programs vs. private sector development schemes, but that's a whole different debate than whether or not pro-lifers see the fetus as a person.
Can you give me some examples of "poverty reduction programs" backed by pro-life organizations? I agree, they are involved in teen abstinence. Abolitionism ended slavery--I'm not arguing that the pro-life people are without moral legitimacy. I'm arguing that like abolitionists, they are motivated more by passionate commitment to a fantasy--that the fetus is a person--than the are by concern for the real life plight of unwanted children.
There is no such thing as "just a symbol." The flag is symbol--people regularly die for it. I'm arguing that just as abolitionists felt for the slave's plight but had no real commitment to racial equality, the Pro-choice movement is motivated by, and attracted to--the purity of abstraction that symbolic thinking provides. They are like abolitionists who loved the idea of freeing "the slaves" but not the idea of black people as equal citizens. They love the fetus, not real children born out of wedlock.
For example--do they support, say, paying women for child care? Or providing state subsidized child care for womem who work? What is the correlation between voting against s-chip extension and voting against abortion rights? I'd be willing to bet there's a very strong connection: that those who talk loudly about the fetus as a child voted against S-chip extension, doing their best to provide that poor children would not be insured
TNC,
I was going to post a similar question to the previous post on this issue. Both sides have principles that don't reflect their principles. I'm distrustful of any true believer because such absolutism requires (a) a lack of thinking through the real world consequences of your principles and/or (b) the lack of such principles!
You've question the extent of the pro-Lifers' commitment to their rhetoric and you should. I've seen the violent, misogynistic side of that movement. I'm convinced such folks see abortion as more about putting "uppity bitches" in their place than saving babies. As a Catholic, I'm spared such folks. (My parish, for example, is full of people who voted for Obama and want abortion illegal and that includes a Sister of Mercy!) I think the Church's position is well thought out and a respectable moral one. The Church is after all willing to bear the responsibility of supporting the mother and children that result when abortion is averted. It is anti-war and anti-death penalty. (Bishops who show at GOP conventions or deny communion Democratic politicians, notwithstanding. Hey, that's the price for being 1,000,000,000 strong.)
But the pro-Choice movement has it's issues too. Principally it plays the human or not game. As a person whose humanity is negotiable even in 2009, I have problems with arguments that make an unborn baby a mass of tissue to be excised. That's the precise mechanism that serves as the basis for human suffering at the hands of other humans whether it's gender, sex, orientation, origin, or creed. It's why I see a moral hypocrisy in pro-choicers who object to Chinese aborting female fetuses because the parents want male offspring. If you have a political objective, simply cloud the ugly truth by dehumanizing it's victims or shielding your eyes from evil's fruits.
I say all this to say that both sides engage in this and if we started to speak in real terms we would begin to understand each side better. To my mind, abortion is like murder and it's absolute ban is like slave rape. As a disciple of Christ, I am wrenched by such a dilemma and, real talk, not too proud of my part in our collective cowardice on this issue. I hope we as a society mature enough to resolve it.
Of course your humanity is negotiable--everyone's is. It's renegotiable depending on your actions. It changes if you commit a crime. It changes if you appear to be mentally ill. If I were judged to be having delusions and hallucinations and speaking irrationally, I could be locked up and subjected to treatment against my will. My humanity is completely negotiable and changeable. It changes if you hold opinions that are out of stepo with your community. The idea that one's humanity is non-negotiable is pleasant but doesn't correspond to the real world. I assume that Roeder, if he's guilty, will get the death penalty, unless he can plead insanity. And we'll lock him up. The meaning of his humanity is clearly negotiable, as is everyone's.
I really appreciate your sentiments. As an otherwise extremely progressive person, I feel like I'm carrying around a deep dark secret all the time... I'm really, really torn about abortion. I think it's intellectually disingenous and overly convenient to declare that life doesn't begin until birth, and I am horrified by the entire notion of abortion... and yet, I don't believe in forced pregnancy, either, particularly in a society that provides very little by way health care, child care, public education, and living wages to the disadvantaged among us. I don't think I'm pro-choice, but I'm certainly not pro-life, either. That's why I love your line: "To my mind, abortion is like murder and it's absolute ban is like slave rape." I feel the same way.
Everyone else around me (conservative and liberal) seems to feel so certain about this issue and I just can't reach a resolution. It makes me feel like a bad liberal. It just seems like a much more complex issue than anyone is giving it credit for.
A couple of things make this issue difficult. One is that people don't tend to have consistent ethical views so pointing out that people don't seem to be acting according to consistent ethical views is not always revealing. The other is that the absolutist positions, while being the easiest to articulate, are often the ones that hold up worst. It seems doubtful that any of these supposedly inconistent view could not be consistently held. It is unlikely that many people on any side of the issue except the least promising from an ethical perspictive are held consistently.
The fact that murderers have been found guilty of a serious crime is enough to make the pro-life, pro-death penalty position consistent. I am not saying it is a good view, but it is certainly a consistent one.
The fact that murderers are persons and fetuses by most reasonable standards are not is enough to make the pro-choice anti-death penalty position consistent. (And the fact that many people holding this view do so further on the problems with administering the death penalty makes it doubly so). These are the easy cases for consistent positions, and the people too quickly charging inconsistency are the ones making the simplistic arguments.
Even the position being attacked by Linker and Coates can be consistently defended (although I don't know what percentage of people who hold the view hold it consistently. Here is one version, although there could be others, I am making a particularly Christian version because of who seems to hold the view.
What happens in this world is less important than what happens in the next. The point of this world is developing virtue to carry oneself over to the next world. The horror of abortion (or murder in general) is not the sending of a soul prematurely into that better next world. It is the violating of God's law against killing. Individuals are charged with obeying God's law, and so it is wrong to perform abortion, it is wrong to kill people who perform abortion.
On the other hand, we are charged to keep separate vengeance that belongs to God, and earthly justice that is done by legitimately vested government authority. This latter is instructed to put murderers to death. So the death penalty is justified (even biblically sanctioned) but vigilantism is not.
That is a perfectly consistent view, not even at odds with the Bible. I see no reason why the pro-life movement cannot endorse it. I don't know what percentage does. (Of course the official Catholic position rejects the death penalty part, but protestants could accept it, as could cafeteria catholics).
"Abortion is like murder:" well yes, and so is self-defense. If someone attacks me, and I kill him, have I committed murder? It's "like murder" in that I killed him, but the law regards it as something else. Suppose I see a guy attacking someone else, and kill that guy to stop the attack? Here again, my act is "like murder," in that I killed someone, but it would be regarded, i suppose, as a justifiable homicide. Shooting your enemies in war is like murder, except that we don't think it's like murder at all. Killing someone in the heat of passion we regard as different from premeditated murder. We have different degrees of murder in law.
So yes, I'd agree that abortion is "like murder" in the same way that self defense or shooting your enemy are like murder. I'd have moral qualms about committing any of those acts. The law recognizes differences of circumstances and intent when it judges the at of killing someone. Abortion is an act of killing, but like self-defense or manslaughter or killing in battle, it's an act of killing that's different from murder in really crucial ways
Reading the thread I am reminded of the following poem by Alice Walker (sorry for the length):
What Can the White Man Say to the Black Woman?
By Alice Walker, address in support of the National March for Women’s Equality and Women’s Lives in Washington D.C., 22 May 1989
What is of use in these words I offer in memory of our common mother. And to my daughter.
What can the white man say to the black woman?
For four hundred years he ruled over the black woman’s womb.
Let us be clear. In the barracoons and along the slave shipping coasts of Africa, for more than twenty generations, it was he who dashed our babies brains out against the rocks.
What can the white man say to the black woman?
For four hundred years he determined which black woman’s children would live or die.
Let it be remembered. It was he who placed our children on the auction block in cities all across the eastern half of what is now the United States, and listened to and watched them beg for their mothers’ arms, before being sold to the highest bidder and dragged away.
What can the white man say to the black woman?
We remember that Fannie Lou Hamer, a poor sharecropper on a Mississippi plantation, was one of twenty-one children; and that on plantations across the South black women often had twelve, fifteen, twenty children. Like their enslaved mothers and grandmothers before them, these black women were sacrificed to the profit the white man could make from harnessing their bodies and their children’s bodies to the cotton gin.
What can the white man say to the black woman?
We see him lined up on Saturday nights, century after century, to make the black mother, who must sell her body to feed her children, go down on her knees to him.
Let us take note:
He has not cared for a single one of the dark children in his midst, over hundreds of years.
Where are the children of the Cherokee, my great grandmother’s people?
Gone.
Where are the children of the Blackfoot?
Gone.
Where are the children of the Lakota?
Gone.
Of the Cheyenne?
Of the Chippewa?
Of the Iroquois?
Of the Sioux?
Of the Mandinka?
Of the Ibo?
Of the Ashanti?
Where are the children of the Slave Coast and Wounded Knee?
We do not forget the forced sterilizations and forced starvations on the reservations, here as in South Africa. Nor do we forget the smallpox-infested blankets Indian children were given by the Great White Fathers of the United States government.
What has the white man to say to the black woman?
When we have children you do everything in your power to make them feel unwanted from the moment they are born. You send them to fight and kill other dark mothers’ children around the world. You shove them onto public highways in the path of oncoming cars. You shove their heads through plate glass windows. You string them up and you string them out.
What has the white man to say to the black woman?
From the beginning, you have treated all dark children with absolute hatred.
Thirty million African children died on the way to the Americas, where nothing awaited them but endless toil and the crack of a bullwhip. They died of a lack of food, of lack of movement in the holds of ships. Of lack of friends and relatives. They died of depression, bewilderment and fear.
What has the white man to say to the black woman?
Let us look around us: Let us look at the world the white man has made for the black woman and her children.
It is a world in which the black woman is still forced to provide cheap labor, in the form of children, for the factories and on the assembly lines of the white man.
It is a world into which the white man dumps every foul, person-annulling drug he smuggles into creation.
It is a world where many of our babies die at birth, or later of malnutrition, and where many more grow up to live lives of such misery they are forced to choose death by their own hands.
What has the white man to say to the black woman, and to all women and children everywhere?
Let us consider the depletion of the ozone; let us consider homelessness and the nuclear peril; let us consider the destruction of the rain forests_in the name of the almighty hamburger. Let us consider the poisoned apples and the poisoned water and the poisoned air and the poisoned earth.
And that all of our children, because of the white man’s assault on the planet, have a possibility of death by cancer in their almost immediate future.
What has the white, male lawgiver to say to any of us? To those of us who love life too much to willingly bring more children into a world saturated with death?
Abortion, for many women, is more than an experience of suffering beyond anything most men will ever know; it is an act of mercy, and an act of self-defense.
To make abortion illegal again is to sentence millions of women and children to miserable lives and even more miserable deaths.
Given his history, in relation to us, I think the white man should be ashamed to attempt to speak for the unborn children of the black woman. To force us to have children for him to ridicule, drug and turn into killers and homeless wanderers is a testament to his hypocrisy.
What can the white man say to the black woman?
Only one thing that the black woman might hear.
Yes, indeed, the white man can say, Your children have the right to life. Therefore I will call back from the dead those 30 million who were tossed overboard during the centuries of the slave trade. And the other millions who died in my cotton fields and hanging from trees.
I will recall all those who died of broken hearts and broken spirits, under the insult of segregation.
I will raise up all the mothers who died exhausted after birthing twenty-one children to work sunup to sundown on my plantation. I will restore to full health all those who perished for lack of food, shelter, sunlight, and love; and from my inability to see them as human beings.
But I will go even further:
I will tell you, black woman, that I wish to be forgiven the sins I commit daily against you and your children. For I know that until I treat your chil dren with love, I can never be trusted by my own. Nor can I respect myself.
And I will free your children from insultingly high infant mortality rates, short life spans, horrible housing, lack of food, rampant ill health. I will liberate them from the ghetto. I will open wide the doors of all the schools and hospitals and businesses of society to your children. I will look at your children and see not a threat but a joy.
I will remove myself as an obstacle in the path that your children, against all odds, are making toward the light. I will not assassinate them for dreaming dreams and offering new visions of how to live. I will cease trying to lead your children, for I can see I have never understood where I was going. I will agree to sit quietly for a century or so, and meditate on this.
This is what the white man can say to the black woman.
We are listening.
I hope I don't get banned for saying this, but the real reason the prolife movement is finished is that the mask slipped. We can no longer pretend the face of the movement is thoughtful, intelligent Ross Douthat.
The face of prolife is crazed terrorist life-jihaadi Scott Roeder.
That is who they really are.
I understand the point. While I don't believe that a fetus is a person and I don't believe terminating a pregnancy is murder, I can totally understand that, as some point, that's a subjective decision and I might be wrong. You can believe that abortion is murder and if you thought that, what wouldn't you do to stop it?
Critics liked to describe Tiller as like a Nazi. If you could travel back in time to Nazi Germany, would it be wrong to commit murder and mayhem in order to stop Hitler?
But, if that's the case, then what's wrong with all these anti-abortion activists who aren't committing acts of murder and terrorism. Abortion clinics would be blown up every day. Doctors would be killed all the time. If you were serious, and willing to practice anarchy, you could shut down abortion in a matter of weeks.
So, do they really believe that no action is too extreme in defense of the unborn? Do they really believe that two wrongs make a right? Are they willing to take a stand? Is it that they don't really believe what they say or do they just not have the courage of their convictions?
I first saw this question at the NPR website. I'll just copy what I wrote there...
Okay- I'll bite. Mr Linker says that if he believed what we (pro-lifers) believe, then he "might feel compelled to do something about it, perhaps even something unreasonable and irresponsible." Well, I guess most of us are just more reasonable and responsible than he is. Putting aside that many of us believe in the 'consistant life ethic' (which forbids capital punishment), I think that even those who are not ideologically opposed to violence can recognize that attacks like the one that occured Sunday do not further our cause, but set it back. Does that answer the question?
PS: I do assert that "abortion truly is what the pro-life movement says it is... the infliction of deadly violence against an innocent and defenseless human being", but since violence against abortion providers will only serve to help the side of those who want to keep the practise legal, we must all "reject the use of violence" if we wish "to save the innocent".
I suspect that Mr Linker may feel that we just speak about abortion in terms of 'killing the innocent' because it is rhetorically useful. My guess is that he thinks that we actually believe that such talk is hyperbolic, and that the fact that our movement is non-violent is evidence that our characterization of abortion is not sincere. He is mistaken, and his reasoning just an inability to empathize with our views shows and a lack of imagination.
NOTE: The full New Republic post and the remarks by Coates make explicit that the sincerity of the pro-life rhetoric is in doubt, but the NPR excerpt did not.