The Bigger Picture: Implications of Language in the Abortion Debate
About a week ago, Henry linked to an article by the National Catholic Reporter‘s John Allen about Rocco Buttiglione, a Catholic politician in Italy who was “a close friend” of Pope John Paul the Great and in 2004 “was rejected as a minister in the European Commission because he refused to recant his traditional Catholic beliefs on homosexuality, abortion and the family.” In his interview, he told Allen that “[t]hose who wanted [legalization of abortion] today recognize, thanks in part to scientific discoveries about the embryo and DNA, that the fetus is not a lump of blood in the body of a woman; the fetus is a life.” The interesting “twist” to the story is that Buttiglione, who clearly is not ashamed of his Catholic faith and not afraid to speak the truth about the evil of abortion even at the expense of his own career, recently stated that “he won’t support efforts to make abortion illegal, because ‘God entrusts a child to its mother in such a special way, that to defend the child against the mother is just, but impossible.’”
To a certain extent that I will explain later on in this post, I disagree with Buttiglione (and since my newfound membership in the American Catholic blogosphere has automatically conferred upon me the charism of infallibility in all matters, he’d better listen to me lest I decide to smack him with that dreaded anathema, “Catholic in Name Only”). But I bring up this story to illustrate a broader point, which is that those of us who participate frequently in the debate over legalized abortion often do not fully consider the implications of the arguments that we make. This is most blatant, of course, among those who oppose restrictions on abortion in order, they claim, to protect the mother’s right to “choose.” To this, the response is simple: “Choose to do what? To kill her child? Is that really a ‘choice’ that anyone should have?” It is also true, however, among those of us who oppose legalized abortion, in ways that are more subtle but that, in the long run, will ultimately hamper our ability to replace our current Culture of Death with a more just, more compassionate, more welcoming–in short, more Christian–society.
When we argue that an unborn child deserves legal protection, the natural followup question is simple: “From whom?” We can hem and haw about this question for as long as we desire, but in the end, if we are honest with ourselves, there is only one true answer: “From his or her mother.” And, as Buttiglione points out, it is profoundly unnatural, uncompassionate, and ultimately un-Christian to frame the issue in such a way that pits the interests of the child against the interests of his or her mother. The true failure of the pro-life movement is manifested not in election results, but in the fact that we have allowed ourselves to be dragged into the debate on the other side’s terms, under the premise that the rights and interests of a mother and her child are separate ideals that must be “balanced.”
Now, unlike Buttiglione, I do not believe that this reality completely negates the importance of a legal system that recognizes the right to life of the unborn. His argument that it is “just but impossible” to protect the life of the unborn child is, in my view, a red herring. Objectively speaking, it is fundamentally unjust–indeed, fundamentally evil–to deprive an entire class of humans of this recognition. One might just as easily and accurately say that it would be “just but impossible” to try to eliminate racism in America by legal means, but few would argue that Martin Luther King and Cesar Chavez were wrong in seeking legal protection for minorities even as they recognized that only a profound shift in cultural awareness would completely exorcise the demon of bigotry that underlay the segregated legal regime.
So must it be with the pro-life movement in modern America. For the sake of justice, we must continue to fight for laws that recognize the inalienable right to life possessed by every human being from conception until natural death. In a larger sense, however, if we wish to create a true Culture of Life, a true Civilization of Love, we cannot merely be satisfied with overturning Roe and changing a few laws. We must, as Buttiglione implies, ask ourselves a difficult question: “How in God’s Name did we as a society ever get to the point where we take for granted the idea that a child must be protected from its mother, that the rights of a child and the rights of its mother must always be mutually exclusive? And how do we as a society begin our retreat from this damnable proposition?”
There are, I believe, two equally valid (and indeed interrelated) answers to this question, answers that point to the heart of the challenge we face in building a society that is more hospitable to all innocent life. One answer will please conservatives–as Pope Paul VI predicted in Humanae Vitae, the cultural mentality that human sexuality should be viewed only as a private, selfish means of pleasure, and not primarily as the sacred act of passing on life (and therefore an act requiring maturity, responsibility, and, God forbid, rules), has led quite logically to the idea that an unborn child is nothing more than an inconvenient byproduct that can quickly and easily be excised if it interferes with the attainment of such pleasure. The other answer will please liberals–we have allowed American capitalism to devolve into a materialist, consumerist orgy that is stacked to favor the wealthy and leave behind the vulnerable. The fact that for many poor and even middle-class women an unplanned pregnancy represents an economic catastrophe is not an invention of a pro-choice propoganda machine, nor is it simply a cop-out for Catholic Democrats who fear running afoul of their party on the legality issue; it is a frightening and, from a Christian perspective, morally repugnant reality.* Those who ignore this reality, or who resist addressing it on a national level for fear of undermining the “free market,” contribute to the notion of a clash between the (very real) needs of the mother and the inalienable rights of her unborn child.
Those of us who call ourselves pro-life need to get serious about addressing these broader cultural issues that have pitted mothers against children, not just through personal charity (for many pro-life Americans do dedicate quite a bit of time, energy, and money to supporting pregnant women through crisis pregnancy centers, and to ensuring that their children receive a proper formation on the true purpose and sacredness of human sexuality) but also through the policies for which we advocate on a national level. For their part, if our fellow citizens who call themselves pro-choice believe, as they say, that abortion is not ideal and should be more rare, they too must work to address these issues. A true common-ground effort to reduce abortion, such as the initiative that Rocco Buttiglione is now putting together, must comprehensively address both the economic factor (a topic about which liberals are more comfortable speaking but seemingly unwilling to address in any truly revolutionary way) and the moral factor (a topic about which liberals are decidedly uncomfortable, since it requires an admission that a totally sexually permissive culture is not, in fact, a good thing). Only when we begin to tackle these difficult issues will we begin to eliminate the false dichotomy that our culture has constructed between the well-being of mothers and the rights of their unborn children.
*Anyone who doubts that the American economic system has become inexorably stacked against the poor, and particularly poor women, would do well to read Nickel and Dimed. The author is Barbara Ehrenreich, a freelance writer who on three separate occasions attempted to cover basic living expenses for a month–food, rent in the cheapest accomodations possible, etc.–by working at several common minimum-wage jobs. Even without children to support, and even while working two or three jobs at a time, she was unable to make ends meet. Though Ehrenreich is an atheist and at several points in the book is quite vocal about her beliefs (or lack thereof), her findings should make it clear that America’s current system of materialistic capitalism is simply incompatible with Christian morality. Indeed, her firsthand observations of the Church’s failure to live up to the words of Her Savior on issues of economic justice should be cause for some profound self-examination on the part of all of her Christian readers.
Comments are closed.
“Now, unlike Buttiglione, I do not believe that this reality completely negates the importance of a legal system that recognizes the right to life of the unborn”
In Italy the Civil Code, in the first Art. states: “we become persons only after the birth”
(ART. 1 La personalità giuridica si acquista al momento della nascita), and nobody want take away the abortion law. Buttiglione’s ideas mirror the Italian legal system.
Good post,
But you do have to be careful. While it is true that poverty or difficult economic conditions in general play a role in abortion, there is also the problem of “too much wealth”. Plenty of middle class women seek out abortions as well, particularly younger women in college who are convinced that a child will ruin their educational or career prospects. When you highlight the role of consumerism, you are highlighting the problems associated sins only people with money can afford to commit. I wrote about this extensively myself, if you’re interested:
http://www.geocities.com/joeahargrave/consumerism.html
I am all for aid to poor mothers and working families. But we also have to be sure that we are not encouraging or reinforcing the “post-modern family” either – the single parent home, the broken home. After all, 2/3 of abortions are sought out by unmarried women, by women who have never married. Strong marriages, I think, tend to lead to a stronger financial situation, especially for the poor.
Joe
I would also add that I think, if one studies it greatly, capitalism has worked hard for the destruction of the family; what better way can one make money than if you can convince a group of people who, when as a group, don’t need to buy an item more than once, to buy it, if they split up and all need it as individuals. Once that has been determined, I am sure many have worked to train consumers to think and be individualistically (rugged individualism) which of course also works to counter the family. But more importantly, once the system of capitalism is allowed to be used as an answer to ethics, it then turns ethics upside down for what it puts as most important (money) and this of course has the effect that anything put in the way can be, and is, questioned (family).
This is a very good essay, thank you for writing it. I agree that these moral and charitable changes also have to be made. But it is also important not to take an inaccurately narrow view of the legal side. When you say “we cannot merely be satisfied with overturning Roe and changing a few laws,” you should recognize that “making aboriton illegal” involves many aspects that are concrete, effective, and woamn-and-child-protecting that are far, far beyond “changing a few laws,” and at the same time do not pit women against their children or criminalize women. These laws are a substantial body of social effort that should be listed as a third activity between your categories of charity and of more fundamental social change. These laws are in fact true common ground efforts if common ground means anything authentic, and they have the benefit of having actually been shown to reduce abortion in large numbers. Such laws include bans on public funding of abortion, requirements of parental involvement, requirements of informed consent and waiting periods, abortion facility sanitation standards, ultrasound requirements, restrictions on types of abortion and born alive abortion, and a host of other restrictions that Americans support. http://dl.aul.org/ And making abortion illegal also involves punishing abortionists. What you overlooked is that in America, the natural and historical answer to your question, “Protect from whom?” is
“From abortionists.” (AUL also has a page on this, search under “Prosecution”) And the question is more properly stated as, who do we protect children and their mothers from. That’s how the early feminists stated the question. (see Feminists for Life under “Voices of Our Feminist Foremothers”). Abortion still hurts and victimizes women, is still unsafe, and is still perpetrated by the bottom feeders of the medical industry. That’s why making abortion illegal is not pitting mothers against children as Buttiglione says, and it does not follow from a rejection of “criminalizing women” that anyone could justify rejecting “making abortion illegal.”
I’m impressed. The piece was very thoughtfully written. I’m in emphatic agreement when you speak to the idea that changing the laws alone will not end the evil of abortion. I remember a story that a religious priest told at a meeting I once attended about a woman, before Roe, who attempted a home abortion, was brought to a Catholic hospital, and subsequently bled to death because they wouldn’t treat her.
It was against the law, but that didn’t deter her.
No, our job as Christians is to flavor the culture, first and foremost. And whatever giant we need to speak to… we need to do it.
Thom, that story doesn’t sound credible at all (and believing an incredible story merely because it was told by a priest would be clericalistic).
Well, you’ve missed the point of my comment, and anyway, your gripe, I presume, is with the Franciscan priest who told a lie, than with me for relaying it. ;-)
Mickey,
And I forgot to add — yes, this is a great start for you here. And I think you are right on the two main issues: the sexuality of the modern world (which influences and sickens us as a culture) and the ways capitalistic consumerism affects as a society (which also influences and sickens us as a culture). Combine the two together, add some “healthy individualism” which justifies the poor as being poor because “they didn’t do enough for themselves,” and we can begin to see what Catholics, as a whole, need to deal with.
Of course, the answer is not complete negation, but transformation — there are reasons for why we, as a society, have taken on these cultural norms; there is something attractive about them, something good about them — the problem is to find what that good is, see how it is being perverted, and then work to complete and perfect the good by placing it back in its proper place.
It is also true, however, among those of us who oppose legalized abortion, in ways that are more subtle but that, in the long run, will ultimately hamper our ability to replace our current Culture of Death with a more just, more compassionate, more welcoming–in short, more Christian–society.
I am glad you admit your goal is to make our society — made up not just of Christians, but also of Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, agnostics, and atheists — more Christian. Nut remember that civil law in the United States must have a secular purpose or it is unconstitutional. I had a discussion with another member of Vox Nova who said he would join forces with Orthodox Jews to prohibit the 99% of abortions Catholics and Orthodox Jews agree are morally impermissible (all those not done to save the mother) and would turn elsewhere to help in banning the other 1%. This raises the question in my mind whether Catholics can accept the separation of Church and state. Is being a good Catholic incompatible with being a good American?
When I pointed out that Benedict XVI put “culture of death” in quotation marks in Caritas in Veritate, someone pointed out to me that John Paul II puts it in quotes in Evangelium Vitae. Exactly what subtle point they were making I don’t pretend to know. But I think it is wrong to refer to our current culture as a “culture of death.” The same culture that permits abortion also spends $26 billion a year to save the 12% of babies that are born prematurely. Americans give hundreds of billions of dollars to charity every year. In the United States in 2007, 60.8 million volunteers dedicated 8.1 billion hours of service to community organizations. I don’t have time to look for all the statistics at the moment, but how many Americans put up with great hardships to care for their elderly parents or their disabled children?
We live in a society that has both good and bad. We do not live in a “culture of death” that the “pro-life” movement must struggle to replace with a “culture of life.” John Paul II himself didn’t say we live in a “culture of death.” He said
Objectively speaking, it is fundamentally unjust–indeed, fundamentally evil–to deprive an entire class of humans of this recognition [of a right to life].
The “entire class of humans” argument becomes — to me at least — a lot less compelling in the light of this:
It is not as if Roe v Wade declared open season on fetuses. Slavery and racism subjugated one “entire class of humans” to all other humans. Legalized abortion gives each pregnant woman, as an individual, the power of life and death over the fetus inside her. I defy any pro-lifer to find, among those who support legalized abortion, anyone who would not be perfectly horrified at the idea of allowing just anyone to kill the fetus of a pregnant woman. The unborn are just as protected now as they were prior to Roe v Wade with one exception. Mothers have the right to abort their children. To pro-lifers that may be a huge exception, but in my opinion, the “whole class of humans” argument is a weak one.
Legalized abortion has begun to seem to me recently more a matter of parental rights — or, if you are “pro-life,” parental rights taken way too far. There are other instances in which parents have, in effect, the power of life and death over their children after birth, and they are seldom discussed. And to the best of my knowledge, they are never discussed by the pro-life movement.
Henry,
Capitalism is largely indifferent to the family, and to religion. I don’t believe there has ever been a conspiracy to destroy the family, only an indifference to policies that end up having terrible effects on families.
Communism and most forms of radical leftism, on the other hand, have been openly and violently hostile towards the family. They believe it is their duty to finish in a conscious way what capitalism has begun in an unconscious way.
David Nickol,
You wrote that,
“had a discussion with another member of Vox Nova who said he would join forces with Orthodox Jews to prohibit the 99% of abortions Catholics and Orthodox Jews agree are morally impermissible (all those not done to save the mother) and would turn elsewhere to help in banning the other 1%. This raises the question in my mind whether Catholics can accept the separation of Church and state. Is being a good Catholic incompatible with being a good American?”
Hello again: that was me :)
I don’t see why joining forces with Jews, Muslims, other Christians or even non-believers of good will would have anything to do with the separation of church and state. The Church has always accepted truth where she has found it, and in the modern era she has proclaimed that the Culture of Life is the responsibility of everyone.
The Church’s position on life issues are not limited to Catholics – we are talking here about restoring to humanism the only rational foundation it could ever possibly have, in God. As for the separation of “church and state”, that is quite a different matter from the separation of “religion and politics”, which is the real goal of the secular “progressives”.
To take religion out of political life is to allow the “inhuman humanism” Benedict spoke of in Caritas to triumph. This is not the world we wish to live in, and not one we will accept so that a few hysterical leftists don’t feel “persecuted”.
“in my opinion, the “whole class of humans” argument is a weak one.”
I actually agree with you on that. Abortion is primarily about an abdication of parental responsibility. It is not a “women’s issue”, and it is not the same as the Holocaust or other similar episodes. It is yet another rebellion against the family, society, and nature. It is a part of the “sexual revolution”, the attempt to completely divorce sex from procreation, from social responsibility, from anything but the satisfaction of individual desires for physical gratification and romantic love.
These children are disposed of not because of what they are but simply because they are in the way. Well, in addition to “forcing” mothers into giving birth to their children, I also believe the law should “force” fathers to support them during the pregnancy. After that, adoption is an option. If that option isn’t taken then the usual laws that “force” parents to care for their children and charge them with abuse and neglect if they fail should apply.
So, everyone should be forced. I don’t just want to oppress women, see :) Men too! Everyone gets “oppressed” – about as oppressed as a screaming toddler who has been told that he must share, and just doesn’t want to. Poor dears.
As for what the pro-life movement discusses, you can’t hold that against us. Those cases are relatively rare – thousands of abortions take place every day. I’m sure any pro-lifer you asked about those particular issues would argue or err on the side of life.
Joe
Many of the people who debated with communism have suggested its repudiation of the family was self-contradictory with its desire for “brotherly love.” But I agree that socialism/communism as we have seen it from Marx onward has had a tendency to reject the nuclear family.
However, one must only look at the outcome of the capitalistic regime to see how the family has indeed been broken apart through the ages, as the world became more capitalistic. I think it is an accident of the system itself, though I also do think some (marketing, for example) have caught on this fact and have worked it over for capitalistic ideals. The problem is capitalism when used as a morality trumps the mores of the family. The family is about self-giving love; capitalism is about the accumulation of capital for the self. Ayn Rand is the exemplar of capitalistic ethics; it’s individualism leads to the destruction of the family, intentionally or not, but again, if one sees the outcome it is quite easy to work with it and promote it for one’s desires (accumulation of capital).
Being of an angelic nature, I again blow my trumpet. Surely the most successful method to prevent unwanted pregnancies, is to work against unnecessary copulation. It seems to be accepted that copulation is as automatic and as necessary as breathing. But it really is not.
Gabriel
The question, of course, remains where the notion of our increased copulation, free sex, as a society comes from; the ideologies behind capitalism, to be sure, which suggests we should aim for our desires, and our desires are by nature good, and goods, to be bought and sold, should provide some answer here.
But I say this in agreement with you — as Mickey pointed out, it is a two-fold prong, and one of it is the sexuality of the modern age. But again, try criticizing it with a capitalistic morality. Just try.
Surely the most successful method to prevent unwanted pregnancies, is to work against unnecessary copulation.
Gabriel,
Henry is awfully charitable to find anything in this statement to agree with. What in the world is “necessary” copulation? Should we figure out the optimal population, calculate how many instances of intercourse are necessary to maintain it, and then institute a program of rationing? Should we encourage a program of “reverse NFP” so that married couples engage in sex only during fertile periods, since sex that takes place during infertile periods is clearly “unnecessary copulation”?
Hello again: that was me :)
Joe,
I remembered who it was. I withheld your name to protect your reputation. :-)
I don’t see why joining forces with Jews, Muslims, other Christians or even non-believers of good will would have anything to do with the separation of church and state.
The point I was trying to make was that you were willing to join with Orthodox Jews to eliminate the 99% of abortions Catholics and Orthodox Jews agree are impermissible, and then you would turn around and try to find some way to prohibit the 1% of abortions your former allies, the Orthodox Jews, are not merely permitted to have but arguably mandated to have. You seem to have a desire to impose — in a pluralistic society — the Catholic view on everyone, no matter what their deeply held religious tradition.
It would not be finding common ground to work with Orthodox Jews to achieve what they and Catholic want in common, and then working with another group to take away what Orthodox Jews want. It would be making temporary alliances when it served your purposes and then repudiating them when you had achieved what you wanted.
To attempt to impose on Orthodox Jews — by civil law — the Catholic position on abortion would be a violation of Church and state, but perhaps even more seriously would be an attempt to deny religious freedom to Orthodox Jews.
David,
There would never be any confusion or denial of our ultimate aims as Catholics in the political arena – to outlaw abortion without exception. No Jew I worked with would ever be lead to believe one thing, only to then be faced with another. The position would be put before them plainly, and they may continue to move forward, or work on their own.
I am furthermore 100% fine with denying religious freedom to anyone when it conflicts with the inherent dignity of human beings. If it were not for Christianity and the widespread belief in a just creator that it spawned, there would be no conception of a “right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”.
The values that secularists believe are threatened by Christianity, exist because of Christianity. Christianity is therefore within reason and right to draw the boundaries on the use of those rights. It is not bound to accept the secular project of hollowing out morality of its religious content, removing its rational foundation and opening it up to the erosion of relativism.
I am furthermore 100% fine with denying religious freedom to anyone when it conflicts with the inherent dignity of human beings.
Joe,
I commend you for being up-front about what I would consider to be working to make the United States a Catholic theocracy, at least on the issue of abortion. Would you argue that abortion is “special,” and therefore it is legitimate to impose the Catholic view in this one area by law? Or would you be in favor of ending divorce, outlawing contraceptives, and legislating in other areas where you feel that inherent dignity of human beings comes into play?
David,
If you don’t want to acknowledge that there are many values that secularists would (and do) impose by force on everyone that are ultimately rooted in Christian, Catholic morality, that’s fine. If and when you do choose to acknowledge it, will you regard such laws as “theocratic”?
“Would you argue that abortion is “special,” and therefore it is legitimate to impose the Catholic view in this one area by law?”
I would argue that the right to life is the foundation of all other rights, and that non-Catholics have as much of an interest and obligation in defending that right as Catholics do. So in that it is foundational, we might say it is “special”. But it is not exclusively Catholic. When I was an atheist I was pro-life – I would have imposed it then as well as now.
“Or would you be in favor of ending divorce, outlawing contraceptives, and legislating in other areas where you feel that inherent dignity of human beings comes into play?”
I am in favor of granting communities that one is free to join, or free to leave, the freedom to outlaw such things, yes. In other words, I support local theocracy, which is what one could call the Amish community or even the fundamentalist Mormons that practice polygamy. I support keeping the ACLU out of Ave Maria, and allowing it to ban pornography from its stores and shops. I support allowing those who refuse to submit to any moral authority the freedom to move to San Francisco or wherever they think they need to go to complete their utter degeneration.
Imposing any of it at a national level at this point would be impossible and absurd. The battle for the future is not so much the battle over legislation but the battle for the minds of the young. More community rights means more local control over education, which means more minds shaped by Catholic moral values. This is why the Church includes support for policies that foster school choice, and opposition to policies that hinder such choices, as part of its criteria for acceptable political candidates for Catholics to vote for.
Joe,
Fortunately (in my mind) our parish Catholic school teaches nothing like what you suggest. If they did, they would quickly be down at least one benefactor.
What is it you think I suggest be taught? The basic teachings of the Church on sexual morality and the origins of human rights and dignity? Is that what you don’t want in the Catholic schools?
Or that people have a right to form communities of their choosing?
You’re certainly entitled to a toothless faith. I like mine meaningful.
Joe,
My parish, its school and its benefactors have a community of our own that I am well pleased with.
to: David Nickol
Your criticism of Joe’s approach to policy doesn’t make sense. You said that, “It would not be finding common ground… It would be making temporary alliances when it served your purposes and then repudiating them when you had achieved what you wanted.” Isn’t that precisely what the president is trying to do when he talks about ‘common ground’ between pro-lifers and pro-choicers? I don’t see a difference.
Also, you wrote that “It is not as if Roe v Wade declared open season on fetuses. Slavery and racism subjugated one ‘entire class of humans’ to all other humans.” This is a bizarre argument. Slaves were expected to obey the orders of whites, but for much of history, children have been expected to be obedient to adults. Even today, they have few of the freedoms that adults do.
You say that, “Legalized abortion gives each pregnant woman, as an individual, the power of life and death over the fetus inside her.” How is that different from the slave owner who, as an individual, had the power of life and death over his slave. Do you think that anyone else was so empowered?
Finally, I am curious about whether your issue about church and state separation is something that you brought up against Joe because he takes an extreme position about the final 1% of abortions, or whether you would apply the same argument to anyone (including the Orthodox Jews) who generally (in all but the so-called ‘hard cases’) wanted to criminalize abortion. Pluralism doesn’t mean that one cannot pursue policies when one is motivated by religious belief. (Rawls wrote extensively on this topic.) One’s motivation is a matter of freedom of conscience. What is generally considered improper in a pluralistic society is pursuing policies which do not have a legitimate non-religious justification. Do you believe that pro-lifers (who would criminialize at least 90% of all abortions) have such an illegitimate agenda?
To: Matt Bowman
I disagree that “the natural and historical answer to your question, ‘Protect from whom?’ is
‘From abortionists.’” That might be the historical answer to ‘who would you incarcerate’, which is a different question. Moreover, it is the mother from whom the child is being protected in the same way that it is the leaders of organized crime from whom witnesses are protected- even if the immediate danger is from hired killers.
To: Joe Hargrave
“We are talking here about restoring to humanism the only rational foundation it could ever possibly have, in God.” People like MacIntyre and the Pope might agree with that, but no non-believer will. As a member of the Brights Movement, I find that to be a pretty offensive statement.
“Abortion is primarily about an abdication of parental responsibility. It is not a ‘women’s issue’, and it is not the same as the Holocaust or other similar episodes.” I fail to see why it cannot be both an abdication of responsibility and the same as episodes like the Holocaust- especially when one remembers the fate of the disabled (to whom society has a special responsibility) at the hands of the Nazis.
“The values that secularists believe are threatened by Christianity, exist because of Christianity. Christianity is therefore within reason and right to draw the boundaries on the use of those rights.” What does that even mean? Do you mean that the secular values post-date Christian society? That is arguably the opposite of the truth. Do you mean that the secularists pursue their values with the forebearance of the Christians who could rise up and smite them?
“It is not bound to accept the secular project of hollowing out morality of its religious content, removing its rational foundation and opening it up to the erosion of relativism.” Secularists probably have to forsake moral realism for constructivism, but that does not make them all relativists.
ockraz,
“People like MacIntyre and the Pope might agree with that, but no non-believer will. As a member of the Brights Movement, I find that to be a pretty offensive statement.”
A non-believer who is interested in discovering the origin of some of the values he holds – not all, of course – will have no choice but to agree. There was no humanism before Christianity, no conception of individual rights and value, no conception of the inherent equality of human beings. These conceptions make no sense without a just and loving God.
No material, physical process can create a right, much less an inalienable right. No material process can create intrinsic moral value. In materialistic evolution, man is “just another animal”, a talking monkey with less hair. Any additional value placed upon man is due to a religious heritage that you will never be free of as long as you hold to that value.
So you may as well be offended by the theory of gravity. Take offense today, if you must, but re-examine your beliefs tomorrow, if you can.
Further, I believe that the madness unleashed by atheistic or quasi-atheistic regimes from the Jacobin terror to Communism to the current Culture of Death is more than proof enough that there is no “humanism” without God, only an imposition of the will of the strongest.
“I fail to see why it cannot be both an abdication of responsibility and the same as episodes like the Holocaust”
The Holocaust sought to rid the planet of all Jews. Abortion simply enables parents to dispose of their “unwanted” children. In one case it is something intrinsic to the people themselves, their “Jewishness” that is getting them killed; in the other, it is something extrinsic, their “unwantedness” that is responsible.
Of course some of the methods are the same, the industrialized slaughter. But the logic is different, and it is important to understand the difference. The Holocaust was mostly carried out by the Nazi state – abortion is mostly carried out, in the West, by individuals. These are different problems that require different solutions.
More later.
There is much confusion about the position of Judaism on abortion:
“Rabbi Sacks rescued the conversation by stressing that the Jewish position regarding abortion is quite close to the Catholic position. His exposition is worth a detailed summary, as it is a close to an official Orthodox Jewish view as we will hear in the English-speaking world. Only in the case of danger to the life of the mother, and only after extensive investigation by competent Jewish authorities, would Orthodox Judaism ever permit abortion. Abortion on demand is inconceivable. As to the question of where the human person begins, Judaism makes a distinction between human life, which is everywhere and always sacred, and the human person. The mother is a person; the fetus is human life. In the exceptional event of a conflict the person takes precedence. Physis (nature) is gradual, but nomos (law) is discrete. Precisely because we cannot say with precision where life begins we cannot allow that abortion is permissible at any stage of pregnancy. Unlike the Catholic position, which proceeds from natural theology, the Jewish position emerges from the legal consideration of the human person, which requires the community to establish a distinction—and that distinction is the event of birth, the physical separation of the baby from its mother’s body. Rabbi Sacks emphasized that the Jewish and Catholic positions converge on nearly the same result, with the only distinction being abortion to save the mother’s life.
“On other life issues, Rabbi Sacks added, the British Rabbinate cooperates closely with the Catholic Church, most visibly in opposition to so-called assisted suicide”.
Henry Karlson Says July 25, 2009 at 1:24 pm
“Gabriel
The question, of course, remains where the notion of our increased copulation, free sex, as a society comes from; the ideologies behind capitalism, to be sure, which suggests we should aim for our desires, and our desires are by nature good, and goods, to be bought and sold, should provide some answer here.
But I say this in agreement with you — as Mickey pointed out, it is a two-fold prong, and one of it is the sexuality of the modern age. But again, try criticizing it with a capitalistic morality. Just try.”
I fear I fail to understand what it is you mean by “try to criticize it with a capitalistic morality”. I believe, by and large, that industrial capitalism is fundamentally immoral. Read Adam Smith. In the last year of his life, Kant proclaimed “I am God”.
It was not so long ago that in this country it was thought disgraceful – socially disgraceful – for an unmarried woman to become pregnant. And in the background there was always pa with a shotgun, or a pair of shears. Nothing particularly Catholic about it at all. Simply human.
Gabriel,
We both agree — capitalist ideology is immoral. The problem is when capitalism has been raised as a justification for action, then it becomes a hermeneutics for ethics, and you will find many who follow through with this. They will say, “Well, that’s how the things turn out,” when the markets or businesses end up hurting innocents. “Nothing immoral done by the business, just the way things work.” And so the moral question is inverted — what supports or works with capitalism is acceptable, when will put limits on it is not.
Isn’t that precisely what the president is trying to do when he talks about ‘common ground’ between pro-lifers and pro-choicers? I don’t see a difference.
The search for common ground is to find what those who are pro-choice and those who are pro-life already have in common. It is not way for the foes of abortion to find ways to add additional restrictions on abortion or the supporters of abortion to find ways to expand abortion rights.
I am not sure I understand your points about abortion and slavery, I was not arguing that slavery gave a slave owner the right to kill his slaves. I was arguing that racism and slavery did indeed take rights from “a whole class of persons.” Slaves could be bought and sold. Their families could be split up. And if they escaped, the those who helped them were committing a crime. In the United States, when slavery was legal, slaves were at the mercy of society as a whole. In the case of legalized abortion in the United States, it is only the woman who conceived the fetus who has the right to destroy it. The law does not force or require anyone to have an abortion, and aside from the mother, the law does not give anyone any more right to harm a fetus than it did before legalized abortion.
Pluralism doesn’t mean that one cannot pursue policies when one is motivated by religious belief.
I agree. Catholics, if they so choose, can support health care reform because the Church teaches that everyone has a God-given right to health care. They can support the criminalization of abortion because the Church teaches that life begins at conception. They can support minimum wage laws because they believe the teachings of the Church require help for the poor. However, laws cannot be written based on religious dogmas. A law that banned abortion in all cases because the Catholic Church teaches life begins at conception would be unconstitutional because it would enshrine Catholic dogma as law. This is not to say a law banning all abortions would be automatically unconstitutional (if Roe is overturned). It is to say that there may not be a law based on what the Catholic Church teaches.
Catholics would be free, if they so chose, to attempt to get a law passed requiring everyone in the United States to go to Mass on Sundays. However, if lawmakers enacted such a law and the courts did not strike it down, they would be violating the constitution.
David Nickol Says July 25, 2009 at 1:51 pm
“Surely the most successful method to prevent unwanted pregnancies, is to work against unnecessary copulation”.
“Gabriel,
Henry is awfully charitable to find anything in this statement to agree with. What in the world is “necessary” copulation? Should we figure out the optimal population, calculate how many instances of intercourse are necessary to maintain it, and then institute a program of rationing? Should we encourage a program of “reverse NFP” so that married couples engage in sex only during fertile periods, since sex that takes place during infertile periods is clearly “unnecessary copulation”?”
I will begin to think that you are a lawyer, but ask you to excuse this thought if you are not. Let us then say “permissible” copulation” – i.e. between people married to each other, a custom in most {all?]societies in the world.
A footnote to another discussion: practising Jews do not consider themselves “orthodox”. They consider themselves Jews who follow the law. They have little use for “reform” or “conservative” Jews who look for ways to shade the law.
Inside sidenote: Israel is one of the most abortion practicing countries in the world.
A footnote to another discussion: practising Jews do not consider themselves “orthodox”. They consider themselves Jews who follow the law. They have little use for “reform” or “conservative” Jews who look for ways to shade the law.
Gabriel,
To describe Orthodox Jews with “practicing Jews” and imply that Conservative and Reform Jews are not “practicing Jews” or that they look for ways to “shade the law” is a slander.
And th slander is to the Orthodox Jews, who I have always found have deep love for the entire Jewish community.
To Joe Hargrave:
The statement that I said was offensive was, “We are talking here about restoring to humanism the only rational foundation it could ever possibly have, in God.” You were asserting that humanism without a belief in God is either without foundation or it is not rational. That is a philosophical claim. When you speak of “the origin of some of the values” or whether “There was no humanism before Christianity”, you are making historical claims.
Your statement that, “No material process can create intrinsic moral value” is true, but it does not speak to the rationality of non-religious morality. Your statement that, “No material, physical process can create a right” is false. Obviously, legal rights are created by a physical process. MOreover, constructivist morality argues that moral principles are created rather than ‘discovered truths’. This is a view which is rational and which can provide a foundation for humanism.
When you bring up that there has been “madness unleashed by atheistic or quasi-atheistic regimes”, I am not sure why that should undermine atheism generally- unless you believe that religious regimes have never unleashed madness.
You make good points about the Holocaust. Perhaps this was just a semantic misunderstanding. When you said “episodes like the Holocaust”, I assumed (correctly/incorrectly?) that you included things like slavery as well. Also, when you said “it is not the same as”, by disagreeing I didn’t intend to say that there were no significant differences. My claim is just that there are enough similarities for one to put abortion in a category that includes slavery and genocide.
While the “Holocaust sought to rid the planet of all Jews”, one could surely argue that so-called ‘abortion rights activists’ seek to rid the world of “unwanted babies”.
When you say that, “In one case it is something intrinsic to the people themselves, their ‘Jewishness’ that is getting them killed; in the other, it is something extrinsic, their ‘unwantedness’ that is responsible.” You make an excellent point.
I would just add two observations: 1) The distinction between treatment which discriminates on the basis of intrinsic qualities versus extrinsic qualities may be less less morally significant than treatment on the basis of properties which one can affect versus properties which are externally determined and which one is powerless to affect. Whether one distinction is more significant than the other is certainly not a forgone conclusion. 2) When I thought that you were including slaver, the extrinsic versus intrinsic distinction wasn’t a factor since one was not automatically a slave if one was African American. There were free African Americans as well. If one includes slavery in the category of ‘like episodes’, that was also a case of individual action that was authorized by a state rather than direct state action.
I grant that your distinction is a valuable one- whether or not the historical episodes are more “like” than “unlike” is surely only a subjective judgment.
To David Nickol & Joe Hargrave:
David said that the ‘common ground’ is about finding what the groups “already have in common”. In Joe’s example, the two groups already had in common that they opposed 99% of abortions.
David also said that Obama’s ‘common ground’ efforts are “not [a] way for the foes of abortion to find ways to add additional restrictions on abortion or the supporters of abortion to find ways to expand abortion rights.” However, in Joe’s example, the Catholic/Judaic common ground was not about the disputed 1% any more than Obama’s efforts are about restricting or expanding abortion. Surely, Obama doesn’t think that restriction/expansion efforts will cease because of ‘common ground solutions’. The two groups will still pursue their own agendas outside of the context of their cooperation. Likewise, Catholics and Orthodox Jews could pursue their own positions on the disputed 1% of cases outside of their own efforts at cooperation regarding the agreed upon 99%.
I still fail to see any difference between Obama’s view of common ground and Joe’s view.
To Gabriel Austin:
Your remarks about the Jewish position on abortion is of great interest to me. I must admit that I have been confused about this. I wonder if you could help me understand more. I had been told that the position of the Orthodox Jewish community is such that their policy is, as you said, the same as that of the Catholic church except with regard to cases of the mother’s life. On the other hand (from what I’ve been told), Reformed Jews would not object to the typical pro-choice view of abortion. Is that correct?
Also, is there a difference between a person who is ‘practising’ and someone who is ‘observant’? Is one term incorrect? Do you know what their position is on abortion or what the position is of those who are ‘conservative’?
(thanks)
To David Nickol:
regarding slavery…
While you were “not arguing that slavery gave a slave owner the right to kill his slaves,” I am arguing that. You could rightly observe that slaves lacked all the rights that free people had as well, but if one is killed, then one lacks all those rights too.
You claim that “slavery did indeed take rights from ‘a whole class of persons.’” I think that is false, since there were African Americans who were free as well as African Americans who were slaves. If you were talking about the class of slaves, then I don’t see why I couldn’t point out that there is also a class of ‘unwanted babies’ which is a subset of the class of unborn children just as slaves were a subset of African Americans.
You argue that “when slavery was legal, slaves were at the mercy of society as a whole.” I have no knowledge of this beyond what information was imparted to me in a public school history curriculum- so maybe my impressions are mistaken. I had thought that the treatment of African Americans by whites in the south after the Civil War but prior the the civil rights era was substantially similar to the treatment of slaves by whites other than their owners prior to the war. My impression was that the thinking at the time was that a slave should be treated the way that today we would treat a beast of burden if they were a field slave or the way that we would treat a pet in the case of house slaves. If that is correct, then during slavery it was the slave owner at whose mercy the slave served (except to the extent that African American continued to be at the mercy of whites in the south during the period of ‘Jim Crow’).
Feel free to disabuse me of my misconceptions where I’m wrong. I’m not a history scholar :)
Pluralism doesn’t mean that one cannot pursue policies when one is motivated by religious belief.
regarding pluralism and abortion…
You never answered my earlier question, “What is generally considered improper in a pluralistic society is pursuing policies which do not have a legitimate non-religious justification. Do you believe that pro-lifers (who would criminialize at least 90% of all abortions) have such an illegitimate agenda?”
You said that, “A law that banned abortion in all cases because the Catholic Church teaches life begins at conception would be unconstitutional because it would enshrine Catholic dogma as law.” Has anyone argued for such a law? How would it be written? Surely, a law would either criminalize a practice or not without then adding that the criminalization is based on some ideology or theology.
Since you say that a Catholic can “support the criminalization of abortion because the Church teaches that life begins at conception”, I am not sure what to make of your theocracy remark. The only way that I can see to make sense of it would be either: 1) you believe that criminalizing abortion is akin to the passage of Blue Laws- which is why I am interested in your answer to the question I asked earlier -or- 2) you were focused only on banning abortion in cases where the mother’s life is in danger, which is why I asked you if your argument applied only to “an extreme position about the final 1% of abortions, or whether you would apply the same argument to anyone (including the Orthodox Jews) who generally (in all but the so-called ‘hard cases’) wanted to criminalize abortion.”
Ockraz,
“You were asserting that humanism without a belief in God is either without foundation or it is not rational. That is a philosophical claim. When you speak of “the origin of some of the values” or whether “There was no humanism before Christianity”, you are making historical claims.”
The development of philosophical argument is a historical event. The advent of Christianity is a philosophical and a historical event. It happened in time – it is historical. It introduced radical new ideas – it was philosophical.
My claim is that it provides the only rational foundations for a belief in the inherent dignity, uniqueness, and value of human beings.
“Your statement that, “No material process can create intrinsic moral value” is true, but it does not speak to the rationality of non-religious morality.”
Ok, if you want to split hairs – I’ll replace “non-religious” with materialist. If you are a materialist it would be irrational to act as if there were a God who cared, which is the real origin of the intrinsic moral value of human beings.
If and when a materialist happens to believe and advocate for things that happen to align with Christian morality, which I admit can happen, I count us all fortunate. When they let a scientistic, technocratic worldview rooted in the philosophical belief that nothing exists by physical matter, I fear for the sanctity of human life and future generations of the weak and vulnerable.
Absolutely nothing in the realm of materialist philosophy demands that man treat man as anything more than an advanced ape, an organic computer that can be altered and tampered with and modified by drugs, surgery, psychological manipulation or any number of violations of the form and will of the human person to achieve some predetermined political or social purpose. Christianity takes a firm stance against these efforts to tamper with and degrade the essence of man.
“Your statement that, “No material, physical process can create a right” is false. Obviously, legal rights are created by a physical process.”
The Declaration of Independence states that we are endowed with inalienable rights by our “Creator”. A legal process can call something a right, but in doing so, it is borrowing a term from theistic moral philosophy and applying it to a thing of its own creation, not creating something identical. It is the difference between an imitation and the original article.
Or, as some others might say, you can put lipstick on a pig, but at the end of the day, its still a pig.
“MOreover, constructivist morality argues that moral principles are created rather than ‘discovered truths’. This is a view which is rational and which can provide a foundation for humanism.”
Created by whom, and for what ends? Even the human being, if underlying this ‘constructivism’ is materialism, is not assured any special status. How can there be a “humanism” that doesn’t regard humanity as something sacred in itself?
And how can there be a morality simply ‘created by men’ if we believe that man is sacred, is the product of creation? That would lead us to a morality created by God.
What you come up with in the way of philosophical alchemy may be any number of things, but I can’t see that it would be anything I would call “humanist”. As with the word “right”, it would be an imitation, a category lacking its original content.
On abortion:
“While the “Holocaust sought to rid the planet of all Jews”, one could surely argue that so-called ‘abortion rights activists’ seek to rid the world of “unwanted babies”.”
It does depend on the level of abortion advocacy. There are people who are so concerned about population control that they would have forced abortion, and that I would compare to the Holocaust.
But abortion as it exists under Roe v. Wade is not the same. Abortion rights activists just want parents, and particularly women, to have the right to dispose of their unwanted offspring. Abortion for them is about not being parents anymore – not about seeking out and destroying all unborn life.
The distinction is important because people need to know where the responsibility for abortion lies. It lies within our culture. It lies with our family members, our neighbors, our co-workers, our fellow parishoners, among whom the statistical probability of their having had or participating in an abortion is high enough.
One can argue that not many Germans knew about the Holocaust, or were powerless to do a thing about it – certainly it was only the SS doing the actual killing. One can also argue that slave ownership was limited to less than 10% of Americans during the antebellum era, and highly concentrated, I believe, in the top 3% of that. In those cases moral responsibility more clearly resides within institutions.
In the case of abortion it more clearly resides in the people themselves. And the power to change it is at their fingertips – it would take neither an allied invasion or a bloody civil war to stop abortion, but a simple plebiscite. Abortion, as political priority surveys show, is not a top priority among American voters, whether they are pro-life or pro-choice. We who debate it tend to exaggerate its political importance to the general electorate.
Which is why I argue that a pro-life agenda must be wed to an economic and social agenda that the majority of Americans support.
David Nickol Says July 25, 2009 at 11:21 am
“Is being a good Catholic incompatible with being a good American?”
I believe Thomas More answered the question on the scaffold: “I am the king’s good servant, but God’s servant first”.
David Nickol Says July 26, 2009 at 4:13 pm
“A footnote to another discussion: practising Jews do not consider themselves “orthodox”. They consider themselves Jews who follow the law. They have little use for “reform” or “conservative” Jews who look for ways to shade the law.
“Gabriel,
To describe Orthodox Jews with “practicing Jews” and imply that Conservative and Reform Jews are not “practicing Jews” or that they look for ways to “shade the law” is a slander”.
Having had many discussions with Jews in NYC [my home town] for the past 70 years, I do not think my description a slander. [You should read some of the prophets].
There is a large body of Jews [those I attempted to describe as "practicing"] who reject the compromises of the reform and the conservative Jews. [This has nothing to do with the Hasidic Jews].
For them, to be a Jew is to keep the rules strictly.
Henry Karlson Says July 26, 2009 at 4:01 pm
“Gabriel,
We both agree — capitalist ideology is immoral”.
I tend to use Chesterton’s phrase – industrial capitalism.
Kurt Says July 26, 2009 at 6:21 pm
“And the slander is to the Orthodox Jews, who I have always found have deep love for the entire Jewish community”.
We know different Jews. You should read of the great disputes in Israel about “Who is a Jew?”.
If, as you say, the Jews you know don’t have love for the entire Jewish community, you really need to starting hanging out with a better class of people.
You claim that “slavery did indeed take rights from ‘a whole class of persons.’” I think that is false, since there were African Americans who were free as well as African Americans who were slaves.
Actually, what I said was that “racism and slavery did indeed take rights from ‘a whole class of persons.’” I am not particularly interested in making the case that slavery affected “a whole class of people.” My argument is that claiming legalized abortion withholds protection from “a whole class of persons” is a weak argument. Even granting granting that the unborn are persons (which almost no one who is pro-choice would), the “whole class of persons” argument looks at things backwards. Legalized abortion doesn’t withdraw protection from “a whole class of persons.” It gives, in the case of every individual pregnancy, one and only one person the right to end that pregnancy — the mother. If legalized abortion withheld protection from “a whole class of persons,” it would be legal for anyone to kill fetuses. You could legally slip abortifacient drugs into a pregnant woman’s food, or use any other method you could think up to terminate pregnancies against a pregnant woman’s will. However appalled you may be by Roe v Wade, it did not (as I have said before) declare open season on fetuses. It guaranteed a pregnant woman a “right” with regard to the child she was carrying that she did not have before.
I am not making an argument here for legalized abortion. I am just saying the “whole class of persons” argument against legalized abortion is a weak one.
ockraz Says July 26, 2009 at 10:37 pm
“To Gabriel Austin:
… I had been told that the position of the Orthodox Jewish community is such that their policy is, as you said, the same as that of the Catholic church except with regard to cases of the mother’s life”.
Rabbi Sacks is fully aware of this problem. And indeed the position of Jews and of the Church is nearly [completely?] identical. All must be done to save both lives. It is not to be a choice of killing one to save the other. The life and death are decided by God. One is just called to do one’s best. [It is astonishing, with our medical advances, how much can be done].
“On the other hand (from what I’ve been told), Reformed Jews would not object to the typical pro-choice view of abortion. Is that correct?”
You have but to read the NYTimes’ continuous praise of those who have made a “difficult” choice.
“Also, is there a difference between a person who is ‘practising’ and someone who is ‘observant’? Is one term incorrect? Do you know what their position is on abortion or what the position is of those who are ‘conservative’?”
I think not. Like Catholics [who have an easier time of it], a Jew is a Jew who follows the rules. The position on abortion is that given by Rabbi Sacks.
David N,
Good points. They need to be said, because the pro-life movement often drops the ball and forgets what is really at stake.
There is no special hatred of fetuses – there is a special hatred of motherhood, of family, of social obligation. These are what the ‘sexual revolution’ that ushered in Roe v. Wade sought to diminish or destroy.
The fetus is just ‘in the way’, and is to be disposed of like garbage when it does not conform to the eternally valid and justifiable mood of its liberated and enlightened mother.
To Joe Hargrave:
-secularism-
“The development of philosophical argument is a historical event. The advent of Christianity is a philosophical and a historical event. It happened in time – it is historical. It introduced radical new ideas – it was philosophical.”
Granted, but then if you’re only concerned with ‘foundation’ from a historical perspective, then there’s no reason to use Christianity as a starting point. After all, weren’t Augustine and Aquinas building on Plato and Aristotle. If you’re using ‘foundation’ in a philosophical sense (as in, ‘this is a view which has a theoretical foundation’ or ‘this view is unfounded’), then your claim that secular humanism is unfounded is wrong. You don’t accept its foundation personally- but that means that you disagree with it, not that it is absent.
Also, when you talk about ‘rational’, I suspect that you are using that term differently than I would. My notion of when a philosophical argument is rational (and I think that most analytic philosophers would find this acceptable) is that it is rational when it does not contain formal errors (it is deductively valid) and it bases its non-normative or objective claims on inductive reasoning from empirical observation. By that standard, metaphysical materialism or naturalism is rational, but believe in the supernatural is not- hence faith is not rational.
You seem to argue that it is unreasonable (perhaps a better term here than ‘not rational?) to have a moral system which does not postulate that there is intrinsic value. I disagree. There is nothing unreasonable about postulating that there are instrumental values which could be recognized by all humans as a result of their commonalities. Don’t you believe that all humans experience life in ways that are similar in significant ways?
“The Declaration of Independence states that we are endowed with inalienable rights by our ‘Creator’.” Okay, but can you say the same of the Constitution- which is the foundation of our government, as opposed to the Declaration which is merely a foundation for the existence of our state?
“A legal process can call something a right, but in doing so, it is borrowing a term from theistic moral philosophy and applying it to a thing of its own creation, not creating something identical. It is the difference between an imitation and the original article.” A legal right is non-identical to a moral right, and a theistic moral right is non-identical to a secular moral right. I never claimed otherwise. That doesn’t mean that there secular moral rights cannot be created (which is what you claimed). I can see where you’d argue that such rights would be qualitatively inferior to the theistic rights, but you can’t get from there to the contention that the secular version can’t exist.
“Even the human being, if underlying this ‘constructivism’ is materialism, is not assured any special status. How can there be a ‘humanism’ that doesn’t regard humanity as something sacred in itself?” Humanism doesn’t need to take a position that there is something metaphysically different about humans (or that they are sacred). Humans can construct a system of moral principles for themselves based on what is common to them. Why would they need a special status to develop rules for themselves? I suppose if they wanted to have rules which non-humans would be morally compelled to obey, then that would be an issue, but unless we find intelligent life elsewhere, I’m not going to worry about that.
I’m not the sort of atheist who would want to convert someone who is religious. My ideas and theirs will be accepted by people based on the appeal to the individual of the idea. I would defend that my views are worthwhile, which is what I took your statement about not being rational or having a foundation to dispute. I don’t think that that should be a necessarily acrimonious process, any more than my finding out more about the nature of other people’s system of belief. I’m especially interested in Catholicism because I have family and friends who are Catholics and because I think that it has an intellectual tradition that is worthy of respect. I think that secular morality (and world views generally) has a tradition worthy of respect as well, which can be both rational and well founded.
-abortion-
“It does depend on the level of abortion advocacy. There are people who are so concerned about population control that they would have forced abortion, and that I would compare to the Holocaust.”
Indeed, my own father has views which are pretty close to that (IMO). He believes that population growth is likely to cause a worldwide collapse of civilization; that all women who become pregnant and who do not wish to remain so should be provided with abortions at no cost (and that when this doesn’t happen it is an example of a social injustice); that increasing abortion is preferable to increasing adoption; and that abortion should be unrestricted until birth.
I think that I agree with the rest of your remarks about abortion. Where I would disagree with you is not about the idea that the motivation is about not being parents- but about the idea that this problem must include a societal change in attitude about the nature of sexual activity. If we were talking about contraception, then that would be true- but abortion is a different animal.
There are some exceptions of course (extremists like Judith Thomson and my father), but I think that the majority of people would change their position on abortion (without necessarily changing their ideas about sex and the propriety of our attitudes about it) if they did not subscribe to a ‘personhood’ doctrine that equates early human life with tissue or non-human animals. It is in that sense that I think that abortion is an issue that is akin to slavery and genocide.
Certainly, there is a relationship between ‘casualness’ in sex and abortion. I’d be stupid if I didn’t think so- but while those attitudes must be addressed if one wants to affect cultural change regarding family life, personal responsibility, notions of propriety etc., abortion doesn’t need to take that approach. For most people, if you convince them that it is unjust to treat early life as subhuman, then you don’t have to change their attitudes about sex. At least, I think so.
To David Nickol:
“what I said was that ‘racism and slavery did indeed take rights from ‘a whole class of persons.’”
I know that that’s what you said, but I removed the racism part because it would only confuse the issue. Racism is so broad a category that it can include personal attitudes which never infringe upon the rights of others. It’s like sexism. It can apply to denying employment or how one chooses one’s friends. Slavery was a state sanctioned institution, and I think that it is comparable to abortion. Racism is in a different category. If you want to say that racism is unlike legal abortion, then I agree. If you stick racism and slavery into a single category, then I suppose it must be different than abortion because racism alone is so different, and a conjunction of two categorically different things is even more different. At that point the discussion would seem fruitless.
“My argument is that claiming legalized abortion withholds protection from ‘a whole class of persons’ is a weak argument.” Not at all.
“Even granting granting that the unborn are persons (which almost no one who is pro-choice would)” Of course not, but given that for someone who is pro-choice, being a person is not merely a question of having certain characteristics (which differ from on pro-choicer to the next and which often are not consistent with the law), but they would also borrow from legal theory the idea that being a person is a necessary condition for possessing a right (which really is a conflation of two different claims that together form an argument)!
“Legalized abortion doesn’t withdraw protection from “a whole class of persons.” It gives, in the case of every individual pregnancy, one and only one person the right to end that pregnancy — the mother.” Since ending the pregnancy is accomplished by killing that is withdrawing protection from being killed.
“If legalized abortion withheld protection from “a whole class of persons,” it would be legal for anyone to kill fetuses.” That makes no sense at all. Legalized abortion with holds protection from the class of humans who are in an early stage of development. They are a class in the same sense as the elderly (who suffer discrimination and whose rights are sometimes trampled).
You’re pointing to the fact that the father or a stranger doesn’t have the right to end their life and then saying that that shows that the state “doesn’t withdraw protection from” them. That doesn’t make sense. Suppose that you were made a serf, and that some feudal lord had an unchecked power of life or death over you. He could kill you for any reason whatsoever. Would you say that the fact that other serfs didn’t have that power over you meant that you hadn’t lost protection from being killed?
To Joe Hargrave:
“There is no special hatred of fetuses” – Not hatred, but dehumanization (even if it is not based on animosity). I don’t hate animals, but I sometimes eat meat, and I wear leather shoes. I’m not sure that animal rights activists would think that my lack of animosity is all that important.
“there is a special hatred of motherhood, of family, of social obligation.” – Not hatred here either. The majority of people I socialize with are pro-choice and they don’t hate these things. They just think that they are one option which is not superior to others. That isn’t hatred either.
If you try to accomplish pro-life goals as part of a holistic program to turn back the clock on the sexual revolution, then I think that you are doomed to failure. I believe that there have always been elements within every culture who had casual attitudes about sex. In some cultures those elements were a minor portion of the overall population and they were treated with contempt by the majority.
I think that the balance has forever shifted on that. There may be a some backlash to the extremes of the sexual revolution, but casual attitudes about sex have become socially acceptable to enough people that they will never become socially unacceptable in the way that they were before the Baby Boom generation came along.
I don’t think that that needs to get in the way of convincing people born after Roe that abortion is immoral. (It didn’t stop me.)
To Gabriel Austin:
Thanks for the info :)
There is only one Jewish Temple/Synagogue in the city where I live. I’ve never been clear about the different denominations.
“You have but to read the NYTimes’ continuous praise of those who have made a ‘difficult’ choice.” Well, the NYT isn’t a religious publication, but they do publish some awful articles about “the issue of choice”, which I attribute to an overall media bias.
“I think not. Like Catholics [who have an easier time of it], a Jew is a Jew who follows the rules.” So would you say that the ‘reform’ in Christianity which gave rise to Protestantism and Catholicism as competing forces is not like the ‘reform movement’ which gave rise to Reform Judaism versus the more traditional or observant forms? (I use the term ‘observant’ because in college I only ever noticed one of my Jewish friends paid any special attention to dietary restrictions or holidays, and that is what he called himself.)
As I mentioned above, one of the things that I admire about Catholicism is a rich intellectual and academic tradition, but I’d say the same about Judaism. Where I live, the Fundamentalist Christians outnumber the Catholics, and I suspect that it is a departure from that sort of tradition that makes it difficult to have a dialog with them. Academic philosophy has a methodological approach which is somewhat similar (and probably derives historically) from Catholic and Jewish forms of scholarship. I don’t know what to do when someone’s entire answer to a question is just to recite a verse over and over again.
Kurt Says July 27, 2009 at 1:28 pm
“If, as you say, the Jews you know don’t have love for the entire Jewish community, you really need to starting hanging out with a better class of people”.
But I never said that, did I? You did.
“A better class of people” – as in Our Crowd?
As to the NYTimes, its was the editor Pinch Sulzberger who when asked what was his religion replied: I have the Times. That is my religion”.
ockraz Says July 28, 2009 at 5:07 am
“To Gabriel Austin:
There is only one Jewish Temple/Synagogue in the city where I live”.
For the non-Reform or Conservative Jews there is no longer a Temple; there are only synagogues.
Gabriel –
I said I have found the Orthodox Jews “have deep love for the entire Jewish community.” You responded: “We know different Jews.”
For the non-Reform or Conservative Jews there is no longer a Temple; there are only synagogues.
Actually, Orthodox Jews tend to use shul as the designation for their place of worship. I live right down the street from one.
David Nickol Says July 28, 2009 at 3:31 pm
“For the non-Reform or Conservative Jews there is no longer a Temple; there are only synagogues”.
“Actually, Orthodox Jews tend to use shul as the designation for their place of worship. I live right down the street from one”.
And many Jews speak of having studied in Hebrew School.
From Wikipedia:
Synagogues are often not consecrated spaces, nor is a synagogue necessary for collective worship. Jewish worship can be carried out wherever ten Jews (a minyan) assemble. A synagogue is not in the strictest sense a temple; it does not replace the true, long-since destroyed, Holy Temple in Jerusalem.
Many Jews in English-speaking countries use the Yiddish term “shul” (cognate with the German schule, school) in everyday speech.
Interesting about the minyan of 10. The number arises from Abraham’s negotiating with God about the destruction of Sodom: “If there be 10 honest people…”. God agreed.
10 honest people in Sodom. Hence the phrase “lying queer.”?
In the exclusive interview with the (Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute’s) “Friday Fax” on July 28, Dr. Buttiglione responds to pro-life concerns, clarifying his recent statements as well as explaining the significance of his recent legislative victory.