Here is a link…

http://www.personhoodusa.com/

I understand your concerns about retaining the pluralistic nature of our country. If I were advocating that religious beliefs be incorporated into law, then you’d be right. For example, if someone wanted to appeal Griswold v. Connecticut, then I’d be on your side.

My point, however, is that the pro-choice side cannot just appeal to pluralism as a justification for the status quo because the law as it stands is not merely enabling one to freely choose how to act- but it is also enabling the harming (and killing) of other human lives based upon a value assertion which is disagreeable to half of the population.

When two groups disagree over whether or not an action is moral or sinful, but it doesn’t physically (or economically) harm anyone, then to legally prohibit the action would not be in keeping with the spirit of a culture which values diversity in philosophical, religious, and political thought- but that is not the case we are talking about.

Now we have laws which allow one set of humans to treat another set of humans as mere property. The laws which protect such a practice cannot be defended along the same lines as laws allow people to go to work on Sunday.

I wonder if you believe that the way to grant rights to African Americans was to wait for “an evolution of human consciousness”? I don’t think that those efforts “to force a view on a population that is deeply engrained otherwise” were fool’s errands, and I don’t think you do either.

American culture is pluralistic. Attempts to change it by superimposing laws on behavior constitutes a submission to an authoritarian and/or tyrannical urge. It simply cannot work and still preserve freedom of choice.

Laws already exist that protect the integrity of the person. I’m not familiar with the new personhood measures you mentioned. But if they involve passing laws that would “define” the unborn as “persons” I would oppose it as an unsuitable to the task at hand. Formally, it is the same approach that has failed.

What is needed is a deeper understanding of what the person means. This entails an evolution of human consciousness. Existing laws would acquire new meaning once that deeper understand has been realizedk.

The pro-life approach has put the cart before the horse. To force a view on a population that is deeply engrained otherwise is a fools errand.

(in no particular order)

I’m sorry to put such a long comment on a ‘stale’ post, but I’ve been unable to get it for over a week and there were some comments that I wanted to respond to…

Gerald L. Campbell

“the Laws already Exist, IF the Unborn were judged to be a Human Person from the time of conception?”

That is the point of the new personhood measures (derided by pro-choicers as “egg-as-person” laws) which are being promoted in some state legislatures.

“Unless there is such a consensus about the status of the Unborn, the Law cannot possibly have any foundation in the culture. It would for that reason become a tyrannical force and lead directly to the creation of a moral police state.”

If your point is that without consensus laws against abortion are tyrannical, then what is the status of laws prohibiting state criminalization (where there may be more consensus) because there is no nation-wide consensus? Are they not tyrannical also?

Or what are we to make of the fact that the courts have ruled in the absence of a consensus that these lives cannot be legally defended if their mothers find them inconvenient? Are they not tyrannical (or given the number of deaths involved something worse than mere tyranny)? Is there a reason that the default should be a tyranny which one finds morally repugnant rather than a tyranny with which one agrees?

Kurt

“Now, while condoning working with any willing partner on legal restrictions (i.e strict constructionists or states righters or supporters of some restrictions but not an absolute ban) is an action the Pro-Life Establishment is as willing as I am to utilize, when it comes to following the same principles on what I find to be root cause issues, the name calling starts… My complaint is that what I would consider different judgments on these matters are termed heresy by some others.”

I cannot speak for others, but as for myself, I don’t condone name calling and I don’t consider such actions heresy. However, I do worry that making common cause with pro-choicers on the root cause front is more problematic than the cooperation on restrictions with people who are not pro-choice.

The reason is that the legal restrictions further the primary goal, whereas the root cause is a secondary one, AND there is the real possibility that your cooperation with the pro-choice element may actually help them politically and undermine progress on the primary goal. That isn’t heresy, and it isn’t intentionally undermining the movement, but there is a LOT of concern that it will undermine the movement whether by design or not.

I’m not ready to rule out the sort of efforts that what you call “your side” wants, but I am worried about them, and I understand why some of the old-school pro-lifers (those who want to maintain the traditional approach and are opposed to your strategy) are so agitated. There are efforts to affect the root causes that I unreservedly support, but they are ones which I think have little or no possibility of helping the pro-choice opposition politically.

Kari J. Lundgren

“Your point is, I believe, that if someone does not support criminalizing abortion, one is de facto not “pro-life.””

No ma’am, my point is that such is the case by definition. I didn’t take Latin, but (according to my handy reference guide) it seems like that would be ‘ex vi termini’ rather than ‘de facto.’ Someone here will have know, I’m sure.

“Is someone pro-life based primarily on her approach to the law? I would argue no – that the legal route should be seen as one strategy amongst many, and not the defining strategy. The goal is the upholding of human life and dignity.”

I think that you are wrong, and that the topic is not really open to debate. What you suggest seems to be inspired by Catholic teaching, but this isn’t an exclusively Catholic movement. (For example, I am not in the least interested in ‘dignity’ or ‘sanctity’ as a goal.) The pro-life movement is united by the principle that there is a right to life. That right is fundamentally incompatible with a legal right to abortion— just as the abolitionist movement’s aims were incompatible with the legal institution of slavery.

There is at least one group today which goes to countries where slavery is still legal, and buys slaves so that they can be freed. That may be a humanitarian thing to do, but it does nothing to abolish slavery. Improving the lot of individuals is fine, but the goal is a guarantee of the rights of the entire class.

David Nickol

If you believed both that abortion is a form of murder (which I take it is not the case) and you also believed that criminalizing it is impossible, then you’d have a depressingly pessimistic view of human nature. If you believed that it was murder, then it would be perfectly reasonable to think that convincing new generations of the righteousness of your cause will take much time and effort, but to be sure that it would never happen would be to have no faith in humanity.

“The idea of secular law recognizing a fetus as a person is a brand new idea and goes much further than abortion law ever did before. That is one reason, I think, why the pro-life movement is destined to fail.”

You have at least implied that the issue is about souls on the one hand, and what should be recognized as a person on the other. I would agree that if the pro-life movement were going to try to convince everyone that the law needed to be changed based on a theory of ensoulment, then it would be doomed to failure. (If someone tried to sell me on new laws that were justified theologically, then I’d tell them to go soak their head.) That’s why I’m part of two groups that are hoping to curb that practice (or even stop it when one is not in a religious setting) of using religious language on the subject. In a church it is fine, but the public argument should be secular and about ethics and biology. (If one’s ethics are based on religious dogma, then that’s your business.)

The personhood issue, I think, is more enlightening. It is not an objective category, but a philosophical one. The pro-choice camp (which includes, in my opinion, those who want to preserve legal abortion even if they prohibit it after the 12th week) needs to argue that the objective claim of the pro-life side that there is a human life being taken should be trumped by a claim about the nature of personhood.

The personhood concept has a long tradition in philosophical discussions of rights, moral agency, and autonomy, but it excludes not merely fetuses. It excludes infants as well. We’ve extended a right to life to infants by giving them legal status as persons at birth even though they do not meet the philosophical definition of a person. I believe that fetuses are just the next (hopefully inevitable) step in that direction.

Peter J. Colosi

Peter, this was my favorite comment!

“If a full demonstration of the personhood or non-personhood of the fetus has not yet been made, it seems to me that the conclusion from this fact would be to wait until it has been securely shown one way or the other…”

The typical response to this is that given the burden that is imposed if one is compelled to carry a child to term (which some say is analogous to imprisonment- although I find that a bit harsh), the burden of proof shifts from the individual who denies that the fetus is a person, to the individual who would impose the burden.

“When you yourself are in a completely unconscious state, but alive and well (for example in a state of dreamless sleep) are you still there fully such that for someone to kill you would be wrong?”

This is an excellent point :)

The most common responses to this objection are one or a combination of the following: a) that there is both a ‘continuity of experience’ which joins the mental states before sleep to those after sleep, b) that there is still higher level mental activity even if there is a lack of ‘reflective consciousness’, and c) it is still the case that one has abilities to behave as a person such that if one were to interrupt your sleep you would once again show evidence of your personhood— and that it is the possession of these abilities rather than the use of them that has moral significance.

There are reasons not to accept a) b) or c), but it is an interesting area of inquiry :)

Yea, that would be great; and I think that it was this insight that motivated Buttiglione’s move.

Jeremy,

I don’t know if the discussion here would like to go down the path of the personhood of embryos but here are 2 initial thoughts:

(1) When you yourself are in a completely unconscious state, but alive and well (for example in a state of dreamless sleep) are you still there fully such that for someone to kill you would be wrong? If so, I don’t see why that couldn’t also be true of other “slumbering” humans who are alive and well – it is at least certainly possible and that is at least a step in the direction of a demonstration.

(2) If a full demonstration of the personhood or non-personhood of the fetus has not yet been made, it seems to me that the conclusion from this fact would be to wait until it has been securely shown one way or the other before acting on not knowing in the form of aborting. Sort of like if a hunter were in the woods and saw something move that he knew was either a deer or another hunter but couldn’t quite tell which. That state of affairs yields a moral obligation not to shoot until certainty is achieved.

These are just 2 initial thoughts on the question, but I know we are focused more now on the sources of abortion in society, and so I am fine with sticking to that side of the question here.

Mea culpa. My blinders were clearly on when I reflected only on American abortion discourse and neglected to think of China when you spoke of coerced abortion. What an amazing breakthrough it would be if prochoice and prolife activists collaborated in a joint denunciation of coerced abortion.

Jeremy,

But this is not about me. It’s about Rocco Buttiglione. You seem to be saying that because I do not endorse the criminalization of abortion and I believe it would be impossible, that because Buttiglione says he does not believe criminalization is possible, he must hold my views on abortion. There’s no logic in that at all.

I postulate that most of the anti-anti-abortion crowd don’t really have a problem with abortion, and do not believe that criminalization is justified.

Maybe that’s true and maybe it isn’t. You have no proof, but even if you feel that way, does that mean Buttiglione is being dishonest?

I consider this silly – the presence of soul is not what makes us a person.

But according to Catholic belief, the absence of a soul is what makes us dead. There are no living human beings without souls. A human being without a soul can’t have a “right to life,” because such a person isn’t alive. How can a Catholic maintain that being a human being doesn’t depend on having a soul? It’s about as fundamental a belief as there is.

Such beliefs mean that man or a consensus of man define what it means to be a person. Is your person-hood up to a popular vote?

In making civil law, who else would define a person? We already have a definition of person in the common law — a human being who has been born and is alive. It’s been around for centuries.

Peter,

I have no problem with what you are saying. My point was that it is not wrong to do something when you can’t do everything.

I also will point out that I have said that if there is a soul infused at conception,
I consider this silly – the presence of soul is not what makes us a person. Such beliefs mean that man or a consensus of man define what it means to be a person. Is your person-hood up to a popular vote?

Coerced abortion is HUGE, especially in China, but also in other countries. It does not have merely a small following. Only if that were the case would the parlaiment of a country like Italy first consider and then actually vote for a measure to recommend a UN sanction against it. You could easily check on this with some google searches. What will be interesting to see is what happens with respect to the UN and other countries. I hope that what you say, namely, “I should hope that both sides can agree…” is true – but I suspect that there are many who will not sign on and even resist this resolution quite vigorously. I also hope that Kari is right that Obama is not soulless and I hope that he therefore signs on straight away.

David Nickol:

EV is not saying that to vote for a bill that “allows some abortions” is ok. It seem like semantics, but this is an important point: since in the view of JPII abortion is intrinsically immoral, then one may never vote for a law that introduces any abortion procedure – only for one which while introducing no new ones, restricts some that already occur. This is one reason why fights over language in laws and resolutions go on so long. Buttiglione’s resolution only restricts one form of abortion – it does not allow anything, it just does not speak on any other form.

I am going to quote Fr. Komonchak from dotCommonweal — noting very clearly that his statement is about grounds for excluding people from receiving Holy Communion. But I think what he has to say about prudential judgments and degress of contingency is relevant to much of the debates we engage in:

That abortion is an evil is one proposition. That it should be prohibited by civil law is another. That it should be prohibited in all cases and under all situations is another. That it should be prohibited under the present circumstances of U.S. society and culture is still another. How a Catholic should judge and act with regard to these last questions, whether as a private citizen or as a public office-holder, are prudential judgments, and I do not myself think that judgments involved in this degree of contingency should be considered grounds for excluding people from Holy Communion. Most U.S. bishops would seem to agree.

Jeremy,

I don’t think you should put me in the same category as Buttiglione! I have never claimed to be “pro-life.” However, I do think criminalizing abortion is impossible in Italy (for the reasons Buttiglione points out) and in the United States. So I respect his position and would not call him “functionally pro-choice.” I am not offended by being called “functionally pro-choice,” but I think to call someone who fully accepts Church teaching on abortion “functionally pro-choice” would be uncharitable, at best.

By the way, I have said limiting abortion after the 12th week (not 20th, as I recall) would be a good compromise between pro-life and pro-choice. And I think there are good pro-life Catholics who would be happy to see that achieved. (And I think that is probably achievable.) So in that sense, I stand ready to help achieve the pro-life goals I think are actually achievable. I wouldn’t claim that makes me pro-life, but it makes me opposed to “abortion on demand.”

I also will point out that I have said that if there is a soul infused at conception, then life and personhood begin at conception. But I don’t know. I am an agnostic on that and many other beliefs. What I do think is that belief in a soul is a religious belief — one that I am unsure of — and that to make the claim that abortion should be criminalized because a person is present from the moment of conception is a religious claim that should not be used to base secular laws on.

As I have pointed out before, you do not need to “prove” a fetus is a human person with a right to life in order to criminalize abortion. It was criminalized before, but never on the basis that it deprived the fetus of a right to life. What the pro-life movement is trying to do today, it seems to me, is not turn back the clock to the days prior to Roe v Wade. Abortion law back then wasn’t about the “right to life” of the unborn. The idea of secular law recognizing a fetus as a person is a brand new idea and goes much further than abortion law ever did before. That is one reason, I think, why the pro-life movement is destined to fail. It’s not because a lot of people don’t think abortion is a bad thing. It’s that they can’t go along with the claim that a fertilized egg or even a 12-week fetus is a person rights. To the best of my knowledge, that has never been codified into law anywhere, ever.

There is another option: The criminalization of abortion is not desirable.