Comments on: At Cross-Purposes

By: Steve N

Steve N — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

If you look at one side of the argument, you see people who are willing to let different people make different decisions in different circumstances. On the other side, you see people who want the decision to be excised from the process so they can set up a once-and-for-all standard by which every situation is judged.

A false dichotomy. Even Singer has a standard, 2 years after birth and "sufficient quality of life" if memory serves. And BTW, to have a law with permitted exceptions is a very different thing from having a standard by which all situations are judged AND different from having no law at all.

Other than extreme philosophical utilitarians (mostly clueless academics), virtually no one believes there shouldn't be a once-for-all standard. They just believe it should be their standard.

Religion is where the abortion fight ceases to be a philosophical argument and becomes a kind of holy (culture) war.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Religion need (perhaps ought)not enter into the question. The prolife axiom is this: "All human organisms have a right to care and protection." The obvious corollary (if you accept the axiom) is that there is no rational basis to discriminate against some members of that class of organisms. There are many religious folks who do not agree with me, and there are at least a few irreligious folks who do.

the only way to solve our conflict satisfactorily will be to put aside our religious differences and address the problem as a pragmatic one: We need to know what constitutes a valuable human being so that, in difficult situations, we know what can be destroyed or discarded, and what should be preserved.

Seeing the only solution to the problem as a pragmatic one is something that a pragmatist might say. But wouldn't you agree that there is no way to "know" what can be destroyed or discarded? In a rigorous reduction, all we have are mere "aesthetic judgements" about when human organisms ought be accorded the right of care and protection. We could argue about whose "judgements" are more or less elegant, more or less consistent (with other "judgements"), more or less beneficial to society, &c. But there is no way to argue which "aesthetic judgements" we "know", for to do so we would have to presuppose which "aesthetic judgement" is "correct" in the first place. All else would be question begging. I "know" I'm right. You "know" you're right. All we really know is that either one or both of us is "wrong".

This of course in no way rules out that any party might, if doing so favors its particular aesthetics, compromise for some political gain. But this wouldn't seem to require "putting aside religious differences", and hardly seems to rise to the level of the "solution" you propose.

Cheers!

By: Funky Dung

Funky Dung — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Contradiction works, but I really meant conflict between different segments of society.

By: dlw

dlw — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

I think the root of the politics of the abortion debate is the legal redefinition of when human personhood begins and the clarification of the guidelines for what is a non-elective abortion.

I write about my own idea for how we could agree on the legal redef'n of when personhood begins at my own blog.

By: edey

edey — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

i think you're missing the point. his point was: either a baby at 26 weeks is a person or it isn't. the conflict is that, essentially, the personhood of that child depends on whether it is "wanted" or not.

By: theomorph

theomorph — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

It's only a contradiction or inconsistency when you turn "society" into a big monolithic lump. But when different individuals have genuinely different views, none of them are necessarily inconsistent just because they disagree. There can certainly be a conflict between them, though.

And, as I said above, I think the real conflict is about whether people have a right to hold differing opinions about the moment that personhood commences (if there is such a thing), than about when personhood actually commences (again, if there is such a thing). If you look at one side of the argument, you see people who are willing to let different people make different decisions in different circumstances. On the other side, you see people who want the decision to be excised from the process so they can set up a once-and-for-all standard by which every situation is judged.

But everyone agrees that, at some (not yet universally acceptably defined) time or by some process, simple, expendable flesh becomes a person worthy of rights, and that after that point or at the end of that process, destroying, killing, or otherwise harming that person against his or her wishes is wrong.

At the root of the push for a once-and-for-all standard is, I think, a deep (and often unexpressed fear) that allowing situational decisions will make it possible that someone, at some time in the future, will then find a defensible moral reason to end our own lives. (Sometimes this is expressed as a slippery slope argument.) Hence, it is necessary that the value and meaning of living human flesh be defined broadly and firmly as a defense against such eventuality. Turning to religious authority to ground that definition seems attractive, but it is problematic because we do not all share the same religion, and some of us have no religion at all.

Religion is where the abortion fight ceases to be a philosophical argument and becomes a kind of holy (culture) war. (By the way, just because it is a "philosophical argument" does not mean it is only an abstract game. The philosophical argument happens because there is a real problem that needs to be solved.) But in my opinion, the only way to solve our conflict satisfactorily will be to put aside our religious differences and address the problem as a pragmatic one: We need to know what constitutes a valuable human being so that, in difficult situations, we know what can be destroyed or discarded, and what should be preserved.

By: edey

edey — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

maybe he meant contradiction rather than conflict. i see a contradiction, or maybe just an inconsistency, when a society treats one 26 week old baby like a person and another as not having any rights. this contradiction in terms is something that needs to be resolved. either our society considers a 26 year old baby to be a person or not. it should not be up to whether the baby is "wanted" or not, but whether or not a 26 year old baby is a person.

By: theomorph

theomorph — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

No, I am not missing the point. The point is that one person thinks one thing and another person thinks another thing, which is not necessarily a conflict, but only a difference of opinion. The real fight is whether such a thing can be a matter of opinion at all, not over the definition of personhood.

By: Jerry

Jerry — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

To back up Steve, I became actively pro-life only when I decided that the pro-life plank was a non-sectarian one. Prior to my junior year in HS, the abortion debate was always presented to me as a religious issue. While queasy with the procedure, I nonetheless saw it as a 1st Amendment issue. Once I saw it as a matter of biology and preexisting laws and principles of homicide, I changed my mind.

By: theomorph

theomorph — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

What is so hard about recognizing that to some people the baby being born is a celebratory occasion, and to other people it is not? How is that a "conflict" that needs to be resolved?