Map of life expectancy at birth from Global Education Project.

Saturday, May 11, 2019

Moral Philosophy

Emboldened by the new composition of the Supreme Court, conservative state legislatures are rushing to enact restrictions on abortion in the hope that laws making the procedure almost unobtainable will be upheld, and perhaps that Roe  v Wade will be overturned entirely. Opposition to legal abortion in the U.S. is largely congruent with  particular brands of Christianity, that is also associated with strict sexual morality including condemnation of homosexuality and adultery. (Although lots of their proponents have turned out to be adulterers and homosexuals, but that's another story.) These are most notably right wing evangelicalism, and Roman Catholicism.

Obviously, I can't make a logical or fact based argument against what is to some people a fundamental moral tenet. For a lot of these people, abortion and homosexuality are just icky and that's probably where it begins and ends. However, there are some factual claims or arguments that people often make when promoting an anti-abortion position.

Most fundamentally, they claim that God condemns abortion, that it is a sin according Christian belief. It is astonishing to me that we hardly ever see anyone point out that there is not one word about abortion anywhere in the Bible, Old Testament or New. I know that because unlike the vast majority of self-proclaimed Christians, I have actually read the Bible. There is a passage in numbers which some people interpret as a ceremony for the purpose of inducing abortion, in the event that a pregnancy is the result of adultery. This interpretation is not certain, but it is certainly plausible.

So we have no ostensible word of God, Jesus, any of the prophets or any of the apostles regarding abortion. Christian condemnation of abortion is a modern phenomenon, which emerged in the 19th Century at the same time as the feminist movement. So Christians need to know that.

The second factual claim that is essential to the anti-abortion position is that "human life begins at conception," that the fetus -- indeed the zygote, the blastocyst, and the embryo -- are human beings with the same moral status and rights as a person born. (The U.S. Constitution explicitly defines a citizen as "a person born" in the 14th Amendment, BTW.) This seems arbitrary to begin with. Why is a single cell a human? Surely an entity needs more than that to claim the moral status of a living human. (This problem comes up with people who have endured severe brain damage as well, but we won't discuss that right now.)

However you want to define a person, however, people who oppose legalized abortion have a big problem. We don't know exactly, but but somewhere between 50% and 75% of fertilized eggs -- zygotes, products of conception -- are not successfully implanted, and the pregnancy ends before the woman even knows she was pregnant. An additional 20% or so of pregnancies end after week five, when it is possible for a woman to find out that she is pregnant. So if you truly believe that these are human beings, this is the gravest public health crisis there has ever been, or ever could be. The vast majority of babies are dying, whether women choose abortion or not. We should be investing all of society's resources, doing everything in our power, to end this holocaust. But I never hear them say a word about it.

For some reason, politicians and opinion leaders who support the right to choose never seem to raise these points. It seems to me that the anti-abortion movement needs to answer them. I'm waiting.


6 comments:

Dr Porkenheimer said...

So, let's step back and understand that about 75% or more in the US self-identify as Christians and about a third of those identify as evangelicals. It should surprise no one that these issues would still be controversial.

One of the big problems with the laws concerning abortion and homosexuality is neither of these issues were decided through a democratic process. The promoters took the short cut through the courts because each issue went down in flames in pretty much every referendum where the people had a direct say...even in liberal California.

Wising to promote a moral code is not the exclusive domain of Conservative Christian Evangelicals.

California's new school guidelines, over the objections of many, are encouraging teachers to discuss gender identity with kindergartners and give advice to LGBT students. This is a far cry from what most have come to understand the role of public schools should be. It's also a moral position.









Don Quixote said...

Again, right-wingers are not love-based; they are fear-based. They fear women and women's equality and power.

It's all about efforts to control women, based in fear. Period.

It's not easy to be wrong--and evil--about every issue. But the modern American "conservative" "Republican" does it. You name it--climate change, economics, education, women's rights, immigration, science, the environment of planet Earth that we all share.

Why would anyone EVER vote for a Republican?

FEAR

Fear of change.

Fear of reality.

Fear of feelings.

Fear of beauty.

Fear of equality.

Fear of "losing their way of life" (this is why Ft. Sumter was fired upon and why the South started the Civil War, which some in those parts falsely call "the war of the Northern aggression")

Fear of losing entitlement

Fear of loss of "power"

The modern right-winger is fear-based.

No decision in my life based in fear ever worked out. It's time to speak truth to power and live in love, not fear.

Cervantes said...

@ Dr. P, it's true that the right to abortion, and the national right to same sex marriage were decided by the SC and not at the ballot box. Of course this is also true of many other issues, for better or for worse.

While it is true that most Americans self-identify as Christian, not all Christians oppose abortion rights or same sex marriage. The majority of Americans support both now, although the cultural transformation with respect to same sex marriage was astonishingly fast. I don't know exactly what the state-by-state breakdown is, however. In any case if Roe v. Wade were to be overturned, we would end up with a patchwork in which abortion was legal in most states but not all.

However, the politics of the issue would change. This is what political scientists call a concentrated issue. Though most voters support legal abortion (under various ranges of circumstances) to most of them it is not their most important issue. However, people who oppose legal abortion are often single issue voters - it completely determines their vote. As long as Roe v. Wade was in effect, pro-choice voters could ignore the issue on the assumption that it didn't really matter. This is why opposition to legal abortion has been a winning issue in many states. In a post Roe v. Wade world, conservative politicians would suddenly discover that they have a problem. Not sure exactly how it would play out, but I would say be careful what you wish for.

Don Quixote said...

Viewing the entire human world and its policies through the lens of a single issue is, by definition, a form of mental illness.

It's saying that only one issue in the entire world matters. If a person said, "I only care about the issue of Amtrak trains being on time. Politicians that are pro-AMTRAK punctuality are the ones I'll vote for. If they have stands on other issues but nothing to say about the timeliness of Amtrak trains, I'll stay at home and I won't vote. But if a politician is a lying crook who is characterized by ugly prejudice, a man who foments hate in all matters--but he cares deeply about making Amtrak trains on time--he's got my vote."

How mentally ill would we call that? What "Kool-Aid" would someone need to drink to think that way?

More like "Kook-Aid."

Cervantes said...

Well I try to get inside their heads. If there were an actual debate about whether murder should be legalized, I suppose I would be a single issue voter, pretty much. Unless a candidate claimed to be against murder, but in favor of nuking Tehran, let's say. In other words from the point of view of these "pro life" voters, that's the issue. I happen to think they lack insight and it's really about the status of women. The fetus=baby concept is largely an excuse. But in their consciousness, it's real. That's why I take the trouble to present facts that undermine the equation.

Don Quixote said...

Of course, it's crucial to understand another's point of view--WHY s/he thinks that way. But at some point the craziness needs to stop being the primary policy. Or we all go over the cliff.