Some Thoughts on Abortion (and Responding To It)

This post is representative of many comments that I've seen lately in response to the murder of Dr. George Tiller. Naturally, this got me thinking about the alleged contradiction in the dominant "pro-life" position.

While my own still-developing view is likely to come out in what follows, my goal for this post is less to set forth my own view than to work through some of the thinking behind it. For the sake of simplicity, it oversimplifies some things and might not be as rigidly cohesive as I might otherwise try to make it. But I hope it will give you some food for thought; in fact, I hope you'll add any comments you might have: Does my reasoning work? Where does it go wrong? What possibilities or considerations would you add? In short, what do you think about the subject?

[Note that '(*1)' indicates footnote 1, etc.]

When it comes to the subject of abortion, the very first question to ask is this: What kind of thing is the unborn? The answer to this question influences everything that follows.

Why is this question important? Imagine a small child coming up behind you and asking, "[Your name], can I kill [or break] this?" How would you respond? Well, before you can answer the question properly, you have to know what "this" is. So you ask, "What is it?" and turn around to look. If it's a spider or a twig, you probably don't mind too much. But if it's the family dog or a fine china plate, you probably don't want it killed or broken.

So when we come to the question of removing a lump of cells from a woman's body and destroying it, we have to know just what that lump of cells is. If the unborn is of little or no value, then abortion is unproblematic. If the unborn has value in itself, then things become more complicated.

If the unborn is just a collection of cells in the mother's body--no different from an organ or tumor--then abortion is no worse than any other invasive surgery.

On the other hand, if the unborn is a human being, distinct from the mother, then abortion is killing. And not just any killing, but premeditated killing of a defenseless person (a good candidate for the word "murder").

Or as one slogan puts it: If the unborn is not human, no justification for abortion is necessary. If the unborn is human, no justification is sufficient (with the possible exception of saving the mother's life).

As I understand it, there are some pretty good scientific and philosophical reasons to think that the unborn is in fact a distinct human being (I might get into those in another post). But for the sake of examining the "pro-life" position, let's just grant that the unborn is a human being. What follows from that?

Well, as I said above, it follows that abortion is the killing of a defenseless human being. So now we have two moral values to consider: the mother's "bodily autonomy" and the child's right to life.(*1) Which is more important? That's a complex question, but let's assume (again for the sake of argument) that life has a greater moral value than bodily autonomy. It follows that the child's right to live is greater than the mother's right to do what she wants with her own body. And since the child hasn't done anything yet, it's hard to see how there could be moral or legal justification for killing it. If that's the case, then abortion is murder and aborters are murderers.

Which brings us to the present question: What should morally responsible people who recognize abortion as murder do about it? If it is indeed the case that millions of babies are murdered every year, do we have any moral obligation to stop it?

This gets us into yet another complicated issue, namely that of defense of others and of self. I'll try to represent the options accurately without going into too much detail.

The most straightforward approach is total pacifism: Violence is not acceptable in any circumstance whatsoever. For the pacifist, the only acceptable way to oppose abortion is "internally," by which I mean working within the society to make abortion illegal, unaccepted, and unnecessary. There might be any number of methods to achieve this, but violence is never among them.

At the other extreme is what I might call vigilante justice: Hurt or kill the would-be attackers before they can hurt or kill you. The "pro-life" vigilante sets out intentionally to kill anyone and everyone who performs abortions. For the sake of defending those who cannot defend themselves, anything goes. Such extremists might even kill or terrorize people seeking abortions, though that seems blatantly counterproductive.

And, of course, there are middle roads: For example, allowing violence in defending against imminent threats but not allowing preemptive attacks. Such an activist might seek to kill only those who perform late-term abortions, or doctors who are about to actually perform an abortion, along with working for internal change.

But moral-action judgments must always include pragmatic considerations. We don't want to feed the homeless rotten food or prevent AIDS with a flesh-eating vaccine. And if abortion is systematic murder, then the moral responsibility of "pro-lifers" is to end the "holocaust" as quickly and efficiently as possible.

If the goal is to prevent as many abortions as possible, then killing individual aborters could be one of the worst ways to achieve that goal. You might save several hundred babies (the ones that particular doctor would have killed) but condemn thousands more to death by "setting back" the work of making abortion illegal and unaccepted.

Even if you could coordinate a mass assassination of every aborter on the planet at once, new aborters would come along, and you'd have to kill them, too. More seriously, this would probably create an atmosphere of fear, anger, hatred, and vengeful desire that would have terrible but unpredictable repercussions. (Imagine armed bands roaming the streets, fighting with each other, the police, and the military.) The life of a child may be more valuable than the autonomy of a mother, but the long-term stability of society could be more important than the lives of millions of babies.(*2) In short, the evil caused by such an act could easily outweigh the good caused by preventing abortions.

Is killing abortionists good? No. Is it more justifiable than abortion itself? Perhaps. Speaking pragmatically (and therefore morally), are there better ways to end the "abortion holocaust"? Almost certainly.(*3)

C. S. Lewis said, "Let us never mistake necessary evils for goods." Taking the "big-picture" view may be the most pragmatically moral approach, but it doesn't do much to help the children that will be killed by abortion today. Perhaps in a fallen world, there are times when there are no "good" choices, only "less evil" ones. Would Jesus have killed Dr. Tiller? I don't know, but I doubt it. But then, God has a way of showing us the options, then giving us what we ask for and letting us deal with the consequences.

If abortion is the killing of an innocent human child, then it is wrong, and no amount of wickedness or ideological inconsistency on the part of "pro-lifers" can change that. But even if you believe that abortion is murder and that violence can be justified when defending the defenseless, it doesn't follow that you're obligated to engage in or condone the killing of abortionists.


--Footnotes--
*1: Of course, if the child is a distinct being, does the mother really have "bodily autonomy" over it?

*2: Though that is by no means obviously true. And even if it were, how many babies is social stability worth? 50? 500,000? 500 million?

*3: Greg Koukl presents the interesting analogy of military sabotage:

Musings on Politics and Science

An assortment of thoughts at various degrees of development. (Try not to faint from shock that I've actually written a substantive post.)
As always, comments are welcome and encouraged.

**

I've heard often that Party X needs to "put ideology aside in favor of doing what's good for the nation." This is not an entirely new sentiment, but it does seem to be more prevalent now than during the previous administration.

This is more than a false dichotomy; it's completely absurd. It fails to grasp that political ideology is about "what's good for the nation." Many (most?) of the people who opposed the stimulus bill did so precisely because they believed that doing so was "for the good of the nation."

Ignoring ideology in favor of "doing what's good for the country" would be akin to ignoring medical science in favor of "doing what's best to treat the patient"; in both cases, the former critically informs your approach to the latter.

****

Is the middle of an economic crisis really the best time to worry about dramatic new programs? Health care reform, alternative energy, educational improvements...these are not inexpensive projects. Given the magnitude of the crisis (remember how we couldn't wait for Congress to actually read the stimulus bill?), shouldn't economic recovery take precedence over other concerns?

****

President Obama has said that he wants to "restore science to its proper place" by "taking the politics out of science" (paraphrases from memory). I would find this amusing were it not so tiresome (not to mention backward).

First of all, exactly what is the "proper place" of science? Note that that's not a scientific question. So who gets to answer it? Also note that if a politician (especially the president!) makes a ruling about science (like assigning it a "proper place"), he has--by definition--"politicized" science.

Second, President Obama clearly doesn't mean what he says. In his stem-cell executive order, he calls for "free and open inquiry" so that scientists can "do their jobs, free from manipulation or coercion" and so that "we make scientific decisions based on facts, not ideology." Why, then, does he insist that "our government never [open] the door to the use of cloning for human reproduction"? Surely reproductive cloning holds great interest from a scientific perspective; think of what we could learn about human development. It is only ideology that leads the president to impose this manipulative limitation. He has just made a "scientific decision" based on ideology rather than facts.*1

This is as it should be: Science by itself tells us only about what we can do, nothing about what we should do. If we were to completely divorce scientific practice from political and ethical ideology, there would be nothing to prevent any form of human experimentation. (And your opinion about the morality of various kinds of experimentation is not ultimately a scientific decision; science makes no value judgments.)

The Wall Street Journal puts it somewhat more succinctly: "The question of whether to destroy human embryos for research purposes is not fundamentally a scientific question; it is a moral and civic question about the proper uses, ambitions and limits of science."

*1: As the president uses the term, "facts" appears to be limited to empirical data, since it doesn't include the possibility of moral facts.

****

President Obama has promised to fix the economy, reduce or eliminate the national debt, restore America to a position of international authority, initiate universal health care, transform our energy economy, and overhaul our public education system, all without raising taxes on 95% of taxpayers...and all in his first term. I think there are only two ways to account for such a claim: insanity or deceit.

Obviously, one of us is delusional.

Solomon on Politics (Sort Of)

I rarely comment publicly about politics, but that's not for lack of thought. Of course, incessant bombardment by "news" coverage of and blog posts about the current presidential campaign have conspired to keep politics on my mind more than usual lately. So when I read the following passage today, I naturally applied it to political discourses:

"The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him.
"The lot puts an end to quarrels and decides between powerful contenders.
"A brother offended is more unyielding than a strong city, and quarreling is like the bars of a castle."
Proverbs 18:17-19 (ESV)

There really is nothing new under the sun, least of all politics.


***

TO: United States of America
CC: The rest of the world

Dear Citizens,

You have strong political views. You are emotionally bound to them and you hold them more tightly than is probably healthy. But please remember that many very, very intelligent people throughout history have disagreed about every topic known to man. The fact that your friend/neighbor/coworker/relative disagrees with you about something does not by itself make him or her an idiot. He or she might very well be an idiot, but then, so might you. In fact, I think it's safe to say that the overwhelming majority of human beings are idiots, at least most of the time. So have your arguments, conduct your debates, but for the love of whatever it is you love, please try to be civil about it.

Thank you.


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