The murder of late-term abortionist George Tiller by a pro-life extremist has provoked several interesting arguments in the blogosphere. A number of pro-choice writers (notably Will Saletan and Richard Spencer) have made the case that Tiller’s assassin was simply taking the logic of the pro-life argument - that abortion is morally equivalent to the murder of a fully-grown human being - to its final conclusion. Ergo, anyone who doesn’t support his assassination is not really pro-life. Here’s Saletan:
The National Right to Life Committee says it opposes “any form of violence to fight the violence of abortion,” preferring instead “to work through educational and legislative activities to ensure the right to life for unborn children, people with disabilities and older people.” Americans United for Life agrees that it was wrong to kill Tiller because “the foundational right to life that our work is dedicated to extends to everyone.”
I applaud these statements. They affirm the value of life and nonviolence, two principles that should unite us. But they don’t square with what these organizations purport to espouse: a strict moral equation between the unborn and the born. If a doctor in Kansas were butchering hundreds of old or disabled people, and legal authorities failed to intervene, I doubt most members of the National Right to Life Committee would stand by waiting for “educational and legislative activities” to stop him. Somebody would use force.
The reason these pro-life groups have held their fire, both rhetorically and literally, is that they don’t really equate fetuses with old or disabled people. They oppose abortion, as most of us do. But they don’t treat abortionists the way they’d treat mass murderers of the old or disabled. And this self-restraint can’t simply be chalked up to nonviolence or respect for the law.
I think this argument makes a good deal of sense. I’m sure that abortion opponents share a heartfelt and good-faith belief that abortion is wrong. But I suspect that most pro-life folks, if they’re really introspective about this, will conclude that abortion is not on quite the same level of wrong as, say, shooting someone in the face outside a convenience store.
For the record, in recent years my own stance on abortion has shifted towards a Douthatian “mushy middle” position. I don’t think it makes sense to grant a full set of human rights to a handful of fertilised cells, but I also think it’s incoherent to believe that a fully-developed and viable infant is a “person” the day after it is born, and something less the day before. My views on Tiller’s practice closely track those of Sonny Bunch at Conventional Folly, who writes:
Though pro-choice myself (certainly through the first trimester, probably through most of the second), I have to say I find nothing particularly noble about his work: some partial-birth procedures are one step up from infanticide, as far as I’m concerned, if not literally infanticide. I find it kind of discomforting when people I tend to agree with on the issue say things like “I genuinely find nothing objectionable about Tiller’s practice.” Really? You find nothing discomforting about half-delivering a living human and vacuuming its brain out? Nothing at all?
I’ll be the first to admit that my approach - drawing the “personhood” line neither at conception nor at birth, but at some unspecified point in between - is not based on any sort of rigorous intellectual framework, but simply on tradition and moral intuition. I would contend, however, that intuition can sometimes provide a more satisfying answer to moral questions than abstract reasoning. It also provides more fruitful grounds for establishing some kind of political compromise on the issue.
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I’d also put myself into that muddy middle area. I want to say abortion should not happen after a foetus has become viable (ie. is able to survive outside the womb) but with medical technology progressing, that becomes earlier & earlier.
The truth is there is no line at which it goes from acceptable to reprehensible, just a big, murky area of debate. While defining a line in law is nice, the battle between pro-life & pro-choice is always going to be over the position of this line with the active legislation simply showing which side is currently in the ascendency.
5 June, 2009 @ 11:29 am
It was Alexander Chase that once so eloquently stated that the peak of tolerance is most readily achieved by those who are not burdened with convictions.
5 June, 2009 @ 12:30 pm
I would like to point out that referring to Dr Tiller as “late-term abortionist George Tiller” is extremely disrespectful and also rhetorically dishonest and simply incorrect. He was a medical doctor, with a specialty as an obstetrician. This meant he cared for pregnant women and did everything possible to save their lives.
This was a man who despite being a target of extremely dishonest rhetoric, and having survived a previous assassination attempt, having a truly horrendous working environment (the protesters outside) kept working. And what did he do, he saved people from suffering.
This is what he did:
http://www.balloon-juice.com/?p=22002
There are other many similar stories, about babies that died in the womb, of babies that developed with their insides outside or without brains. Why should these women have to suffer because other people are ignorant? E.g “Late term abortions”
There is to my mind only one moral decision to take regarding abortion, and anyone with a shred of moral decency and anyone who believes in the word “liberty” should come to the same decision. This position of mine is that it is the woman’s choice. Always and exclusively. A fetus is literally in a woman’s body, and it can (and sometimes does) kill the woman. The only reason to want to take this decision from women is because you do not trust their ability to make decisions for themselves.
In short you would deny them both their agency and their humanity. What must your opinion be of women that you would believe that a woman would abort an 8 month old baby, or a seven month old baby, or is it that you believe doctors are monsters. Why would you want to put yourself in between a woman’s right to choose what should be done with her own body?
And this is just my comment about the first sentence…
And something else that was galling was this statement “I’m sure that abortion opponents share a heartfelt and good-faith belief that abortion is wrong. ”
They don’t, the so called “pro-life” movement concerns itself with little else than controlling women’s sexuality. The “pro-life” movement stops giving a damn after the baby is born, it doesn’t give a damn about the only methods to reduce abortion (sex education and contraceptives) it only gives a damn about “slut shaming”.
I will post a more detailed and less ranty response on a later date on my facebook page.
7 June, 2009 @ 8:40 pm
With regard to the last point: it is very difficult, often impossible, to determine whether people are arguing in good faith. For better or worse, it’s not like we can scan people’s brains to figure out whether people really mean what they say. As a result, I believe that we should generally give our political opponents the benefit of the doubt and assume they are arguing in good faith, unless there is extraordinary evidence showing otherwise - not least because this is the only way to preserve some sort of civil and constructive political discourse.
7 June, 2009 @ 11:29 pm
A long time ago I came to the conclusion that foetuses weren’t people. They’re human - they have the DNA - but they are not people. They do not have the level of cognitive access that we expect from people. They are not sentient or concious to the level that we expect of people. If foetuses were AIs they certainly wouldn’t pass the Turing test. If we met aliens that behaved like human foetuses, we’d never consider them intelligent life.
Of course, all of this applies to a newborn infant. However, for legal and social reasons we need a dividing line at some stage. Birth seems as good a point as any. It’s unequivocal and clear.
8 June, 2009 @ 4:25 am
With regards to people and their believes and whether they are acting in good faith, I have a simple test.
If the person says they stand for something I believe them. Right up until the point where their actions give lie to their words.
I.E. Conservatives say they are fiscally responsible. True or False? Every time in the last 50 years when the Americans elect a conservative government, spending balloons up to record levels.
I.E. American “Pro-life” groups. Their stated aims include reducing abortions. Yet, they focus on abstinence only education (which has proven to result in an increase in abortion rates). And they also have shown incredible resistance to anything resembling child supporting measures (SCHIP & Daycare etc.)
BTW Sorry for going off a bit in the previous post, I sometimes get a little bit overheated on the topic of civil liberties.
9 June, 2009 @ 7:15 am
This may simply mean that some (not all) individuals who believe in good faith that abortion is wrong, also have a good-faith belief that teaching abstinence is the best way to prevent underage sex. Without endorsing either of these views (and certainly the latter, being more of policy question than a metaphysical one, is better suited to being settled with empirical evidence), I certainly don’t see why someone couldn’t hold both of them at the same time.
Consider what happens to the public debate if both sides assume bad faith on the part of their opponents. Pro-choicers will say “you claim to care about protecting the lives of the unborn, but you’re only interested in controlling women’s sexuality and ’slut-shaming’”. Pro-lifers will say “you claim to care about protecting womens’ right to bodily integrity, but clearly you’re only interested in protecting your own ability to engage in consequence-free promiscuity, and perhaps you even take a grisly delight in killing fetuses for its own sake”.
To me, it’s clear that not only would this be an unproductive way to conduct the public debate, it would also be a stupid way to do so, because both of these statements are wrong. Anyone who spends enough amount of time talking to people outside of their own political ideology will soon realise that pro-choicers genuinely do see this as an issue of women having the right to make choices about their own body, and passionately believe that this is a good thing; similarly, that pro-lifers genuinely do see this as an issue of the fetus being a human being that ought to enjoy a right to life, rather than a sinister plot to control female sexuality (in fact, all of the most passionately pro-life people I have ever met have been women).
To be clear, this is not an issue that is amenable to compromise, and I certainly don’t think we’re ever going to come up with a legal regime that will keep both sides happy. But if we want to engage seriously with the topic, we ought to acknowledge that both sides are prioritising a particular value that they consider important and take that as a starting point, rather than trying to demonise the other side according to some strawman notion of what their “real” motivations are.
10 June, 2009 @ 4:43 pm
Well it is certainly a fair point that you bring up in number 7. Except why is abortion such an issue in the United States? Because of the “culture war”, as it is a useful device to get people to vote against their own interests. Ditto gay marriage. Which is over course one of the reasons why despite having full control over all three branches of government from 2002-2006 abortion is still legal in the US. Yes, there were significant setbacks to reproductive rights, but the procedure remains legal.
So perhaps we should subject this issue to two tests.
1) What would happen if the current situation stays in place?
2) What would happen if ROE vs WADE was overturned and abortion in the US criminilazed again?
1) Viable babies could not be aborted past the 21st week (legislation). Non-viable babies and pregnancies that threaten the health of the mother could be aborted. The “pro-life” crowd will continue to harass, threaten and intimidate and occasionally kill health care providers. These attacks won’t be referred to as terrorist attacks because of the peculiarities of the American political landscape. Large amounts of women who don’t wish to be pregnant or can’t afford to be pregnant get to continue with their lives. Women whose health is being endangered by a pregnancy have a choice to risk their lives and have a baby.
2) Sepsis wards. Back Alley abortions. Coat-hanger abortions. Suicides. Large amounts of abandoned babies. Increase in child abuse. No choice. Like the recent case in Brazil where the Catholic Church excommunicated the mother and caregivers of a child who was taken for an abortion because she was raped and the pregnancy would have killed her.
And although this perilously close to being an ad-hominen one of your sources but Will Saletan to steal a quote is “Now Saletan is pro-choice, just like he’s a believer in racial equality”. And his article is one big false premise. He is talking about the assassination of Dr Tiller. The fetuses being aborted by Dr Tiller weren’t unborn children. They were dead/dying children, children who weren’t going to live. So the end result is not Roeder killing Dr Tiller so that unborn children could live, but Roeder killing Dr Tiller, and causing women to die.
And at the end one should always consider compromise. But where would the line be to draw the compromise. So let us consider the two extremes, no abortions for any reason whatsoever and abortions for any reason at anytime in the pregnancy. Where is the middle position.
Perhaps the following, as soon as the fetus is viable (I can live outside the mothers body) it cannot be aborted except in cases of maternal endangerment.
Does that sound good? What alternative would you propose? Which of the two sides would be more likely to accept this compromise, the pro-choice or the pro-life? Well, since the above is pretty much the existing condition in the US we know how it works out.
The pro-life side will not accept this. Hence the protests, hence the bombings, hence the shootings, hence the games to call the emergency contraception “Plan B” an abortificent, hence their attempts to make contraception unavailable, etc etc.
The interesting thing about the two original articles are both writers unawareness of what it was that Dr Tiller was doing. Similar to Sullivan’s ignorance on the matter. And there is one point that I have to agree with both of them; The pro-life moment is incredibly dishonest in their rhetoric. e.g. Dr Tiller = Baby Killer.
So what would your ideal policy with regards to abortion be?
10 June, 2009 @ 5:56 pm
Dirk, I think your characterisation of conservatives is misguided and based more on caricatures of conservative thought rather than the positions and policies they actually hold.
For one, you’re conflating ‘Republican’ and ‘conservative’ as though both those labels described a group of people with the same political views, but that’s not necessarily accurate. Both major parties in the US proceed on the big tent model, encompassing massive diversity in opinion, which is reflected when they govern the country. They’re not monolithic ideological entities.
So for example, not all conservatives believe in being frugal with the public finances, not all conservatives are hawks when it comes to defence, not all conservatives believe in free markets, not all conservatives agreed with the Iraq War and not all conservatives are against gay marriage and abortion. Pat Robertson and Ron Paul might vote for the same party, but they’re not ideological bedfellows.
So yes, under Bush public spending did increase rather dramatically, though it provoked a backlash from the fiscal conservative wing of the Republican Party which helped the GOP lose the 2006 Congressional elections and eventually the presidency. But of course, that just resulted in Bush being replaced by Obama, who in his relatively short term as president and with a compliant Democratic Congress has made Bush’s spending seem paltry in comparison. Hence the desire of fiscal conservatives to back the Republicans, who at least have some people who want to keep budgets balanced. More to the point, you’re completely ignoring the picture at the state level, where there have been numerous examples of Republican governors and legislatures that have kept spending and taxes low. Plus, it’s not like the Democrats have any Ron Pauls.
That’s also why it’s perfectly possible for one wing of the party to be opposed to abortion and support abstinence-only education while another wing vehemently opposes SCHIP and similar measures on the basis that they represent unnecessary federal government spending and are areas in which the federal government should not be involved. Occasionally, policy prescriptions overlap for different reasons, such as in the case of those who are opposed to Roe vs Wade because they believe that the killing of any foetus is murder and those who wish to overturn it because they believe that the Supreme Court overstepped its authority and that the decision should be left up to state legislatures.
The idea the conservatives vote against their own interests is a fallacy, based on the assumption that because you may not be able to understand conservative voting patterns that conservative interests must be bunkum and that they’re voting against their interests as non-conservatives define them. But that’s silly; people vote according to their own interests as they define them and half the reason people are ‘conservative’ or ‘progressive’ to begin with is because they define those interests differently. A person my age voting for Obama might firmly believe that it’s within his interest to have laws that protect employees from being fired because as a young entrant into the market he’s most vulnerable to getting fired. But from my perspective, even though I face the same circumstances I regard it as in my interests to NOT have such laws because they reduce the flexibility and ease I have when getting a job in the first place and moving to new jobs thereafter.
The ‘culture war’ is not some trick pulled on the populace, it’s the result of fundamental differences in opinion over moral questions that can only be won by either side and not subjected to a compromise that pleases all sides. Laurence’s broader point, that the ‘pro-life crowd’ deserves to have their concerns taken seriously, remains valid. And the fact remains that partial-birth abortion, no matter how you cut it, very often represents the legalised killing of a viable human being. Absent a threat to the life of the mother, I don’t agree with any of the reasons that its proponents have advanced in favour of it.
Lastly, your second test is incorrect. If Roe vs Wade were to be repealed, it would not result in a total ban on abortion and therefore to the proliferation of back-alley abortions and the like. Instead, it would devolve the decision on abortion from the federal level and return it to state legislatures which is arguably where it belongs. As most states already protect abortion at the legislative levels, there would not be much of a change at all. But it would give states that heavily disapprove of it the right and ability to regulate it or restrict it as they wanted.
10 June, 2009 @ 7:05 pm
All good points Darren, but… (in order in which responses popped into my head)
1) The Democrats have “a Ron Paul” except they have one who is electable, and is not an ideologue about the gold standard. William Jefferson Clinton. The only American president who brought about a a balanced budget, with a surplus in the last 50 years. Remember the Gore/Bush debates. Also up until Obama, the only American Democratic President in our lifetime.
2) Perhaps I did conflate the Republican party and conservatives in my post at number 6. My apologies, please read post number 6 with “conservative” replaced by Republican. Incidentally, please consider the http://www.gop.com for some evidence on my point. Now massively unfunded loans are a problem, but from 1981-1992 and from 2000 - 2008 this wasn’t a problem.
3) The “culture war” is a construct. Largely created and supported through politicians taking positions against a group of “others” to appeal to the base emotions of their voters. Also involved are media personalities, who make quite tidy fortunes decrying the behaviour of others whilst finding no such problem with their own activities. E.g. Rush Limbaugh and his drug addiction. Organized religion also plays a considerable part in egging on the culture wars. Occasionally various corporations also provide support to culture wars (Climate Change, health risks of smoking)
4) It is true that people vote for their own interests. This is why the culture war exists, to rile up the passions of “the base” using unimportant things (e.g. Gay marriage) to elect leaders who will support the funders and/or leaders of the party. Yes, people and politicians can sincerely hold any of a wide variety of odious opinions naturally but a wide scale bait and switch operation has been going on for a long time in the US. An egrarious example of this would be the various references made by various Rebuplican leaders that the Democratic Party is elistists, flip floppers who don’t support the troops etc. etc. In short, the culture war is not people having certain beliefs, but the organized approach to manipulating those believes for electoral success, cf “Southern Strategy”
5) Roe vs Wade can easily be sidestepped. All you have to do is write a law which does not run afoul of the due process and equal protection clauses. And one that can be implemented without violating the 4th, 9th and 14th amendments. Roe vs Wade can be more easily repealed by one of two ways. Two 2/3 votes in the House of Congress. One by the house and one by the Senate. Poof. The other way would be to have 3/4 of the state legislatures motion to adopt the amendment. Poof, no more abortion. The Republican party has not tried either of these approaches (I’m not aware of any)
6) States can and do make laws regarding abortion, they just haven’t manage to get any passed that don’t run up against the equal protection and due process clauses. 30 Something states still have legislation criminalizing abortion. Once Roe vs Wade is gone, bam. Second scenario starts taking place.
7) If you had to choose between no abortion and any abortion, where would you compromise Darren?
11 June, 2009 @ 7:42 am