Good morning,
Sometimes it’s worth giving the platform to someone with whom I disagree, yet whose position is well-considered and held in good faith.
FIRST, MY GENERAL VIEW
As many of you know, I believe there are rational and reasonable solutions and policy prescriptions that can get us to a “middle ground” on many issues. Among these are taxation, government spending, medicare and social security, a meaningful social safety net, the health care system, and gun safety/control. The most difficult issue is abortion. But even there, I have written before about the possibility of a reasonable compromise position that can appeal to the vast majority of public opinion and the reasonable arguments out there (but, notably, not all of them). In many ways, my solution parallels where most states were prior to the repeal of Roe v. Wade, to wit:
More generally available birth control
A woman’s right to abortion up to 24-25 weeks, after which only a few women on the periphery would be unaware of their pregnancy
After that period, the right to an abortion would be limited to those circumstances when the woman’s life or health is at significant risk.
My critique of the Court and many anti-abortion advocates is that their beliefs fundamentally are religious (often based upon “ensoulment” or “personhood”) and that such views ought not trump the religious views of others. I had stated I felt there was no argument against abortion that did not carry with it a component of religious belief (or at least philosophical view). If someone holds the view that a fetus (or, for all practical purposes under their construct, a zygote) is human, then there is no negotiation with them, because the ending of that nascent life must be murder.
THE PHILOSOPHICAL AND ETHICAL ANTI-ABORTION POSITION
Then along came Alberto Delgado, who articulated to me the best argument against abortion that I have read that is not dependent upon a religious construct. I think it is important to understand a different view—in this case, a different view that cannot exist in in any compromise regime. It is intellectually consistent, honest, thoughtful, and unapologetic. While I don’t agree with his position, I respect it. It reminds us of the stakes and it is important we understand views that are different from our own, yet passionately and sincerely believed. Here it is:
“Although, mercifully, not restated in your post today, you have stated previously that there is no non-religious argument for banning abortion from conception. The question of a soul is irrelevant to any scientific inquiry of whether a fetus is a person under the law. Science has nothing to say about the soul. If the law does, it does so without recourse to a basis in science. In the following, I put forth my arguments based on ethical, philosophical and scientific principles. I do not expect to convince you of anything other than that there are reasonable and sound arguments for the proposition that human life begins at conception that have absolutely no basis in religion.
The scientific argument is essentially the following. Based on current and well-established scientific knowledge:
From conception, the cells of a zygote and fetus are alive. They are living cells.
From conception, the cells of a fetus have unique DNA, distinct from the mother and the father.
From conception, a zygote and then a fetus is a separate and distinct organism than its mother (and father).
It is an organism that can only be scientifically classified as homo sapien. Absent natural or artificial interruption, a zygote will continue developing through gestation into a human infant and nothing else. That distinct organism is a human.
A heartbeat is evidence (not proof) of sustained human life, because once it starts, the absence of it is evidence of death (the absence of life) but it is not, of itself, proof of life. Similarly, the ability to sense pain, which fetuses have as early as 6 weeks, while not in and of itself proof, is further evidence of life.
On the philosophical and ethical front, the principal purpose of any society is to perpetuate itself into the future. Anything that ethically promotes that end is a legitimate act of government. Any ethical act in protection of young life and reproduction is a legitimate use of government power. Recognition of the right to life an unborn fetus is a legitimate interest of the government, and those rights must be balanced with the rights of the mother, as determined under the law. Under the law, there are no living human beings that are not deemed ‘persons’. Under the law, there can be a legitimate balance of the rights of 2 separate persons and the government has a legitimate interest in legislating the balance of such interests. The mother’s ‘health’ should not automatically take precedence. On balance, the mother’s life may legitimately take precedence, but in a society that equates mental health with medical and physical health and considers depression and other ‘bad’ feelings (that may simply be derived from inconvenience) as unhealthy, then the mother’s health, in that context, cannot automatically outweigh the life of an unborn child.
The precautionary principal requires that, in the absence of concrete information, the least damaging option available should be favored. If do not know whether an unborn fetus is a person, the precautionary principle dictates that preservation of that life should be the priority because, in the vast majority of abortions, it is the less damaging option: potentially killing a living human v. potentially causing undesired hardship to the parents.
The practical counter to viability as a standard for determining when abortion should be permissible is that viability is an absurd test primarily because it is subject to geography, wealth and technology. Viable beyond the edges of modern civilization, such as in the African bush, is very different than viable in Baltimore within minutes of Johns Hopkins Medical Center, for example. It is a moving target, that relies on resources. There are few things less compassionate than to suggest that the definition of a person depends on their relative wealth. Consider what that would mean in any other context.
Finally, to address how you regard pro-lifers such as myself, you stated that with respect to the extreme pro-life position, which I hold, there is no negotiation. Consider that any moral person who arrives at the conclusion that every unborn child is a life, simply cannot abide voluntary murder of an innocent life. To permit the intentional murder of the most innocent of life is the gravest evil I can conceive of. Any person that seriously considers this perspective, even if they do not agree, should be disappointed in me if I didn’t object to abortion so vehemently, knowing my beliefs. While I do have great compassion for anyone dealing with a crisis pregnancy, there is no negotiation as to what the nature of the question and that life is.”
Have a great day,
Glenn
I truly appreciate your consideration of and regard for my argument.