All or nothing (Erin)

But downplaying, diminishing, or abandoning the philosophical and moral arguments against abortion means downplaying, diminishing or abandoning the innocent unborn human whose life is at stake in every abortion, no matter what the circumstances. To the little girl or boy whose heart is just about to begin, or has just begun, to beat beneath his or her mother's own heart, abortion really is all or nothing.

Yes. I see this, and resonate with it.

But Erin, your analysis leaves the Mom out of the equation.

Let's take a hard case, since abortion seems to be about hard cases. Let us take a mother who desperately wants a baby, who is married, whose husband desperately wants this baby. Let us unfortunately go further, and consider a case where the baby is diagnosed as having developed without a brain.

So, what now? The baby will die upon birth, or shortly thereafter. You have asserted that this can be a beautiful thing ("baby Faith"), and I agree. It can be.

But....what if it isn't a beautiful thing in this situation? What if the mom is horrified at the prospect of carrying such a pregnancy further? What if, as a result of this trauma, she is unable emotionally to bear more children? Don't they, the unborn children, deserve some consideration as well? (What would I have done? What would you have done? May I suggest, with all respect, that no one knows, so don't sail in here and tell me that you do know.)

Who goofed up here? God, I guess. Shouldn't he bear the consequences for once? Why is it always me?

Erin,
there is another distinction you are missing. The Vatican, American Medicine and American Law all recognize the concept of brain death - this is crucial to the debate.

A person with a beating heart and breathing lungs is not alive IF there is no electrical activity in the brain. That means the following facts - seemingly contradictory - none the less are true: 1) the human body can be biologically active and functional, 2) but if brain is not functional, 3) the person no longer exists.

A fetus does not begin to develop brain tissue until the neural tube closes after the third week. The fetal brain does not become active until sometime in the 7th-8th week. Not surprisingly, this date coincides with research suggesting the earliest moment a fetus can feel pain. At this point, the fetus passes the test for personhood.

The topic also has attracted a great deal of attention at the Vatican over the years. Most recently, an article in L'Osservatore Romano last September said the acceptance of the cessation of brain activity as death would seem to equate the human person with brain function, contradicting Catholic teaching about the dignity of every human life from the moment of conception.

But a Vatican spokesman later said the article reflected only the views of the author, Lucetta Scaraffia, a professor of contemporary history and frequent contributor to the Vatican newspaper. In 1985 and 1989, the Pontifical Academy of Science recognized brain death as "the true criterion for death."
-- Catholic News Service, January 30, 2009

Unapologetic Catholic,
The government can only regulate those rights that the people have explicitly granted the government the limited power to do so. And the people retain the right to demand the return of that power if the government fails to exercise its power responsibly.

That is the reason behind the Conservative ideology to promote limited government, a philosophy traces directly back to Hamilton, Madison, Jefferson, et al.

Of course, the Founders never imagined that a minute-old piece of fetal tissue would have the same fundamental rights as a human being; it's fair to say that even a viable fetus would never have been considered a human being for purposes of constitutional protection. Yours is a post-modern view of human rights without precedent in any culture or in history.

There is no culture that has ever afforded the fetus legal rights, except in the most discreet situations. No legal system allowed the fetus to inherit property or even be considered in the successions process until birth. Women carrying children have never been seen as having double rights; in fact, just the opposite.

I can't get on board with the idea that all abortions are equal from the standpoint of moral philosophy. Yes, either the fetus has a claim to life or it doesn't, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the fetus has a claim to life that is strong enough to outweigh a competing claim of the mother. In hard cases like threats to the mother's life, it's entirely reasonable philosophically to allow women and their doctors to make a careful decision about how much risk they're willing to take. I'm not sure that we have any good philosophical grounds on which to force women against their will to place their own lives in serious danger for the hope of protecting the life of the child in their womb, not to mention the fact that the mother may already have prior commitments to other children who are in her care and who will be put in a desperate situation if they lose their mother. From a purely religious standpoint you might encourage a woman to have faith in God to work His will in the situation, but you simply don't have any philosophical grounds on which to enforce that faith through law. We can recognize that all abortion is a tragedy--and I truly mean a tragedy, the death of a human being--while still allowing for hard cases where it can be the lesser of two evils, or at least be morally ambiguous and open to judgement of those who are most directly and personally involved. I think such situations are extremely limited, but they exist nonetheless.

Re: No legal system allowed the fetus to inherit property or even be considered in the successions process until birth.

Actually there are a handful of cases throughout history where monarchs (and other persons of note) died leaving behind no children but a pregnant spouse. Their unborn children were recognized as their heirs; no other claimant coudld simply come waltzing in and claim the throne or estate in the unborn child's stead.

Re: In 1985 and 1989, the Pontifical Academy of Science recognized brain death as "the true criterion for death.

I certainly hope so, or we have some ghoulish consequences: living tissues preserved for medical research after the original person has "died" would still constitute that person morally and be deserving of human rights.

Re: There is no culture that has ever afforded the fetus legal rights, except in the most discreet situations

Pregnant women could not belegally put to death in any Christian culture (and in many non-Christian cultures), no matter how heinous their crimes; the mere suspicion of pregnancy was enough for a woman to escape the gibbet or the headsman.

But the legal right extended to the potential heir, not to the fetus. Recognizing the potential heir is not the same as giving the fetus actual rights, for instance to sue the estate.

Nate W,

"I can't get on board with the idea that all abortions are equal from the standpoint of moral philosophy. Yes, either the fetus has a claim to life or it doesn't, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the fetus has a claim to life that is strong enough to outweigh a competing claim of the mother."

You are conflating two questions. That there may be a compelling reason for a woman to kill her child does not negate that she is, in fact, killing a human being. The absoluteness is in what the act is, not in the judgment of the perpetrator.

Loudon is a Fool,
A two week old embryo doesn't have a brain - it does have a very rudimentary neural tube that will later form a spine and brain stem, and eventually the lobes of the brain. So to answer your question as accurately as I know how, a two week old fetus is a living body but is not a living person.

My question is: Granting that the fetus and embryo do in fact have an inalienable right to life, does it follow that this right must be enshrined in civil law and safeguarded by the coercive power of the state?

If the state commands abortion, then it would indeed strip the fetus of her right to life. But what if the state simply tolerates abortion, or early abortion -- refuses to intervene, just as it refuses to intervene coercively in many situations where human rights are violated (eg, Darfur).

Toleration of abortion, or refusal to criminalize abortion, is not equivalent imo to stripping the fetus of her right to life.

I agree with this post, and it's why I think the pro-life movement is ultimately doomed. With apologies for the length, here's why:

People's moral sense tells them that a late-stage fetus close to birth should not be destroyed. But very few abortions happen late, and of those that do, many involve tragic cases of severe fetal mis-development and/or likely death (of the kind that Andrew Sullivan has been chronicling on his blog since the Tiller murder). In those cases, most people I think intuitively feel that decisions are best made as they are in the case of old people nearing death, and in some other hard cases like Terry Schiavo's: by those closest to the situation and in possession of real-time information and medical advice -- in other words, by family members and doctors, not politicians and prosecutors.

So, even for late-term abortions, while it may be possible to get people to agree in theory that there should be restrictions, it will be difficult to get them, ultimately, to endorse measures that limit private decision-making -- still less that criminalize family members or doctors -- in actual cases, where the right thing either seems unknowable or is highly dependent on the particular facts of the case. And anyway, these are a small number of abortions. The overwhelming majority occur early, and on those, it's going to be even more difficult -- at least in a modern society that believes in women's rights -- to persuade most people that a woman should be forced by law to carry a great and risky personal burden like a pregnancy that she's decided early on she doesn't want. Even with some possible recent movement in polls toward the pro-life position, majorities of Americans are still apparently saying they want early-stage abortions kept legal.

Thus, proposals to restrict both early- and late-term abortions run up against widespread moral intuitions that ought to be respected -- unless the fetus is unqualifiedly a person. Erin is right that ultimately that's the argument that has to be made if the other moral considerations are going to be overcome. Pro-lifers, in other words, are forced by their own logic to endorse full personhood for the unborn, and right from the beginning of pregnancy, if they're going to persuade people to accept restrictions on anything but a rare few "late elective" abortions.

That argument for full personhood, however, is very, very hard to sustain. We know this from the conduct of pro-lifers themselves. Few if any of them do the things you would do if you thought the unborn were fully people, like hold funerals or demand inquests after miscarriages, treat the production and discarding of fertilized eggs for in-vitro fertilization as mass murders, call for the prosecution on capital charges of women who get abortions, or refuse to countenance exceptions for rape and incest. (And if they did take such positions, their political support would fall to almost nothing.) Likewise, we would surely all applaud the actions of someone who killed a Jeffrey Dahmer or some other serial killer of people already born, if the authorities for whatever reason were refusing to put that killer away. And yet mainstream pro-lifers denounced Scott Roeder, even if not always convincingly.

In other words, even pro-lifers, with few exceptions, don't act as if they really believe that the unborn are full rights-bearing human beings who are murdered in abortion. Their own practices are inconsistent with such a view in too many ways. In reality, they must have some more nuanced view, and I think what Ross Douthat is doing is acknowledging this and groping for a way of making that view sound coherent. But as Erin suggests, nuance ultimately means the pro-choice arguments win; it deprives pro-lifers of any good reason for insisting that embryos and fetuses have "rights" that should trump all the other moral and prudential considerations that might lead to abortions in given cases. That's the dilemma they're stuck in -- either take an extremist position and lose, or give up their best and most coherent argument -- and that's why the pro-life movement is doomed.

"Every woman who has an abortion because she feels there is no other path available to her (whether it be financial need, healthcare need, or other social need) and who, if that need were provided for, might choose to keep the child...every one of these women is a failure of the pro-life movement."

I said this in another thread, and I'll bring it up again here...why is all the responsibility for helping women if/when they choose life thrown exclusively on the pro-life side? If pro-choice means what its proponents say it means, then they support a woman's right to choose life, too. Right? Or is it only if the baby is healthy or the mother has money? How much of Planned Parenthood's millions go to help women keep their babies? According to their annual report for 2007 (available at their website) their clinics performed 305,310 abortions while adoption referrals totaled only 4,912. Despite their claims of effective education and prevention programs, abortions performed at their clinics have been increasing every year. I could not find reference to other support programs besides those for contraception and prenatal care.

Honestly evaluating the efforts of both sides is going to require some fact checking. How much are pro-life groups/agencies spending on advertising, public policy, etc., vs. support programs for women who choose to have their babies? Ditto for pro-choice groups? How many women who abort their babies would not have if offered some kind of assistance? Without that information, you are being presumptuous about who's failing who. If you have that information, I would be very interested to see it.

"Natty, the pro-life side is making the argument that the unborn child is a person from the moment of conception. The pro-choice side does not agree with that position. To expect them to offer these services does not square with their stated values."

I don't get it. Can you explain more? I thought the pro-choice position is that each woman should be able to choose whether to keep her baby, give birth to it and give it up for adoption, or abort it. That no woman should feel financially or morally pressured to choose any one of these, but should choose what she deeply feels to be right for her. Is that, or is that not, the position? If it is the position, then why do not pro-choice folks make a real point of making sure all of these choices are viable for the woman in question?

Doctor Science:

"Making quickening the baseline for life has an extremely long pedigree, going back to Aristotle at least (and probably further). You'll note that the widespread belief that first-trimester abortions are OK is in line with this traditional approach. Most women were quite willing to use whatever remedies they could get to "bring on their periods", and did *not* consider this the same thing as the heinous crime of abortion.

Men (including male clerics) objected to these first-trimester remedies, but *not* usually on the grounds that it was destroying an ensouled human being. Rather, they said (truthfully) that it undermined male authority, and the husband's unquestioned right to control his wife's fertility."

I've never heard of such a thing. Abortion was considered to be an awful crime, even when it was thought that ensoulment happened around quickening, because it violently halted the natural process of bringing human life into being. This is why contraception was and is also considered gravely wrong. I would like to see some support for the male-domination theory you have put forward.

"Of course, the Founders never imagined that a minute-old piece of fetal tissue would have the same fundamental rights as a human being; it's fair to say that even a viable fetus would never have been considered a human being for purposes of constitutional protection. Yours is a post-modern view of human rights without precedent in any culture or in history."

I read this over and over, trying to make sense of it. Please explain. You're telling me that the founding fathers would be rolling in their graves at the very idea of unborn children being protected by law? You're not really saying this, are you? Because I'm thinking the opposite; that the founding fathers would be rolling in their graves to think that the ripping of babies from their mothers' wombs would even be up for consideration as a possible constitutional "right". I'm thinking they'd be shocked that we would have to state fetus' rights explicitly in the constitution, that their rights would not be an absolute given.

Well, if we're just not sure when someone becomes a person, but we're pretty sure they're a person in the last couple months of pregnancy, what does that come to? How does not being sure equal a right to kill?

Rebecca, the problem here the phrase “right to kill.” The common moral intuition, I think, is that there’s no right to kill, but that “killing” is a poor description of what’s going on, just as it’s a poor description of what family members and hospice workers are up to with a terminally ill older person. What’s happening is something more like “managing the circumstances of an inevitable death in order to minimize suffering.” I’m referring here to awful cases like those that Andrew Sullivan has recently chronicled in his “It’s So Personal” series of blog posts. It’s interesting that reading those first-hand accounts that his readers sent in has led Sullivan, a Catholic who opposes abortion, to conclude that late-term abortions like these may be, not just morally justifiable after all, but the most justifiable of all abortions. I think that in saying that he is simply expressing the intuitive sense most people have about a situation in which (for instance) the fetus is certain to die anyway, possibly in great pain, and/or might kill or wound the mother too.

I agree that people do not have the same intuitive reaction to late abortions that involve healthy fetuses and are not medically indicated for some reason. On those, you could succeed at rallying political support for imposing restrictions -- and already have, I think, which is why it’s so hard to find doctors who will do those abortions. But those, as you probably know, are a tiny percentage of all abortions.

[Pro-lifers] do consider the discarding of fertilized eggs for in vitro fertilization as mass murders, and they do refuse to countenance exceptions for rape and incest, since a second act of violence on a woman is not is what is called for. As for capital charges, it is the abortionists themselves, the moneymakers, and those who just want fewer poor blacks and Mexicans in this country, who bear the greater part of the burden of guilt. Many if not most women in the position of choosing an abortion are confused, misinformed, and highly pressured.

Well, here you’re making my point. I salute the pro-lifers you refer to for their logical consistency, but even that apparently has limits, since by your own account they’re prepared to excuse people they believe to be murderers, even before investigation or trial, on the grounds that many if not most are “confused, misinformed, and highly pressured.” That’s just not the position we take with regard to murderers of born people: We insist on their arrest and prosecution, and let the mitigating circumstances come into play later in deciding things like sentencing. We just don’t say, of whole categories of people who obviously played some role in murder, “Well, we expect you were probably confused or pressured, so never mind, you can go.” How many people are in prison today because they stupidly got themselves involved in something as confused teenagers – participating in a robbery, say, that their older peers pressured them into – and somebody got killed? Even if killing someone wasn’t part of the plan? And yet you are saying that we should assume going in that women ought not be prosecuted for murder in the case of abortion, even though killing the fetus is exactly the plan, and at least some significant fraction of women know exactly what they’re doing and aren’t confused about it at all.

Likewise, you seem not to grasp that if pro-lifers truly believed that aborting even fertilized eggs and early-term embryos was murder, they would be compelled not just to memorialize a miscarriage but to make sure it was investigated just as other deaths are, in order to make sure there was no foul play involved. And they wouldn’t just rhetorically grant that what goes on at in-vitro clinics is mass murder, they’d be demanding the shutdown of those clinics. Yet, on the whole, the pro-life movement gives in-vitro clinics a pass, bends on the rape-and-incest exceptions, and gives assurances (like yours) that outlawing abortion wouldn’t lead to police investigations and prosecutions of ordinary women and their friends or family members. They do this because they know that taking the logically consistent position would destroy their remaining political support -- but that’s precisely the dilemma I’m talking about: to have any hope of success at all, they have to do things that undercut their own position. I believe that’s what Ross Douthat and Erin Manning are talking about, and the disagreement between them is over which horn of the dilemma it’s better to be impaled on. My point is that neither option is going to rescue their movement.

Rebecca, one other thing -- that Ross Douthat column that Erin links to includes this startling fact: "Almost half of that number are repeat abortions; around a quarter are third or fourth procedures." I didn't know that, but it certainly suggests that lots of women who get abortions are not confused or misinformed. Surely at least they should be prosecuted?

Also, what public defender just said.

Public defender: a red blood cell if left alone to do its thing will not grow into a bouncing baby boy or girl.

In the parable of the prodigal son in Luke we read that he had hit rock bottom and then "He came to himself".

Look at the precious little ones at early phases of development.

http://www.prolifetraining.com/Prenatal-Pictures.htm

As a people we have to come to ourselves. I don't know how we can argue that destroying millions of them doesn't rank us among the most corrupt of any age.

"Whatsoever you do to the least of these, that you do to me" Matt 25:40

There cannot be in any world a justifiable case for killing them. "Simplicity exists on the far side of complexity". This is a simple issue one that is laid open for us, a no-brainer, just begging for us to demonstrate our quality.

There is an opportunity to make a difference of great historical moment. To defend the foundations of law, as read in the Declaration of Independence:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness"

It has come down to the defence of the nation's integrity. The only unifying principles we have are these inherent rights. At present, in a devil's bargain we are blind to them because we wish to experiment with the dissolution of the time tested ordering of male-female relationships - that most foundational of relationships for a civil society.

There are only two ways with this.

The widespread acceptance of eugenics, and European anti-Semitism prior to WW2 corroded the collective consciences of developed nations, weakening its defence against the coming of something monstrous. It devoured Europe. Dealt it a fatal existential blow (demographicwinter.com).

And things in the US are moving swiftly. Do I need to identify the confluence of factors in the perfect storm gathering now?

And all we have to do is defend the lives of these little ones and they will save us. The stand has to be made here!

The argument that abortion was prohibited in order to protect patriarchal rights, is easily refuted. In several cultures that I know of, including among the Christianized Visigoths and among the (non-Christian) Zoroastrian Persian culture, the death penalty was imposed on three people in the aftermath of an abortion: the abortionist, the mother, and the _father_. Now, just how does it support the patriarchal power structure by killing men when their wives get abortions?

Charles Foster Kane,

I would consider myself pro-life, but in the Ross Douthat mold rather than the Erin Manning mold. I don't think the early vs. late term distinction is the most morally relevant one, but rather the reasons for which someone is getting an abortion. I think that abortions should be allowed, and can even be the moral choice, when the mother's life is threatened (I'm not sure about other severe health threats) or when the fetus has severe damage and will not survive long anyway. I'm not talking about Down Syndrome babies here, but rather conditions like anencephaly. I would base the former exception on the right to self defence and the latter on the golden rule. In most other cases, I think abortion is a grave evil and should not be allowed. It should be noted that my ideal legal framework, though more liberal then Erin's, would prohibit the vast majority of abortions.

And no, pace Erin, I don't think that perfect 'logical consistency' here is the highest thing. Intuition is usually, I think, a surer guide to moral truth then pure unadulterated logic. We stopped burning heretics because it sickened our consciences, not because we found that the Scholastic arguments were logically flawed.

That is to say: I think it's less wrong to abort a seven month old fetus when your life is at stake than to abort a one month old fetus when your life isn't. Though I think that ideally, third trimester babies should be delivered and attempts made to rescue them. We live in a fallen world and sometimes the choices we face are between a lesser evil and a greater evil.

R Hampton,

The point of noting that an embryo is not dead or dying is to suggest that brain activity at the beginning of life and at the end of life mean different things. I find the concept of brain death troubling for several reasons; but the concern would still exist if cessation of heart function were our criteria. If your heart stops and you are not successfully resuscitated at the end of life you are dead. If your heart is not beating at the beginning of life you are alive. Granted heart activity and brain activity are more rational distinctions than the geography test currently employed but both are used to rationalize the killing of an innocent human.

Martin,

A fertilized egg becomes nothing if it isn't in a uterus that can support it.

Very simply, there is not much support for an absolute ban on abortion. After decades of anti-abortion activism, there has been little change in the opinion of voters. There is even less support for a law that calls abortion murder. Republicans know that. That is why they did nothing to change the law. The anti-abortion activists who refuse to compromise are doing nothing to decrease the number of abortions.

It's up to you, do you prefer to argue for your personal ideal that is not going to happen and will keep the abortion rate where it is, but let's you make self-righteous posts or are you willing to compromise so we can see fewer abortions but give up your quixotic demand that abortion become illegal?

"Rebecca, if you get your way and the law is changed to say that abortion is murder, how will you implement the necessary requirements to have an inquest for every miscarriage?"

Sorry? At present, do people hold inquests for every death that occurs? I was unaware of this practice.

Charles Foster Kane,

"I salute the pro-lifers you refer to for their logical consistency, but even that apparently has limits, since by your own account they’re prepared to excuse people they believe to be murderers, even before investigation or trial, on the grounds that many if not most are “confused, misinformed, and highly pressured.” That’s just not the position we take with regard to murderers of born people: We insist on their arrest and prosecution, and let the mitigating circumstances come into play later in deciding things like sentencing. We just don’t say, of whole categories of people who obviously played some role in murder, “Well, we expect you were probably confused or pressured, so never mind, you can go.”

Look, you're not the only one who has thought about this. In a state with good laws about abortion, a woman *would* ordinarily be held accountable for abortion. But right now, at present, assuming we could immediately change the law, this would be a matter of prudence and a sort of recognition that the kind of mass pressure and mass moral confusion that has happened is not best treated by going and hunting down anyone who has participated in abortion, which would be something like a third of all women in this country. After WWII, I don't think the US tried to go and hunt down everyone who had participated in the holocaust; we went for the ringleaders, right? Because of the nature of the third reich it would not have been particularly prudent or effective to put every suspected German on trial. It may have been justified, but not prudent or effective, and likewise with abortion.

"Likewise, you seem not to grasp that if pro-lifers truly believed that aborting even fertilized eggs and early-term embryos was murder, they would be compelled not just to memorialize a miscarriage but to make sure it was investigated just as other deaths are, in order to make sure there was no foul play involved. And they wouldn’t just rhetorically grant that what goes on at in-vitro clinics is mass murder, they’d be demanding the shutdown of those clinics. "

What am I not grasping? I don't believe every death is investigated with an inquest; only when there are some good grounds to believe there was foul play???

And I'm not sure what your point is about "rhetorically" granting that there is mass murder going on at in-vitro clinics? How am I supposed to "demand" the shutdown of those clinics? The most I can do at this point (and even this may not be possible soon) is to stand outside, pray, and offer information to those entering. I don't happen to have an in-vitro clinic near me, only an abortion slaughterhouse, so that's where I go. I talk to people online and in person, try to inform them of the truth of the process of in vitro, try to inform them of the truth of the pill as abortifacient, and this is true of the many pro-lifers I know. And we are trying to raise large families of children who will grow up to value life and value logic. This is what we can do for now.

No, Rebecca, I am not talking about contraception, I am talking about social programs, programs that make life less worrisome, programs like health care for all that all can afford, programs that make certain that everyone has a place to live and enough food and clothing, programs that rightwingers mock and work on destroying. I am talking about how the Roman Catholic Church has made common cause with those people and made life less certain for those who are poor and cannot always rely on their own ability to raise an added mouth. There is correlation between economic security and abortions. Those who are more economically secure are less likely to have abortions, but the Catholic Church has decided to cast its lot with the Right, the ones who make the poor less economically secure. They have supported the election of people who claim to be pro-life but vote for policies that make abortions more likely.

Please point to evidence to support your claim about contraception.

Free-Lunch:

"The anti-abortion activists who refuse to compromise are doing nothing to decrease the number of abortions."

Things may not be very successful on a political level, but we can work one person at a time. In the recent campaign Forty Days for Life, pro-lifers simply stood and prayed outside of abortion clinics across the country in a concerted effort. In that effort, at least 600 women are *known* to have changed their mind--just because someone was standing there praying for them and their babies. That is a small number compared to the women who went through with the abortion but it is something. The Life centers, offering free services and counseling to pregnant women, are plugging away and helping one woman at a time. I'm sure the abolitionists felt discouraged at times, and they were probably told they were unrealistic, too, and maybe making people be more unkind to their slaves because of their insistence on principles. Nevertheless, we will continue, and know that it will not be due to our efforts alone that minds and hearts will be changed.

Another citation:

While Aquinas had opposed abortion — as a form of
contraception and a sin against marriage — he had maintained that the
sin in abortion was not homicide unless the fetus was ensouled, and thus,
a human being. Aquinas had said the fetus is first endowed with a
vegetative soul, then an animal soul, and then — when its body is
developed — a rational soul. This theory of "delayed hominization" is
the most consistent thread throughout church history on abortion.

Miscarriage is an extremely common thing.

Exactly, but there is no way to tell, without an investigation if it was a miscarriage or induced. If as you say, "The state wouldn't demand an inquest unless there was some very specific good reason to suppose foul play," then even if you got the law that abortions were murder, abortions would continue on without any problem, but you will have a nice, meaningless law that you can be proud of.

As with your other comment, it seems clear that you are more concerned about the form than the substance. Abortion will not be made illegal throughout the United States, not even if the Supreme Court reversed Roe and Casey. You can choose to fight to have the law become more onerous than it has been, even before Roe, even though the experience of the last 40 years is that you will continue to lose. Sometimes you might talk a woman out of getting an abortion that day at that clinic, but it's a small thing, smaller than if you work with the pro-choice people to make sure our society does its best to provide a strong social safety net so fewer women even consider getting an abortion.

My question is why you have chosen to go with all or nothing when it is so clear that you are not getting all you want, have made no headway, and haven't any expectation that you will? Why wouldn't you cooperate with those who disagree with you about the law when there is an opportunity to make abortion more rare? Are the people who insist on all or nothing in their attempt to abolish abortion every bit as responsible for the levels of abortion in this country as those who provide it?

Doctor Science:

Your two secondary sources quoted are just making a claim, like you are. I'd like to see some primary sources. Your point about St. Thomas Aquinas is only a confirmation of what I've already stated: that even when it was thought that ensoulment was delayed, abortion was considered a grave crime because it violently halts the process of the bringing into being of a human life.

The Church has always, from the very beginning, held abortion to be a crime. This is from the Didache:

"The second commandment of the Teaching: "Do not murder; do not commit adultery"; do not corrupt boys; do not fornicate; "do not steal"; do not practice magic; do not go in for sorcery; do not murder a child by abortion or kill a newborn infant..."

Doctor Scienc (and Free Lunch)

"My experience is that there *is* an investigation when an elderly person dies alone and unexpectedly. It's also my experience that the issue is far more likely to be suicide than euthanasia."

Okay, but do you really think that when people hold strong to a moral principle, that means they are absolutely incapable of any nuance when it comes to law? Obviously the law would need to take into account the commonness of miscarriage and the ordinary circumstances of it, and not act as though it occurs under the exact same circumstances as deaths outside the womb. My guess is that the best and most practical kind of law about this would be to assume natural death unless there are good reasons to think otherwise.

do you really think that when people hold strong to a moral principle, that means they are absolutely incapable of any nuance when it comes to law?

"All or nothing" is what it says.

Here's a primary source quote for you:

To the dismay of medical leaders, the public still believed that quickening marked the beginning of life. The practice of abortion persisted nationwide. "Many otherwise good and exemplary women," Dr. Joseph Taber Johnson reported in 1895, thought "that prior to quickening it is no more harm to cause the evacuation of the contents of their wombs than it is that of their bladders or their bowels."

As for how reasonable people would be in practice, here's a Boston Globe article on the abortion ban in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Chile. In those countries, poor women may find it difficult or impossible to be treated in a timely way for ectopic pregnancy or miscarriage, due to doctors' fear of prosecution. As you probably know, a D&C is both a method of abortion and frequently necessary to treat miscarriage -- doctors in public hospitals in these countries will wait as long as possible before performing one, lest they be charged with murder.

Rebecca:

I don't get it. How would abortions continue without any problem? How would doctors go around performing surgical abortions for a living? Attempting to self-inflict abortion is dangerous and I doubt many women would go for it.

I'm going to assume that this an honest question, and that you were born after 1960 or so. Alas, this comment will go to moderation, but I hope the links will be worth it.

Some doctors would still make a living performing abortions for well-to-do women, as is the case in most of Latin America (as reported in the Boston Globe article I linked to previously). When Barry Goldwater's daughter became pregnant out-of-wedlock in 1955, he arranged a safe, though illegal, abortion for her in New York. Networks of safe, expensive, discrete abortion doctors were *everywhere* in those days, with referrals through an intense network of word-of-mouth, mostly woman-to-woman, and ads using the words like "full gynecological services" and "complete privacy and discretion". Women would go out-of-town if they could -- a "spa weekend" to "restore one's health" was a *euphemism* in my youth. I don't know what this kind of service cost in today's dollars, but I'd guess that if a legal abortion costs $400 today, a safe illegal one one would cost $1000 or more, if you follow me.

As for women who couldn't afford a good doctor, yes they did take awful risks. Here's one doctor's report:

The first month of my internship [in 1962] was spent on Ward 41, the septic obstetrics ward. Yes, it's hard to believe now, but in those days, they had one ward dedicated exclusively to septic complications of pregnancy.

About 90% of the patients were there with complications of septic abortion. The ward had about 40 beds, in addition to extra beds which lined the halls. Each day we admitted between 10-30 septic abortion patients. We had about one death a month, usually from septic shock associated with hemorrhage.Right now, complications from illegal abortions are a leading cause of death for women of child-bearing age in South America. In Peru alone, an estimated 50,000 women a year either die or suffer serious complications after an illegal abortion. More women in Ethiopia die from complications from illegal abortions than from any other medical reason save tuberculosis, the World Health Organization reports.

Rebecca,

So R, next time you go under general anesthesia for surgery, is it okay if I knock you off, because you're not a person during that time?

No, it's not okay because there would still be electrical activity in my brain. People under anesthesia, in comas or vegetative states, suffering from mental illness or severe disability, etc. all have at least minimal brain activity -- if they didn't, then they would be brain dead.

[my comment at 1:14 pm]

By the way, the bishops are not just condemning the non-existant set of politicians who are actively promoting abortion, they are condemning all politicians who support the status quo which allows a woman to decide for herself.

arrgh, formatting is messed up on my 1:12post. "About 90% ... associated with hemorrhage." is still the quote from the doctor, talking about conditions at Cook County Hospital in Chicago in the early 60s. The next sentence should be a new paragraph.

Doctor Science,

Do you know who Dr. Bernard Nathanson is? Do you know that he was an abortionists who was one of the people pushing for the Roe v. Wade decision, and that later, when he repented and became pro-life, he admitted that the numbers of coat-hanger abortions stated to the court was a complete fabrication? That the number, stated to be "millions" I think, was something closer to "hundreds" if that, and yet even after he and others admitted to the fabrication, the press continued to put forth that number as being some kind of established fact?

On a positive note, a couple of partial concessions:

Hector, I agree that "Intuition is usually, I think, a surer guide to moral truth then pure unadulterated logic," at least on an issue like this one. As I said earlier, though, I think moral intuition is what's killing the pro-life movement, which makes claims that ultimately don't accord with most people's moral intuitions.

Ultimately, I think, the only way to change that is probably Erin's way: bring about a kind of collective "paradigm shift" in which the unborn are raised to a basically different ontological status (i.e. "full human being") than they currently hold in most people's understanding. That could happen, of course. I doubt it will, and it's an all-or-nothing strategy politically (as in the title of Erin's post), but without such a change I think the pro-life movement has already peaked.

Rebecca, good answers, at least to my points. You are right, the prudent policy in the wake of the Third Reich was not to prosecute every German, Pole, Frenchman, etc. who cooperated in any way with the Final Solution. That analogy still has some problems, though, most notably that the Final Solution was a large-scale, organized effort, which the war was able to stop so that it was definitely over.

To analogize that situation to the situation after a change in laws made abortion criminal, you'd have to imagine that after World War II, some number of ordinary Europeans still went around killing Jews -- a kind of "freelance S.S." determined to continue the Final Solution in the same way the Ku Klux Klan continued the Confederate resistance by lynching blacks in the defeated American South. Surely those freelancers would have had to be found and prosecuted, right? We couldn't, in such a case, have settled for just prosecuting the Nazi leaders no longer in power.

Well, that's essentially what you'd be facing after abortions were outlawed. Some women would still get them, and at some point you'd have to drop the excuse that they were, as a group, pressured and misinformed and start holding them responsible for their individual acts. But that's exactly the kind of nightmarishly oppressive legal regime that Americans are unwilling to accept, because at present they don't think that abortion is truly morally equivalent to murder -- because they don't ultimately feel, as a matter of moral intuition, that embryos and fetuses are human beings in all the same ways as born people.

And so the pro-life movement is stuck either watering down its message, or being logically consistent and losing nearly all its political support. But both of these are losing strategies. Which means that the movement just doesn't have any winning strategies, absent that collective "paradigm shift" I mentioned. Going for that, though, is all or nothing. I guess you're going for it, so good luck.

Rebecca:

It's true that I never heard first-hand of anyone using a coat hanger. I did hear first-hand stories about crochet hooks. Is that scary enough for you? You've said that "I doubt many women would go for [self-inflicted abortion]", but the historical record and what's going on in Latin America proves that many *will*. Shocking, dangerous, horrifying -- yes, but it's a *fact*.

R Hampton:

"Thanks for making that point about Roe v. Wade increasing the number of (known) abortions. While true, it refutes Rebecca's contention that the Pill was responsible.

Dr. John Rock realized in 1956 that Envoid, a new drug being tested to treat gynecological disorders, was also a very effective anti-ovulent. Three years after approving it for gynecological disorders, the FDA approved G. D. Searle's Envoid as an oral contraceptive. By 1962, 1.2 million American women were on the "Pill," and 12.5 million by 1967. Six years later, the Supreme Court ruled on Roe v. Wade."

It sure seems to me that you're just reiterating my point. First legalized pill, then legalized abortion. Coincidence, I think not. The bottom line is that the new fundamental right is the right to separate sex from children, and *nothing*, no nothing, not even a child, may hinder that "right". Not even a child already born, as evidenced in the recent case of a baby accidently born at an abortion clinic and left to die of exposure.

Doctor Science,

Many more women die from complications of legal abortion than ever died from complications of illegal abortions. Women are far less likely to try to terminate a pregnancy if society supports pregnant women and mothers instead of telling them either outright or in veiled ways that the better thing to do for themselves and society is to terminate the pregnancy. Even proposing something like "this must be a hard decision for you" has got to be crazymaking--if I had a child and society sympathetically told me that I do have the option to kill the child and pursue a career and really fulfill myself more and be more useful to society, but gosh it must be a hard decision to make--that would be crazymaking and extremely confusing. Pro-choicers think they're being kind to women; they're not--even the proposal that aborting your child is a viable option by its very nature implies that if you are devastated by this decision, there's something wrong with you. You're allowed to shed a tear or two, like maybe if your puppy got run over, but really to be devastated in any lasting way should be off the table, if this isn't a person.

The bottom line is that the new fundamental right is the right to separate sex from children, and *nothing*, no nothing, not even a child, may hinder that "right"

So, you believe contraception is - or should be - illegal? Roe v. Wade did not rule on contraception. Do you understand the distinction? Condom use in the U.S. dates back before the Civil War. The NRLC has no position on the matter.

If you push pro-life to be a cause for anti-contraception, then the movement jeopardize all the progress made against abortions.

I don't consider that "nightmarishly oppressive". I don't know why anyone would, if they think babies are people. That's what it boils down to--whether babies inside wombs are people.

Yes, Rebecca, that's what it boils down to. (I would say, not whether babies are people, which they are be definition -- but whether embryos and fetuses are babies. But whatever.) I don't think you'll succeed at persuading majorities of people to this view, but again, best of luck.

"Thanks for making that point about Roe v. Wade increasing the number of (known) abortions. While true, it refutes Rebecca's contention that the Pill was responsible."

How so? It's not an either/or proposition. The contraception mentality is most certainly what has led to the abortion mentality, because what is the logical next step once an unwanted pregnancy occurs due to failure or improper use of birth control? Abortion was still illegal when the pill came out, and remained so for what, about 10 years afterward? During this time, more and more teens and women began using the pill and engaging in sex outside of marriage than before. Once abortion was legalized, many more were now getting pregnant as a result of contraceptive failure or misuse and would seek a now legal abortion.

I know I recently read some stats on this but I'd have to dig them up again.

No one here has yet mentioned the thriving black market in pharmaceuticals that already exists in this country. Does anyone writing here truly believe that RU-486 type drugs will NOT become readily available from underground sources if an early abortion ban is instituted?

And yes, the Pill can fail (very rarely), and if it does, the answer is not to have an abortion. Ideally, I would say that you shouldn't sleep with anyone that you would not be willing to marry and raise a child together in the event of a pregnancy.

Charles Foster Kane, I disagree with you about moral intuitions. The nations of the world run the whole gamut in terms of legal attitudes towards abortion, from complete legality to complete illegality. It's eminently possible to move America from one place along that spectrum, in terms of our moral intuitions, to another.

Many more women die from complications of legal abortion than ever died from complications of illegal abortions

I doubt it. According to the Guttmacher Institute: "The risk of death associated with abortion increases with the length of pregnancy, from one death for every one million abortions at or before eight weeks to one per 29,000 at 16–20 weeks—and one per 11,000 at 21 or more weeks." The rates were not that low when it was illegal.

How many abortions happen after 15 weeks because of the actions of the anti-abortion forces that have made it harder and more expensive to get an abortion, particularly for teens?

Does anyone else here find it interesting that pro-choice advocates first complain that pro-lifers refuse to find common ground (a la Obama's speech at Notre Dame), and then complain when they make concessions such as those for rape and incest, accusing them of being inconsistent?

Which do you want, concession or consistency?

How can we have both?

CFK,

In terms of theory and belief, I agree that both consistency and concession are mutually exclusive. If you believe that something is wrong, by gum, you should stick to it.

However, when it comes to forming policy, I don't think that one's beliefs have to change in order to concede elements of that policy. In a perfect world, we would all agree. In this world, we have to find some sort of compromise. For centuries, those who believed that abortion was wrong suffered no argument. Now the tables have turned. The law of the land allows abortion as though it were a Constitutional right.

However, that policy was established not via a Constitutional amendment, but by the Courts. If it were dependent upon a majority vote for ratification, I don't think it would survive.

Even though I myself believe that it is always wrong to take a human life, I must concede that, in the name of the common good, it is sometimes necessary. Government is a complicated dance between lesser evils...one could even say it's a bit of a dance with the devil. But a just people will always seek to minimize unwarranted taking of human life.

Therefore to say that abortion should be "safe but rare" and then remove every imaginable restriction (such as parental consent laws, etc...) is an error of consistency with a much greater impact on human life than it is to say that abortion should be illegal with the exception of cases of rape or incest...

RHampton,

"That means the contraception mentality" had been around."

Yes, contraception has been around. However, in the 50's and 60's when sexual morality was really starting to change, the availability of contraceptives was restricted, especially for unmarried women. The birth control pill brought the sexual revolution to new heights with its ease of use and its promised effectiveness. As restrictions were removed and the age of majority lowered in most states, contraceptive use and pre-marital (and extra-marital) sex increased significantly. So, although contraceptives were available prior to the availability of the pill and wider availability of other types of contraceptives, I'm not sure it met the level of a "contraceptive mentality". Even if it did, the pill and the dropping of restrictions only made it worse.

Hector,

"I don't think there is much of a connection between the acceptance of contraception and premarital sex on the one hand, and abortion on the other."

Studies show that as availability of contraceptives and sexual activity increased, so did the abortion rates. Planned Parenthood touts the effectiveness of their prevention programs while their abortion rates have increased each year. If a woman is using birth control, why is she using it? Because she doesn't want to get pregnant. So, what do you think her reaction is going to be when she does get pregnant? Is she going to want the child more now than she did before? In most cases, no. At least 50% of abortions are performed on women who were using birth control when they got pregnant.

"Abortion is a life issue, not a sex issue. We will never win on this issue if we paint it as a sex issue, because most people want the right to have sex before marriage and to plan their number of children and have small families."

But the problem with the contraceptive mentality is that the result of it has been the separation of the procreative act from the unitive act. It is the belief that sex is primarily for pleasure and that children are optional. Women become disposable objects of sexual desire and their children, if they should "accidentally" come into being, are disposable, too. So, yes, that may be what people want and stating this correlation between contraception and abortion may not be what they want to hear, but it's the truth. Although, I'm not under any delusion that this message would be well-received.

The other truth is that widespread availability of contraceptives and comprehensive sex education are not significantly reducing the number of abortions. England, Scotland, and Sweden all report increases in teen pregnancy rates and abortions despite increased funding for sex ed programs and the promotion of the morning after pill. Washington state has also reported an increase (16% between 2006-2007) despite an ongoing Medicaid program (also supported by Planned Parenthood) which provides free contraceptives to low-income women who are not supported by Medicaid. They're giving the stuff out for free, and it's not working.

It's also interesting to note that the divorce rate among married couples who use contraception is 40-50% while it is only about 2% for couples who use Natural Family Planning or no birth control at all.

Natty:

"Planned Parenthood touts the effectiveness of their prevention programs while their abortion rates have increased each year."

Yes, and you know, they're glad that it does, because it's a moneymaker. I'm amazed that large numbers of actual people fall for all the cheery newspeak about prevention programs. The truth is that Planned Parenthood wants people to choose abortion. They are not pro-choice, they are simply pro-abortion. When, during the 40 days for life campaign, some women did not go ahead with the planned abortion, people at the clinic were up in arms. They were angry with the people standing outside praying (there was obviously no coercion involved), they were vocal about the money being lost. If they were truly pro-choice, they would actually be relieved that the women made a choice they were finally happy with; they should be relieved that the woman realized she had been feeling pressured by her boyfriend to have an abortion and decided not to succumb to that pressure. That would be "empowerment", right? But no, it lost them money. That is the bottom line--it is about moneymakers preying on very vulnerable people, and snapping and growling when their prey escapes.

Didn't anyone notice that Douthat's entire article/premise is based on a lie???

To with:

"The argument for unregulated abortion rests on ..."

Absolutely no one is arguing for "unregulated abortion". No one.

If the 'right' has to continually resort to lying in order to, er, 'make their point', they've already lost. They have ZERO credibility.