Why should abortion be a matter of public policy? 1 Jun 2009 Something I don’t get, possibly because I’m a white male, is why we should pay any attention in the public domain to the concerns various people have about abortion. If Catholics don’t like it, don’t do it. If Protestants don’t like it (and that is something that only arose in the 1970s, at the behest, according to Frankie Schaeffer, of Fulton Sheen to Protestant leaders who previously had no moral qualms about it, but only about promiscuity), don’t do it. What this really is, is not about abortion. It is about controlling sexual activity, and the sole basis for it is theological. And theology should not play any role in the public order of a pluralist democracy. That’s what is at issue. The religious do not like not controlling the social order, and they do not like people being free of their control. Abortion is not murder – it is destruction of tissue, which increasingly resembles a person. But a person is not something that is all or nothing, and we set secular boundaries more or less arbitrarily, because biology is vaguely bounded. So the religious authorities oppose abortion because it gives them a way to shift attention from the fact that they want to control who can have sex when, since controlling mating is a major justification for religious authority. By casting it in terms of a moral absolute like murder, this gets lost in the shuffle. But once you establish abortion as a moral prohibitivum, you can now justify real moral crimes, like shooting abortionists, bombing clinics. In other words it becomes a basis for terrorism, and terrorism this is. It is no different to the Wahabism that justifies Al Qaeda’s crimes or the Taliban. So why do television shows like Boston Legal see it as necessary to pay lip service to the “moral conundrum” of abortion? Why should every show that tries to back abortion rights have to make the abortion-having woman undergo a moral crisis? There is no moral crisis; there’s a theological crisis only, and if you are not in that theological tradition, then there are no reasons to feel any more guilty about an abortion than about having an appendectomy. And since the Church’s theology is not the basis for western common law, nor even for the moral consensus, there should be no legal sanctions other than those imposed upon responsible medicine and psychology. Again: if the Church is worried about some activity, prohibit it for members of the Church, not for anyone else. They have and should never be given control over those who are not members of their club of their own free will. That is what makes it possible to be in a democracy. Ethics and Moral Philosophy Philosophy Politics Religion Social evolution
Epistemology Philosophy as forgetting, and index characters 13 Nov 2009 I was talking to a friend, Damian Cox, yesterday, and we were discussing how many of the ideas of, say, a Wittgenstein had been a rediscovery or reformulation of what had been commonly held over a century before. Damian made the comment that philosophy is a process of forgetting what… Read More
Epistemology Hume on induction (sort of) 10 Nov 201110 Nov 2011 Reading this from the Enquiry, in the section on Miracles (Chapter X), it hit me Hume is describing induction*… A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence. In such conclusions as are founded on an infallible experience, he expects the event with the last degree of assurance, and… Read More
Logic and philosophy What is an Agnostic? by Bertrand Russell 10 Jun 2007 Bertrand Russell, a leading philosopher in his prime, was also a wonderful writer. And, it appears, many of my views were formed when I was but still Young in the Discipline of Philosophy by reading Russell. Here is an essay (stolen from here) from 1953, when I still was not,… Read More
Very reality-bite points are raised in this post. Really, the concern of the religious heads and establishments there is not necessarily pro abortion, or anti-abortion, but how better they can enhance their ‘iron’ control over the masses in the name of ‘sermons’. The whole religious and theological (all religions included) debris there is centered on ‘sex’ issue. Have they no better things to do?
But how does a society then enforce any rules? Ignoring the religious bit (which is really just an aside), what you appear to be saying is that we have no right to interfer in the actions of another if it does us no immediate physical harm. Is walking up and killing someone wrong? If it is why? Surely, in a secular society, all groups have a right (for whatever reason rights exist) to have their say?
I agree that all groups have a right to make their opinions known. But the issue here is Religions attempt to control the masses. There is no separation of church and state anymore, we live in a theocracy and always have. The Christion Right has always held major sway in all aspects of our society. It is no surprise that they try to confound the issue by claiming it is murder. In order to truly be free we must not allow religion to creep into governance at any cost.
That what is going on here is about moral posturing and cultural politics is obvious. If the evil to be combated were simply the death of fetuses, the rational thing to do would be to make safe and economical birth control universally available since that would actually reduce the number of terminated pregnancies. Outlawing abortion, by contrast, wouldn’t automatically reduce the number of abortions, any more than outlawing pot reduces the use of marijuana. It simply makes the detested act illegal. The goal of anti-abortion hysteria is the gratification of the self righteous, not the survival of the unborn.
@Pete We cannot allow religion to creep into governance Then you disenfranchise a vast swathe of people. The vast majority of people claim allegiance to one religion or another and this affects their worldview, just as your beliefs affect your worldview. Are the only ethics to be enforced those you approve of? @Jim Harrison That what is going on here is about moral posturing and cultural politics is obvious Again your are saying your views are obviously correct and others are wrong. I don’t disagree with the idea nor act of birth control, but would you force those who do to pay for economical birth control universally available. If you limit the universality to the UK (you can get them free from social workers, pregnancy advice centres etc and condoms 3 for 2 pounds from a vending machine in a pub) there they are universally available and cheap. Hasn’t help a lot. The free ones are paid out of general taxation, no choice for those who don’t agree with the practice. There are ethical issues here (not if murder is incorrect or not, we likely agree that it is). But what ethics best serve the greatest number of people with the least distress to those who disagree (democacy, in a stable society, isn’t winner take all and stuff the losers) and enhance societies survival. Dr Wilkins mentions responsible medicine and psycology, but I guess he doesn’t include medical practioners or psycologists who disagree with his view as being responsible. We are stuck at definitions, what is ethical what is responsible and why should you let my view prevail over yours or vis-a-versa.
Come now, you make some good points here but you are overreaching. I agree that person-hood isn’t all-or-nothing, and I agree that this is because biological things are poorly bounded, i.e. during development something gradually changes from a single cell with no huge objective moral significance into a person with objective moral significance. But on that very logic, you can’t just blithely say that all fetuses of whatever age are just “tissue”, and that there is “no moral crisis” anywhere anytime in the decision to abort. Something that is part-way towards being a person has some moral significance. It has more and more the closer it gets. We can’t got around saying that killing a 1-day old baby is murder, but killing that baby 2 days previously in the womb has no significance whatsoever. And such questions clearly are matters of public policy, i.e. for the same reasons murder is. It’s a messy, gradual, slippery slope, which is why the question is so tough. Probably the best we can do is our de facto policy in the US, i.e. early abortions should be legal and safe, but policies, education, contraception, etc. should be encouraged which reduce their frequency. Late-term abortions, i.e. after the fetus is viable outside the womb, should be prohibited except in exceptional cases like health of the mother. It is tough enough defending this common-sense position in a conservative country without pro-choice folks taking extreme, blaming all anti-abortion feeling on fundamentalist attempts to control sexuality, etc…
It is about controlling sexual activity and about controlling women. It is not a coincidence that those cultures and subcultures that are most anti-choice are also more likely to see women as second-class citizens, less fully human, or at least restrict access to equality in some measure (no women priests, etc.). Chris’ Wills, would you rather your tax dollars pay for cheap contraception or for welfare support for unplanned, unwanted children? Or for the disposal of the bodies of those children who are born, but discarded to die or murdered? You cannot wish these things away. Everyone’s tax dollars pay for things they despise. Do something reasonable and meaningful to change things if you really, really hate it.
I’m not morally upset about abortion at all. I’m just saying that if you are unhappy about abortion, it’s irrational to embrace policies and laws that do not reduce the number of abortions. No institution on earth has caused more abortions than the Roman Catholic church.
I think the old notion was that a child was not fully human until they developed language and the ability to speak as the standard classical definition of man became so centred on the notion of language and reason being god given. One needed language to reason and to engage with god. Without such we were “mutum et turpe pecus” Dumb and discraced by sin. Although the words carry the secondry sense of decended from the lower orders, shapless, unsightly The philosopher James Burnett thought this old classical discription of mans origin represented the whole of human history as though in minature. I suspect he may have been correct. It would appear the churches attitude has shifted somewhat since James Burnett gave language a history that was not dependant on god. The church was certainly not very happy with the notion at the time or the fact that Burnet suggested babies and feral children were not monsters. Strange how things change when you find it usefull to shift position for political reasons.
I see the problem is that everyone is in the Church or potentially in the Church according to those who think their morals should be the basis of secular laws; and that is why it is a pipedream to think that there can be a separation. Of course, that doesn’t mean that I won’t continue separating church and state, just stating what I see to be the problem.
Then you disenfranchise a vast swathe of people. The vast majority of people claim allegiance to one religion or another and this affects their worldview, just as your beliefs affect your worldview. I get so tired of people who hide behind vague and ambiguous terminology in order to promote something that they don’t want to be perceived as promoting. “Affect your worldview”? What the hell does that mean? The issue is whether religious justifications are appropriate for public policy. A secularist says No, public policy should be based on cogent secular justifications, not religion. A religious person can easily be a secularist. When arguing for public policy, they provide secular reasons for the policy. There. Simple as that. Whether religion “affects their worldview” is irrelevant.
Zek able makes the point very well, that there are secular reasons to be concerned about abortion, not just religious ones. Wes: “The issue is whether religious justifications are appropriate for public policy. A secularist says No, public policy should be based on cogent secular justifications, not religion.” You and I agree that that should be the case. But plenty of religious people (including politicians) disagree, and in a democracy they get to express their religious justifications and vote in accordance with them. So ignore them at your peril.
Religious people get to express their opinions and vote for them, but that doesn’t make majority imposition right. Even if only one person fails to be a member of a majority religion, that religion has no right to impose its values and mores upon them. Suppose we substitute “Catholic” for the majority, and “Jew” for the minority and prevent the Jew, whose religion permits a quite civilised form of divorce from being able to divorce at all, because the Catholic majority thinks it is an offence against God?
I couldn’t agree with you more, John. But some of the replies demonstrate why it’s necessary to attack religion directly, and not just argue for secularism. As a political reality, we need to do both. Too many religionists will never give serious commitment to secularism. We have to keep hammering the point that religious claims are highly controversial and that there are, indeed, powerful arguments against them. Secularism will only work, in practice, for as long as the moral authority of religion is widely considered problematic.
A religious person can easily be a secularist. When arguing for public policy, they provide secular reasons for the policy. There. Simple as that. Whether religion “affects their worldview” is irrelevant. A few years ago when same-sex marriage was an issue in Canada, some RC bishop (I think it was Arch-jackass Fred Henry of Calgary) said that Catholic MPs should vote against any attempt to legally recognize it. Our then-PM Paul Martin, a Catholic (and not a theocon like our current bunch), told him politely to stuff it — he had to govern for all Canadians, not just Catholic ones. That’s secularism, from a religious politician. I’ve also seen a quote from Obama outlining the same position: believe whatever your god says, but if you want to enact it in the public sphere, you must find a rationale that universalizes those values, so that those not of your faith can also embrace them.
There is still a moral issue here, that even non-religious people need to deal with. I think aborting a fetus is much more like euthanizing an animal than it is like having an appendectomy.
@Susan Silberstein Well, my tax pounds do pay for free contraceptives, available on the NHS, and I have no objection to that, as I think I mentioned. That doesn’t automatically make me pro-abortion. Just pragmatic. The question is, as far as I can see, fairly simple. Whose rights are paramount and when does a fetus become classed as a human with all the protections that normally entails. It is odd that the christian churches have become so hung up on this issue. Up until the 13th century in England the church didn’t condemn abortions until quickening (fairly late on in many pregnancies).
@Wes Replace worldview with belief or pre-suppositions, if you prefer. Your disdain for my verbiage is noted and ignored. Not my fault you haven’t access to a reference book, such as a dictionary. On what is appropriate in politics; you feel free to disdain a religious view but, I suspect, would not consider your own views or those you agree with in a similar light. But your views are as bound up in basic beliefs learnt since childhood as to what is right and wrong as anyone elses. You may choose to claim them to be rational and secular, but aren’t they based on unprovable beliefs as well?
I think aborting a fetus is much more like euthanizing an animal than it is like having an appendectomy. Then treat it as such in your personal moral scheme. I don’t think that at all, and so for most abortions I think the only harm to consider is that of the mother. The law should not inflict upon me and those who think like me the values of a majority religion, in a democratic society.
Chris Wills: “But your views are as bound up in basic beliefs learnt since childhood as to what is right and wrong as anyone elses.” Our most basic moral values cannot be rationally justified, but we can argue rationally from those basic values to more specific moral positions. It’s one thing to argue rationally from one’s basic moral values to some sort of anti-abortion position. It’s another to get an anti-abortion position from the alleged words of an alleged god.
Snowflake: “Religious people get to express their opinions and vote for them, but that doesn’t make majority imposition right.” Majority imposition is essentially what democracy is about. We may wish that voters and politicians would make their decisions on a rational (non-religious) basis as far as possible, and do our best to influence them that way. But nothing requires them to do so except their inclinations. “Even if only one person fails to be a member of a majority religion, that religion has no right to impose its values and mores upon them.” Again, you and I agree that rights should be based as far as possible on rational thinking, and not on irrational religious beliefs. But there is nothing that requires that to be the case except our inclinations. Rights are a human contruction, not objective truths.
Of course rights are human constructions. And under the construction that represents the best of our present social values – the democratic ideal and rule of law – nobody has the right to impose their private values upon others.
@Snowflake: My point is that simply declaring that certain values are “best” begs the question of how to decide which values those are. As for democracy and the rule of law, if you support those then you presumably do think that the majority has the right to impose its values on a minority. That’s what democracy does. For example, you probably approve of the majority, who think sex with children is wrong, imposing that view on the minority who think it’s OK. You seem to want to make a distinction between “private” values and other values, but I don’t see what such a distinction could mean. The only relevant distinction I can see is the one I mentioned above, between values which are rationally derived from more basic values and those which are derived in some non-rational way.