{"id":41039,"date":"2020-11-02T21:36:44","date_gmt":"2020-11-03T02:36:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=41039"},"modified":"2020-11-02T21:36:44","modified_gmt":"2020-11-03T02:36:44","slug":"the-abortion-status-quo-is-untenable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2020\/11\/the-abortion-status-quo-is-untenable\/","title":{"rendered":"The Abortion Status Quo is Untenable"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I appreciated the tone and intent of <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/bycommonconsent.com\/2020\/10\/24\/the-other-side-a-defense-of-the-pro-choice-position\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Michael Austin&#8217;s By Common Consent post<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> responding to <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/publicsquaremag.org\/editorials\/a-latter-day-saint-defense-of-the-unborn\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Terryl Givens&#8217; post at Public Square<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. He correctly identifies the question of abortion as one of competing rights: the right of the unborn human being to life set against the right of the mother to preserve her bodily integrity, but he makes two crucial mistakes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">First, he is too hasty in his application of the organ donation argument to abortion. According to that argument, since we do not require anyone to donate blood or organs to someone in need, surely we cannot require a pregnant mother to donate her body, either. Although this line of reasoning has strong intuitive appeal at first glance, the appeal vanishes if we probe a little deeper. Consider two scenarios (neither of which is an analogy for pregnancy or abortion; we&#8217;ll get to that later):<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Alice has a rare genetic condition. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Because of this, Alice needs a kidney transplant. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Bob is the only potential donor. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If he refuses, then Alice dies.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><\/p>\n<p><\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Bob steals Alice&#8217;s kidneys and sells them on the black market. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Because of this, Alice needs a kidney transplant. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Bob is the only potential donor. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If he refuses, then Alice dies.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Now, I agree with Michael that the state cannot compel Bob to donate his kidney. In either case, he has the inviolable right to refuse to donate his organs. That doesn&#8217;t change the reality that, in the second case, if he refuses to donate the kidney and Alice dies, he will be guilty of her murder. Whereas if he agrees to donate the kidney and Alice lives, he will remain guilty of organ theft (and probably assault and kidnapping, etc.) but <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">not<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> murder.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The deeper flaw in Michael&#8217;s argument that&#8217;s revealed here is the attempt to change the topic from whether <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">abortion should be illegal<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> to whether <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">pregnancy should be compulsory<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. Like many on the pro-choice side, Michael sees the two as equivalent. As this example shows, they aren&#8217;t.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The second mistake Michael makes is dismissing the difference between actively killing someone and passively allowing them to die. Michael admits that in most cases this distinction is valid. I presume he&#8217;d agree with me (and most people) that if someone is starving to death and you have the right to withhold food (which means they will certainly die), that <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">doesn&#8217;t<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> mean you can shoot them in the head and it <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">certainly <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">doesn&#8217;t mean you can torture them to death.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This ordinary distinction doesn&#8217;t apply in the case of abortion, Michael argues, because &#8220;there is no practical difference between actively ending a pregnancy and simply removing the mother\u2019s support.&#8221;\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But this is a failure to grapple with the central issues that Michael told us were at stake: the bodily integrity of the woman <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">and the life of her child<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. Human beings have rights, not pregnancies, and so framing the distinction as between &#8220;actively ending a pregnancy&#8221; (rather than a human life) and &#8220;removing the mother&#8217;s support&#8221; misses out on addressing the competing rights Michael agrees are central.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The results of this bait-and-switch are by no means purely academic. Most of Michael&#8217;s argument is a minor update to Judith Jarvis Thomson&#8217;s seminal 1971 paper, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/A_Defense_of_Abortion\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A Defense of Abortion<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. In it, Judith pioneered most of the logic Michael uses, but at the end she remained clear-eyed about precisely what her argument entailed, concluding: &#8220;while I am arguing for the permissibility of abortion in some cases, I am not arguing for the right to secure the <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">death of the unborn child<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.&#8221; (emphasis added)<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Michael assumes that &#8220;nobody seriously believes that, if it were possible to detach a fetus from a woman\u2019s body and allow it to die of natural causes, the issue of abortion would simply go away.&#8221; Well, no, the whole issue you wouldn&#8217;t go away, but that straw-man exaggeration is a long away from the reality that <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">the methods of abortion matter<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When performing an abortion on a fetus that is viable, inducing premature labor or surgically removing the fetus intact and allowing it at least a <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">chance <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">at life is not the same thing as deliberately killing him or her prior to birth. When conducting surgery on fetuses 21 weeks or older, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencedaily.com\/releases\/2018\/03\/180316111413.htm\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">researchers advise the use of anesthesia<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. Therefore, manually dismembering a 21 week fetus <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">without<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> anesthesia (as is standard practice) is not the same thing as providing at least that barest, smallest sliver of humane mercy in the unborn child&#8217;s final moments.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And yes, even when it comes to earlier abortions, the ability to remove a fetus without deliberate injury&#8211;even if they cannot survive for long&#8211;is a fundamentally different <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">kind<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> of action than deliberately killing them. It&#8217;s the same difference as refusing to feed a starving person versus stabbing them in the heart. If we really cannot tell the difference, then we are truly past feeling.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Here are the general principles that remain standing between Michael&#8217;s starting point and his desired pro-choice position.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>First, active killing is never automatically justified.<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> The main reason that abortions often rely on dismembering fetuses or crushing their skulls is because smaller parts are easier to extract than an intact body. As a result, these methods of active killing can be safer for the mother. As such, they may be warranted in some circumstances, but this is not automatic. Michael assumes the difference doesn&#8217;t even exist. It does, and that means that a kind of blanket any-means-at-all approach to abortion is presumed rather than defended.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Second, invoking a right to withdraw support doesn&#8217;t work if you are responsible for the need for that support in the first place. <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We saw this general principle at work with the example of Bob and Alice; even though compelled organ donation is off the table, he&#8217;s still culpable for Alice&#8217;s death in the case where he took her kidneys to begin with.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Of course stealing someone&#8217;s kidneys is intrinsically wrong and harmful. Having sex (and possibly creating a new human being) is not. But the crucial link between Bob and Alice does not depend on the immorality or illegality of organ theft. It only depends on his <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">responsibility for Alice&#8217;s predicament<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Imagine inviting a little child to jump into the deep end of a pool with you. Or tossing a toddler into the air to make them laugh. These are harmless, everyday activities, but&#8211;purely by placing that child into a state where they depend on your you&#8211;a duty is created. Even if we assume for the sake of argument that there is no <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">general<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> duty to save a drowning child or catch a falling toddler, you absolutely would be held culpable for the death or injury to those <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">particular<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> children if you passively allowed them to drown or fall.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Take a moment to note that elective abortions violate <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">both<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> of these principles. Biological parents have a particular responsibility for a child created through consensual sex, but even if this first point falls, there would <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">still<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> be the fact that we could only permit a <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">passive<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> withdrawal of support, not the active killing typical of abortion methods.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Some might protest that attempting to avoid pregnancy by using contraception nullifies this responsibility, but that isn&#8217;t how responsibility works. We don&#8217;t get to pick and choose what we&#8217;d like to be responsible for based on what we wish had happened. As long as a new human being is created as a <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">foreseeable<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> consequence of the <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">voluntary<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> actions of a mother and father, the responsibility holds.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Some might also protest that it&#8217;s unfair that&#8211;although theoretically the responsibility adheres to mothers and fathers&#8211;only mothers are actually <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">biologically <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">on the hook during pregnancy. This is true; it absolutely is unfair. This unfairness incurs an obligation on all of us&#8211;as a society&#8211;to protect, support, and assist mothers facing unplanned pregnancies. But it does not obviate the responsibility parents have to their children to the extent that it allows elective abortions, especially via methods of active killing.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Finally, some might protest that there are exceptions in the case of rape, or a threat to the life of the mother, or critical medical problems with the unborn child. That is correct. It is a feature, not a bug. If the pregnancy results from a rape, for example, then the mother is <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">not<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> responsible in the way I&#8217;ve outlined above. This makes an abortion potentially permissible, but not automatically so (see: active killing). This is a very good fit for the Church&#8217;s position, and we can follow similar logic for the other exceptional cases.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>I have a final observation to make.\u00a0<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Abortion is indeed a very complex issue, especially when we consider the hardest and most fraught cases. Abortion is also a very serious issue, involving two of the most fundamental human rights: the right to bodily integrity and the right to life. Deciding on a perfect abortion policy is difficult and fraught, with many considerations to be balanced.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>But not <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">every facet of the issue is complicated, and the least complex is the facet pertaining to elective abortions <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">especially<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> later in pregnancy. In those cases, which are generally legal at present, which make up the vast majority of abortions (elective ones, not late-term ones), and which were the target of Terryl&#8217;s piece, the complexity that Michael finds is an artifact of his own tangled arguments and not the issue itself. Unfortunately, complex arguments don&#8217;t need to be correct in order to be effective. To the extent that an incorrect argument dulls and deflects, it succeeds in protecting the status quo. <\/span><\/p>\n<p>That is why Terryl began his essay with the observation that &#8220;the intellect disconnected from the heart is just an organ for winning arguments.&#8221; Even as we are mindful of the high stakes and complexity of the debate, <span style=\"letter-spacing: 0.05em;\">we should surely be able to <\/span><em style=\"letter-spacing: 0.05em;\">start<\/em><span style=\"letter-spacing: 0.05em;\"> by ruling out elective, late-term abortions. It&#8217;s hard to see how anyone who approaches this issue with open heart, open eyes, and open mind could seriously countenance defending this practice.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I appreciated the tone and intent of Michael Austin&#8217;s By Common Consent post responding to Terryl Givens&#8217; post at Public Square. He correctly identifies the question of abortion as one of competing rights: the right of the unborn human being to life set against the right of the mother to preserve her bodily integrity, but he makes two crucial mistakes. First, he is too hasty in his application of the organ donation argument to abortion. According to that argument, since we do not require anyone to donate blood or organs to someone in need, surely we cannot require a pregnant mother to donate her body, either. Although this line of reasoning has strong intuitive appeal at first glance, the appeal vanishes if we probe a little deeper. Consider two scenarios (neither of which is an analogy for pregnancy or abortion; we&#8217;ll get to that later): Alice has a rare genetic condition. Because of this, Alice needs a kidney transplant. Bob is the only potential donor. If he refuses, then Alice dies. Bob steals Alice&#8217;s kidneys and sells them on the black market. Because of this, Alice needs a kidney transplant. Bob is the only potential donor. If he refuses, then [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1156,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41039","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-politics"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41039","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1156"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41039"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41039\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41041,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41039\/revisions\/41041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}