Do religious people have any authority to speak on abortion in culture? Garry Wills said "No" in his religious editorial in the LA Times (entitled "Abortion Is Not a Religious Issue.") yesterday.
It's clear from his article that he not only means to put religious people on the same plane as anyone else speaking to the issue. He wants to convince us that religious people have less authority than individual women deciding about abortion.
I'm not interested in contradicting his claim about religion, as it relates to this discussion. I don't think religious people, insofar as they are religious, necessarily have more authority to speak to the abortion issue than anyone else. Religious ideas may provide grounding for one's beliefs about abortion just as they may provide grounding for one's beliefs about genocide in the Darfur or sex slavery in Cambodia. But religious ideas may lead us in the wrong direction on abortion too. We have to look at the specific ideas in question. And we can discuss these things without reference to religion. I certainly wouldn't expect Wills to take my arguments more seriously simply because I am religious.
How does Wills defend the idea that individual women deciding about abortion have more authority to speak to the abortion issue than anyone else?
First, he points to pro-life advocates who are inconsistent in applying their anti-abortion views. Here, he fails to distinguish between inconsistent believers in a position and a contradictory position. There is no contradiction in the pro-life position, at least not in the position as I take it to be. But yes, there are believers in the position who are also religious and inconsistent. But to show the position itself is false, Wills will have to show the position itself has some internal flaw or inconsistency. Plus, there are plenty of women deciding about abortion who act inconsistently too. Pointing to the person's inconsistent behavior (ad hominem) won't help us determine who has authority to speak. A person's arguments give her authority to speak, as we shall see in a moment.
Second, Wills talks a lot about biology. Here again, he fails to make an important distinction. He likens the embryo to hair that is cut and semen that is collected. Sperm, egg, hair, embryo, fetus: all are taken to be the same kind of thing. But the pro-life position doesn't claim rights for hair or semen or sperm or egg, which are parts of human organisms. The pro-life position claims rights for human organisms themselves.
Biologically speaking, the embryo is as much an organism as you and I, or a tree, or a bird. The embryo, from the time of fertilization, is developing itself through the stages of human development. It needs only nutrition and a proper environment to continue to send itself on its determinate trajectory. Gasp! Those are the same things you and I need to exist. So, if we are organisms now, we were also organisms then. Wills confuses parts and wholes, and misleads his audience.
He would have done better to start his article on paragraph 15:
The question is not whether the fetus is human life but whether it is a human person, and when it becomes one. Is it when it is capable of thought, of speech, of recognizing itself as a person, or of assuming the responsibilities of a person? Is it when it has a functioning brain? Aquinas said that the fetus did not become a person until God infused the intellectual soul. A functioning brain is not present in the fetus until the end of the sixth month at the earliest.
Although I disagree with the way Wills characterizes the fundamental debate ("person" is a term that has been used throughout history to disqualify humans...we tread on dangerous waters to use it), he is right that the fundamental debate is really, Who counts as a member of the human community? He gives a few functional reasons that the unborn (before viability) don't count. For each reason, though, we can ask, "Why should we take that reason as sufficient to justify killing a biological human being?"
That is a question worth asking...and one Wills must answer. But Wills destroys any productive discussion he might have started when he says,
Given these uncertainties, who is to make the individual decision to have an abortion? Religious leaders? They have no special authority in the matter, which is not subject to theological norms or guidance. The state? Its authority is given by the people it represents, and the people are divided on this. Doctors? They too differ. The woman is the one closest to the decision. Under Roe vs. Wade, no woman is forced to have an abortion. But those who have decided to have one are able to.
In other words, Wills's opinion is irrelevant. And so is mine and yours. Whether or not any of us has good reasons. Why? Because who is a person and who isn't should be decided by the woman carrying the unborn. But the question of who is or isn't a person (or a member of the human community or however you want to characterize it) -- that's a metaphysical or philosophical question. And what special qualification does the woman have?
When Wills leaves the decision of who is a member of the human community to the minds of individual women, he begs the question. He must assume the unborn is not a person to leave the decision of who is a person in the hands of individual women, simply because they are closest to the unborn. One woman can say that the unborn is a person, another can say that the unborn isn't. The only way that makes sense is if the unborn can't possibly be persons. If Wills was even open to the possibility that the unborn are members of the human community, he would treat the question as one that is at least possibly objective, one on which women might be wrong, and one that matters enough to debate for more than a few paragraphs.
No, Wills gives a few flimsy functional definitions of persons, picked out of the air and undefended. Then he dismisses the whole discussion as irrelevant -- after all, individual women can imbue the unborn with the value of adults or with the value of dung, and their reasons aren't the key factor making their determination accurate. It's simply the fact that they made the determination that makes it true.
I take a different tact: if adults deserve equal treatment, then there must be something truly the same about them. As it turns out, there is only one thing we all share: we all have a human nature that demands we be treated equally, that we be taken seriously. But we have our nature from the moment we begin to exist, which means we had that same human nature as toddlers, infants, embryos, and zygotes. That's why we should treat the embryo as a member of the human community -- because she is the same sort of thing you and I are.
Thank you for posting your comments on this article Steve. I agree that "religious people" as seen as a homogeneous group have no special status as far as abortion arguments go. (Although the case could be made that, as per the moral argument, if God does not exist then there are no moral absolutes, and therefore ... etc)
It sounds like Wills' argument boils down to "Who's to say?" Here's what Greg has to say [grins] about this: 'The answer to the question "Who's to say?" is "We are the ones to say. We are to look at the evidence, weigh it and draw reasonable conclusions based on what we know, not on what we don't know."'
http://www.str.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5649
As a second free plug for STR (I won the Frapper free book recently so it's payback time!) I wholeheartedly recommend Scott Klusendorf's short book "Pro-Life 101", $7 at STR's store, it's a short & easy read but extremely well written and well worth the price. Re the "we don't know when life begins" objection, besides being a false claim, even if this claim were true, says Klusendorf: "If no one knows when life begins, we should not kill the unborn because we may be taking human life."
Posted by: emmzee | November 05, 2007 at 11:30 AM
Who is to decide?
God is to decide, that's who.
What I say about abortion (or many other matters) is irrelevant. But if I tell you what God has to say about it that is a different thing altogether.
Of course, there are those who deny that God gets a vote, or that there is a God to vote. The arguments listed in the original post might be valuable in discussing abortion with these people.
But among people who believe in God, the debate should be framed in these terms: What does God say?
Posted by: Scott | November 05, 2007 at 12:07 PM
You gotta love the fact that this character uses "religeous" philosophers to bolster his point at the same time he denies religeous input that harms his case. Aquinas is a heavyweight, not to be dismissed quickly, but that isn't the point. The point is that Willis thinks nothing of having his cake and eating it too by using a religeous authority while denying religeous authority.
What's up with that?
Brad
Posted by: Brad B | November 05, 2007 at 06:01 PM
"I take a different tact: if adults deserve equal treatment, then there must be something truly the same about them. As it turns out, there is only one thing we all share: we all have a human nature that demands we be treated equally, that we be taken seriously. But we have our nature from the moment we begin to exist, which means we had that same human nature as toddlers, infants, embryos, and zygotes."
Then all abortions are either first degree murder, second degree murder or voluntary manslaughter.
Question: Abortion is now a capital crime (as it should be, as the Due Process and Equal Protection provisions of the Constitution now apply from conception). Abortion is still legal in countries like Canada and the U.K. If I left the country with a child and returned alone, at some point questions will be asked. If the fertilized egg is entitled to SP and DP then shouldn't all females of child bearing age be required to take a pregnancy test on leaving and entering the country? For that matter shouldn't all FoCBA be required to take a monthly pregnancy test? Seems reasonable to me. How serious are you all about protecting the unborn?
As our friend Doug reminded us in a below thread, socialism and Communism have beautiful ideals and are a bad dream in the case of the former and a nightmare in the case of the latter when actually implemented.
Once we get into actually creating laws and policy, where does all this go? How do you write an abortion law that isn't either class based or totalitarian? All I see from you all are beautiful words - just like we get from our Communist and socialist friends.
Posted by: alan aronson | November 06, 2007 at 08:56 AM
"If the fertilized egg is entitled to SP and DP then shouldn't all females of child bearing age be required to take a pregnancy test on leaving and entering the country? For that matter shouldn't all FoCBA be required to take a monthly pregnancy test? Seems reasonable to me. How serious are you all about protecting the unborn?"
Alan, you are missing the fundamental point - if the fetus is a human being, then abortion is illegal. No, you don't have to have a pregnancy test for each fertile woman entering/leaving the country. Just as you don't check if each parent came back with their children or decided to kill them enroute to help with financial burdens. If the US bans abortion, I'll take that happily knowing that some women will still go abroad to have their children dismembered and their heads crushed. If the ban in the US saves 90% of embryos, I'll take that.
Posted by: karthik | November 06, 2007 at 10:02 AM
"Alan, you are missing the fundamental point - if the fetus is a human being, then abortion is illegal."
Hi Karthik, actually that was my point as covering humans from conception on under the Due Process and Equal Protection clauses of the Constitution would clearly remove abortion as a separate crime, the unborn then being covered under the murder statutes.
"Just as you don't check if each parent came back with their children..."
That is only because that doesn't seem to happen all that much. If, in fact, that happened, there would, at some point, be some questions asked. Also, if this became a problem, we can be sure that ICE would start keeping track of how many in a family left and how many came back.
This wouldn't be our call, of course. Born children are fairly obvious things. The unborn aren't, yet they would be entitled to Equal Protection under our laws. If there is a means whereby the presence of a person needing protection may be made known, and there is a reasonable likelihood that that person remaining unknown puts his life in danger, that person has a right to have those means utilized in order to effect his protection. The courts would ultimately decide the issue.
Posted by: alan aronson | November 06, 2007 at 01:48 PM
As a Catholic I must note that Gary Wills has been and continues to be an embarrassment to the Catholic faith and Christianity in general. He is a wolf in sheep's clothing, a man who claims the faith as his own while simultaneously watering it down with heresies, falsehoods, and relativistic nonsense that does nothing but injure the mission of the Church on earth and the salvation of souls. He is in need of our prayers.
Posted by: Brendan | November 06, 2007 at 02:14 PM