Abortion and Slavery: The Same Old Arguments

In an article on Slate, pro-choicer Mary Elizabeth Williams argues that the unborn are living human beings:

I know women who have been relieved at their abortions and grieved over their miscarriages. Why can’t we agree that how they felt about their pregnancies was vastly different, but that it’s pretty silly to pretend that what was growing inside of them wasn’t the same? Fetuses aren’t selective like that. They don’t qualify as human life only if they’re intended to be born.

When we try to act like a pregnancy doesn’t involve human life, we wind up drawing stupid semantic lines in the sand: first trimester abortion vs. second trimester vs. late term, dancing around the issue trying to decide if there’s a single magic moment when a fetus becomes a person. Are you human only when you’re born? Only when you’re viable outside of the womb? Are you less of a human life when you look like a tadpole than when you can suck on your thumb?

But then she says, “So what?”

Here’s the complicated reality in which we live: All life is not equal. That’s a difficult thing for liberals like me to talk about, lest we wind up looking like death-panel-loving, kill-your-grandma-and-your-precious-baby storm troopers. Yet a fetus can be a human life without having the same rights as the woman in whose body it resides. She’s the boss. Her life and what is right for her circumstances and her health should automatically trump the rights of the non-autonomous entity inside of her. Always.

Yesterday I wrote about how our worldview affects our view of human beings, which affects the way we treat human beings. For Williams, the live, unborn human being is, as she says, “a life worth sacrificing”—worth sacrificing if “the boss” wants to get rid of him for the sake of the life she would rather have.

How is this complete power of one human being over another not slavery? For Williams, this isn’t a problem, because in her view, “all life is not equal.” She’s bought the idea of instrumental human value—that is, the idea that human beings are on a scale of worth, according to their characteristics and abilities. And apparently, if you’re higher up on that scale, then your desires trump the natural rights of someone who is lower.

Abraham Lincoln commented on the absurdity and danger of citing instrumental value to justify the use of power to impose one’s will on other human beings (thanks to Scott Klusendorf for pointing to this):

You say A. is white, and B. is black. It is color, then; the lighter, having the right to enslave the darker? Take care. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet, with a fairer skin than your own.

You do not mean color exactly? You mean the whites are intellectually the superiors of the blacks, and, therefore have the right to enslave them? Take care again. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet, with an intellect superior to your own.

But, say you, it is a question of interest; and, if you can make it your interest; you have the right to enslave another. Very well. And if he can make it his interest, he has the right to enslave you.

The arguments for slavery were the same as the arguments now for abortion: Human beings are only instrumentally valuable. Some people are worth less than others because they lack particular qualities that I have. Therefore, my desires trump their rights.

The arguments against slavery were the same as the arguments now against abortion: All human beings are intrinsically valuable and have equal natural rights, regardless of their characteristics.

The arguments are the same then and now because the two options presenting themselves to us haven’t changed and won’t ever change. Slavery and abortion aren’t just random, unconnected controversial issues, they’re rooted in our view of human beings, and they illustrate the two possible directions in which our country can go as we move forward. Will we embrace intrinsic human value or instrumental human value?

Whatever we decide as a nation, don’t think for a moment that the principle we settle on will only be applied to abortion.

Comments

[Carolyn]

Spot on, to the point, and so very true--a great piece, Amy.

[Darth Dutch]

Great article. Can't wait to see what the pro-choice readers on the site who promote abortion say about this.

Darth Dutch

[ArthurK]

Either all humans are equal, or they are not all equal.

If they are not all equal, why is birth state the only criteria? Other cultures have had other criteria. Why not have economics?

Depending on how you define slavery, it hasn't gone away, and may be rising.

[Louis Kuhelj]

In this whole abortion debate I find the term "unintended pregnancy" particularly interesting. It is like a overweight person saying that they are a victim of unintended digestion. But as Al Roker recently stated on an interview on NPR he was clearly the one responsible for his weight problems. It wasn't a matter of his stuffing his mouth with food and then the unintended digestion, the prevention for which he was not provided a physician and a stomach pump, that victimized him. Yet this phrase is used to justify the assertion that women are victims at the hands of others when they act to initiate a human life that resides in them due to a pregnancy. To me it seems to be just another form of blame shifting instead of accepting the responsibility for one's actions. Why is it that we are willing to admit in the case of overeating that it is our responsibility what we put into our bodies, but when it comes to pregnancy, what we put into our bodies suddenly is no longer our responsibility? It boggles the mind.

[Mike in Mpls]

"The Boss/mother" as it were, has already been born, lived life, formed connections with other humans.

There are degrees of tragedy...

If it was your daughter, and you had to choose would you rather:
1. Lose her in death in a late-term miscarraige or still birth, where you never get to meet her, interact her with her, know her heart, have great stories about her?

Or 2. Have her die later as 12-year-old after 1st knowing all the great things about her, and then losing all those things?

Likewise, if you knew your wife and love of your life was going to die or in severe jeopardy of dying unless you end her pregnancy, would you honestly value that potential for life in her womb equally to your wife's life?

[Amy]

Mike, this isn't a matter of making a decision about whether or not it's okay to kill someone based on the relative pain it will cause to others. Imagine an orphan girl that nobody cares about. Is it less wrong to kill her than somebody who has friends? Or is the offense of killing either one of them an equally wrong offense against the person killed?

Likewise, the reason why we say it's okay for a mother to have an abortion when her life is in danger (and we do) isn't because more people happen to care about the mother. Rather, in the case of literal life vs. literal life, the objective moral claims of the mother and child to live are equal, and so the mother is justified in doing what is necessary to save her life, if she so chooses (and in fact, usually in a case where her life is in danger, the child can't be saved, even if the mother wanted to give her life for her child, because if the mother dies, the child dies).

In your illustration, you ask which life we would subjectively value more, but again, that's not the question. A human being is objectively valuable and has a right to life regardless of whether or not we personally know him--even whether or not anyone personally knows him. Just because we don't know a person, that doesn't make it okay to kill him.

[the janitor]

Mike,

As for your dilemma: Better to have loved and lost than never loved at
all. So 2. And I speak not just from a maxim, but from personal
experience of having raised my nephew who is now 9 (and his mother
considered abortion).

As for your likewise: it isn't "potential for life" but actual life in
the pro-life view.and yes I would value it equally and add that
parents have a duty to put the loved of their children above their
own. What kind of scumbag would, if a gun was put to his head say
"please kill my two month old, not me! I've formed

[John M]

I have to say, I was completely apalled by Williams' words. It never ceases to amaze me how selfish we humans have the ability to be. Is this the new way that pro-choicers are going to base their argument on? They are going to concede that the fetus is a human being, yet the woman's rights to her body supercede the fetus' right to life?

I'm pretty sure that the Constitution would disagree with that assessment.

[John M]

Mike,

The "would you rather" scenarios aren't really the issue here; and they don't prove anything either. All it proves is that you can come up with different scenarios that would steer people to agree with your viewpoint. The bigger issue here the value of life. Williams is essentially being a bully here with her thinking. Since she's the bigger person in stature, she feels she can do what she pleases.

[John Shipp]

Amy, thank you for maintaining the high level of snyaptic connectivity necessary to engage this debate in terms that bring clarity where pro-abortionists have been blurring the lines for decades. The need for objective acuity has never been greater, and your writing opens dimensions of thought that must be grappled with by all.