Mirror of Justice

Response to Cathy (via Rick)

Assuming that a university bases its exclusion of pro-life groups on an overtly moral position, rather than on moral neutrality, Cathy asks "Is there anything that can be said to that?"

Well, yes, much could be said. The whole natural law tradition could be said, for example.

The elimination of moral neutrality in favor of substantive claims regarding the good leaves "nothing to be said" only if we adopt the notion that claims about human good are not debatable.

But since just such a vacuum might follow from a secular university's abandonment of neutrality, we ought to be quite cautious in encouraging such a university to stake out a self-consciously substantive moral position. We might be eliminating our one last basis for dialogue with said institution.

Frank Beckwith is Homo Sapiens of the Year!

Inside the Vatican magazine has named Catholic convert philosopher Frank Beckwith as #1 among its 10 top folks of 2007. It's not often that a lover of wisdom gets ranked by anyone as the year's top homo sapiens.

Frank most recently had a pro-life book published by Cambridge University Press, entitled Defending Life, but there's lots more to his work and story. Go to www.insidethevatican.com and scroll down to "Francis Beckwith"; you'll love it. By the way, Frank has studied law at Washington University in St. Louis, just in case somebody thinks a mere philosopher doesn't merit MofJ mention. (Just kidding.)

More on Liturgy and Life

Tom -- Thanks very much for reminding me to cast a wider empirical net before reaching any conclusions on whether the seeming relationship between the sacred in liturgy (e.g. the Host) and and the sacred in morality (e.g. unborn life) is intrinsic or simply accidental in some Catholic circles. You rightly point to liturgically traditionalist Protestants (e.g. many Episcopalians) who are untraditional in morality, and to liturgically innovative Protestants (e.g. charismatics? Baptists?) who tend to be traditionalist in morality.

But I think that the categories of the great and the holy (as in the Orthodox name for Great and Holy Week) are not coterminous with the traditional or the grand or even the mysterious. Liturgy can be very "high" but merely aesthetic rather than holy. For example, I view choirs as potentially desanctifying, because one can just enjoy them as entertainment, precisely because of their beauty. By contrast, it's harder not to enter into words of adoration that one is oneself singing. By the same token, a seemingly "low" liturgy can be filled with a very reverential spirit. I'm thinking of hymns such as "How Great Thou Art" or "Our God is an Awesome God". Even if, in the lower traditions, God's great holiness is not transferred to any concrete element in church (e.g. host or altar), i would think such hymns to be excellent preperation for reverence toward the image and likeness of that great and awesome God that we find in human beings, including the unborn.

By the way, Jody Bottum and Robert Miller pick up on this discussion on the First Things blog for Jan. 11 & 12. See 

RE: Liturgy & Politics

Posted by Robert T. Miller on January 12, 2008, 1:46 PM

I agree, Jody, that there is an interesting and important connection between the division in the Church over liturgy and the division in the Church over moral issues, and that it’s no accident that those who support traditional morality also support the traditional liturgy while those who support moral innovations also support liturgical innovations....

Respect/Reverence: the link between liturgy and life

In the report linked below, John-Henry Westen finds it strange that there is a de facto connection between cultural and liturgical activists. It seems to me that the explanation for this (frequent, certainly not universal) connection lies in a common lack of perception for dignity or sacredness, and with it the loss of respect or reverence for life, on the one hand, and for the Host on the other. This absence of awareness of the great or holy is a result not just of becoming friendlier and more informal, but of the reduction of the whole world to the banal categories of "fact" and "value." This reduction endangers not only the unborn and the liturgy but any firm recognition of the human individiual, as I tried to show in my “The Priority of Respect: How our Common Humanity can Ground our Individual Dignity,” 44 International Philosophical Quarterly 165 (2004), available through http://www.valpo.edu/law/faculty/rstith/

Here is Westen's report:  "Although it may seem a little strange, there is a definite battle being waged within the Catholic Church. It is the same culture war being waged by secular moderns against those who uphold traditional morality, it is pro-life vs. pro-choice. But within the Catholic Church the same battle is fought along liturgical lines, and the publication in the Vatican newspaper of an article calling for Catholics to receive Holy Communion kneeling and on the tongue is telling..."

The full text of his story is available at:
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2008/jan/08010904.html

A belated response to Amy's May 23 posting

Amy Uelmen, as I understand her, makes the good point that at least some of the Catholic Democrats who signed the recent statement may be sincerely pro-life even if they remain also pro-choice. But in order to show such sincerity, I think two things would have to be in the statement that were not there in any strong form.

There would have to be, first of all, some sort of acknowledgement of the enormity of the evil we face. For example, I would believe someone to be solidly pro-life who said "Abortion is an act of almost unimaginable violence. A typical abortion tears a child piece by piece from his or her mother's womb. And that act is repeated over a million times in America each year. As long as we hold to the precedent set by the institutionalization of abortion, we cannot in principle or in practice well defend the lives of other dependent and vulnerable human beings. Nevertheless, we think that, at least for now, the best way to eliminate abortion is not to threaten women but to empower them, not to reduce their choices but to increase them. Most women do not really want abortion (at least once they truly understand what it is), but feel they have no other choice. We have to provide them not only with the truth about abortion but also with real alternatives, so that each can freely choose life." This is, by the way, is essentially what the German Constitutional Court has twice held: that the unborn child has a constitutional right to life throughout pregnency but the legislator may nevertheless leave early abortion unpunished because candid counseling and maternal empowerment may save more lives than penal threats .

The second crucial element of any truly pro-life position is that it be pro-child, not merely anti-abortion. Opposing (even hating) abortion by promoting more contraception to prevent unwanted pregnancies misses the fundamental point. The deep problem is callousness toward the unborn child. To propose contraception as a means to cut down on the numbers of abortions is like proposing a border fence to reduce the number of discriminatory acts against immigrants to the US. Even if contraception and fences do cut down on the number of wrongful acts,  they may at the same time heighten the hostility that leads to such acts. (In Germany the birth control pill has long been called the "anti-baby" pill.) A sincerely pro-life and also pro-choice position would do something (like funding ultrasound machines) to help mothers, and all of us, bond with and want to protect those babies who manage to slip through any barriers we put up. The Democratic stement in question does make an important move in this direction, by urging the facilitation of adoption, for example, but in the light of the overwhelming violence of abortion, much more concern for the child victim is needed.

Is there somthing about the culture of death that makes it especially deceptive?

We're all familiar with the re-definition of "embryo","conception", and "pregnancy" and to begin at implantation. Thus Plan B can't cause abortion and embryonic stem cell research can't kill embryos. Again, in Oregon I understand that suicide has been re-defined to not include assisted suicide.

I just looked at the new Mexico City law. It actually does not legalize abortion in the first 12 weeks. Rather, it simply defines "aborto" to include only "interruptions" (another odd word) of pregnancy after the first 12 weeks. ("Aborto es la interrupción del embarazo después de la décima segunda semana de gestación.")

So much for informed consent: "Don't worry, Senora. What we're doing here today is not an abortion."

What Amnesty International Doesn't Want You To Know (Yet)

The FIRST THINGS  blog ("On the Square") has a great story today by Ryan Anderson -- on Amnesty International's plans to spin and sell its just-adopted policy in favor of the complete decriminalization of abortion: http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/?p=719 

Reminder of Upcoming Conference

University Faculty for Life is a non-denominational, multi-disciplinary organization which welcomes the membership and participation of all pro-life faculty members in institutions of higher education. Its focus is on issues related to abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia. Many papers presented at its annual conferences are quite profound. And the guys who go are fun. It's one of my very favorite yearly events, one which I try never to miss. (Full disclosure: I'm on the Board, so I have to go.)

Its 2007 conference will be June 1-2 at Villanova University near Philadelphia, PA. Attendance is open to current or former members of college, university, and seminary faculty and their spouses, and to others by individual request.

The presentations will begin at 2:00pm the afternoon of Friday, June 1st. Registration is only $60, which includes a wine and cheese reception, continental breakfast, refreshments between sessions, lunch, and the concluding banquet on Saturday evening. Accommodation is available in guest apartments on Villanova’s campus. Registration form.

The plenary speakers at the conference will be Helen M. Alvare, Associate Professor of Law at Catholic University’s Columbus School of Law and David L. Schindler, Dean of the John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage & Family. There may still be time to submit your own papers. Check it out at http://www.uffl.org/conference.htm

Pretty accurate report (by an undergraduate Yale Daily News reporter) on my talk last Thursday (3/29) at Yale Law School.

Analogies can shed light on abortion debate

Peter Johnston , Tilting at Windmills, Tuesday, April 3, 2007

No one is pro-death. No one is anti-choice. Yet both sides of the abortion debate consider the other side absurd. Why?

The pro-choicer considers pregnancy the construction of a human person. Compare pregnancy, for a moment, to the construction of a car in a factory. The relevant question in the comparison is this: At what point in the construction process does the object under construction become a car? Some may say that it is when the object receives an engine. In the analogy to pregnancy, this parallels quickening. Others might say that the object becomes a car when it has an engine, axles and wheels, and the capacity to move. In the analogy to pregnancy, this parallels viability. And some may hold out and claim that the object isn’t really a car until it rolls out of the factory, paralleling birth.

But all who consider the question are certain that at the very beginning stages of construction, when only a few scraps of metal and a few bolts are in place, the object under construction is not a car. Similarly, if pregnancy is the construction of a human person, then at the early stages of pregnancy the embryo is clearly not a human person. The consequence for abortion policy: People disagree when a fetus becomes a person, but all agree that an embryo is not, so abortion is justified early in pregnancy and debatable only later on. From this point of view, pro-lifers seem irrational, for they try to legislate upon the absurd idea that an embryo is a person. And because the pro-life position is often expressed in religious terms, pro-lifers seem to consider an irrational religious dogma the basis for public policy.

The pro-lifer does not consider pregnancy the construction of a human person. Rather, he considers it the development of a human person. Compare pregnancy, for a moment, to the development of a Polaroid photograph. The camera clicks, setting off a chain reaction of chemicals on photographic paper. In the analogy to pregnancy, this parallels conception. If someone were to wipe the chemicals away, saying that the image was only a potential photograph, he would seem crazy; he cut short the development of a uniquely existing photograph with an essential nature. In the analogy to pregnancy, this parallels abortion.

At what point in the process does the developing image become a photograph? The image of the photograph is not immediately apparent, but is revealed and develops over time. All agree, then, that the undeveloped photograph is very dissimilar from the developed photograph. Nevertheless, the undeveloped photograph is still a photograph. Similarly, if pregnancy is the development of a human person, an embryo, though at an early stage of development, is still a human person. The consequence for abortion policy: After conception, abortion is unjustified because it cuts short the natural development of a human person. From this point of view, pro-choicers seem irrational in asserting that an embryo is not a human person and dangerous in allowing its destruction. And because the pro-choice position seems so destructive, pro-lifers make abortion a litmus test and invoke divine aid to combat such evil.

The central difference between the pro-choice and pro-life position, as first stated by Valparaiso law professor Richard Stith, is the subtle dichotomy between pregnancy as construction and pregnancy as development. Pro-choicers continue to assert the inviolability of choice, and pro-lifers continue to assert the inviolability of life, but that discussion is largely meaningless, for nobody rejects choice or life in itself. The question that should dominate debate is whether pregnancy is a process of construction or a process of development. If pro-choicers can convince pro-lifers that pregnancy is the construction of a human person, pro-lifers should accommodate themselves to existing abortion policy. On the other hand, if pro-lifers can convince pro-choicers that pregnancy is the development of a human person, pro-choicers should abandon abortion rights.

Pro-choicers are often uninterested in debate because they feel that they cannot appeal to reason, that the pro-life argument is essentially religious and irrational. Pro-lifers are often uninterested in debate because they feel that the justification for abortion clouds rationality itself. But the exposition above reveals that neither side of the abortion debate is irrational. Instead, pro-choicers and pro-lifers begin with different presuppositions from which their respective conclusions follow.

While both sides are rational, only one side can be right. If pregnancy is the construction of a human person, our society is infringing upon the reproductive freedom of women by stigmatizing early-term abortion and threatening more restrictive legislation. If pregnancy is the development of a human person, our society is legally allowing the killing of innocent human persons. In either case, society is messing up. It is now the duty of intellectuals on both sides to open their minds and address the issue afresh.

Peter Johnston is a sophomore in Saybrook College.

"A Middle Ground for Stem Cells"

By YUVAL LEVIN

Published: January 19, 2007, Op-Ed, New York Times

WITH each new round of argument, the ethical questions at the heart of the embryonic stem cell debate get buried under more layers of hype and confusion.

Backers of a House bill, approved last week, that would loosen the limits on federal support for the research argue that there is now a “ban” on financing, that embryonic stem cells will cure tens of millions and that current federal policy sets American scientists behind their foreign counterparts. But the Bush administration has spent more than $100 million on embryonic stem cell research in the past six years; the research, while promising, remains purely speculative; and American scientists hold a huge and steady lead that no other country comes close to challenging.

Defenders of the president’s policy, meanwhile, too often get caught up in comparing adult and embryonic stem cell research. This leads them to deny the utility of embryonic cells, which scientists clearly do find useful, rather than articulating the moral justification for a policy that avoids the destruction of developing life.

All of this leaves us confused over just what the debate is about. It is, to begin with, not about stem cell research, any more than an argument about the lethal extraction of livers from Chinese political prisoners would be a debate about organ transplantation. There are ethical and unethical ways to transplant organs, and there are ethical and unethical ways to conduct stem cell research. The question is to which category a particular technique — the destruction of living embryos for their cells — belongs.

The debate is also not about whether there ought to be ethical limits on science. Everyone agrees there should be strict limits when research involves human subjects. The question is whether embryos destroyed for their cells are such human subjects.

But that does not mean the stem cell debate is about when human life begins. It is a simple and uncontroversial biological fact that a human life begins when an embryo is created. That embryo is human, and it is alive; its human life will last until its death, whether that comes days after conception or many decades later surrounded by children and grandchildren.

But the biological fact that a human life begins at conception does not by itself settle the ethical debate. The human embryo is a human organism, but is this being — microscopically small, with no self-awareness and little resemblance to us — a person, with a right to life?

Many advocates of federal financing for embryo-destructive research begin from a negative answer to that question. They argue that the human embryo is just too small, too unlike us in appearance, or too lacking in consciousness or sensitivity to pain or other critical mental capacity to be granted a place in the human family. But surely America has learned the hard way not to assign human worth by appearances. And surely we would not deny those who have lost some mental faculties the right to be regarded with respect and protected from harm. Why should we deny it to those whose faculties are still developing?

At its heart, then, when the biology and politics have been stipulated away, the stem cell debate is not about when human life begins but about whether every human life is equal. The circumstances of the embryo outside the body of a mother put that question in perhaps the most exaggerated form imaginable, but they do not change the question.

America’s birth charter, the Declaration of Independence, asserts a positive answer to the question, and in lieu of an argument offers another assertion: that our equality is self-evident. But it is not. Indeed, the evidence of nature sometimes makes it very hard to believe that all human beings are equal. It takes a profound moral case to defend the proposition that the youngest and the oldest, the weakest and the strongest, all of us, simply by virtue of our common humanity, are in some basic and inalienable way equals.

Our faith in that essential liberal proposition is under attack by our own humanitarian impulses in the stem cell debate, and it will be under further attack as biotechnology progresses. But the stem cell debate, our first real test, should also be the easiest. We do not, at least in this instance, face a choice between science and the liberal society. We face the challenge of championing both.

President Bush’s stem cell policy seeks to meet that challenge. It encourages scientists to pursue the cells they seek without destroying life. Scientific advances in the past two years have suggested that this can be done: that “pluripotent” cells could be developed without harming human embryos; that stem cell science and ethics can be reconciled. But some members of Congress nonetheless insist on a policy that sets the two at odds.

If we cannot pass this first and simplest test of our devotion to human equality and dignity in the age of biotechnology, we will have little chance of meeting the far more difficult challenges to come. Biomedical science can offer us tremendous benefits, but only if we make sure they do not come at the cost of our highest ideals.

Yuval Levin, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, is a former executive director of the President’s Council on Bioethics.

Why we don't convince some reasonable people about embryos

Robby George and many others have made strong arguments in this blog for the continuity of human life and dignity. Yet some rational folks on the other side find those arguments not so much unconvincing as absurd. Witness the ridicule that the defense of human embryos sometimes draws. It is this sense of absurdity that must be explained.

I submit that the pro-life arguments seem absurd to any listener who has in the back of the mind a sense that the embryo or fetus is being constructed in the womb. Here’s an analogy: At what point in the automobile assembly line process can a “car’ be said to exist? I suppose most of us would point to some measure of minimum functionality (viability), like having wheels and/or a motor, but some might insist on the need for windshield wipers or might say it’s not fully a car until it rolls out onto the street (is born). We would all understand, however, that there’s no clearly “right” answer as to when a car is there. And we would also agree that someone who claimed the car to be present from the insertion of the first screw at the very beginning of the assembly line would be taking an utterly absurd position. To someone who conceives of gestation as intrauterine construction, pro-life people sound just this absurd. For a thing being constructed is truly not there until it is nearly complete. (Moving from ordinary language to metaphysics, we would say that a constructed thing does not have its essential form until it is complete or nearly complete. And it can’t be that thing without the form of that thing.)

Now, this way of thinking (treating gestation as construction, fabrication, making) has not only intuitive appeal today but a grand pedigree. For thousands of years it was the dominant (though not the exclusive) way to conceive of what was happening in the womb. Thus Job exclaims to God “You poured me out like milk and curdled me like cheese. You clothed me with skin and flesh and knit me together…” No one knew of the ovum (until the 1830s), and, despite its name, semen ("seed") didn’t seem to develop on its own. So it made sense to posit an outside constructor or fabricator, either God or one of the parents, who worked inert seminal material up into a human shape during the early stages of pregnancy. And, quite reasonably, abortion of this still relatively amorphous mass was not considered the destruction of someone with an essential human form.

But at quickening (enlivening), the unborn child exhibited something that no merely constructed thing could do: it could move itself. [This was judged to occur in mid-pregnancy, a position that did not become untenable until, again, after the 1830s when the invention of the stethoscope first made possible the detection of the early fetal heartbeat.] The greatest of all fabrications must therefore have taken place, an animal soul (anima) must have been inserted by God. From this point on, construction from the outside was over and development from the inside began. And so now abortion constituted homicide. For, unlike a constructed entity, which (as we have seen) is not present until nearly the end of the construction process, a developing being is already there as soon as it starts developing.

Why does self-development entail continuity of being? There are many ways to access the answer here. For Heideggerian aficionados, one could point to “de-velop” as an un-veiling or un-wrapping (cf. “en-velop”). [Heidegger would no doubt privilege German and point to “ent-wickeln” (un-wrap). In Spanish, one would unwrap in the sense of un-roll: des-arrollar]. One could also just point to ordinary language today, in which development connotes continuity. We would say that the first little spout we saw come out of the ground five years ago is the same plant as the pear tree we now see, unless someone told us that some construction had occurred (i.e. that the pear branches had been grafted onto non-pear stock).

But the difference between making and developing is not just an accident of language. Suppose we’re back in the pre-digital days and you’ve just taken a fabulous photo, one you know you will prize, with your Polaroid camera. (Say it’s a picture of a jaguar that has now darted back into the jungle so that the photo is unrepeatable.) You are just starting to let the photo hang out to develop when I grab it and rip its cover off (perhaps because I’m eager to see it; my reason doesn’t matter here) thus destroying it. What would you think if I responded to your dismay with the assertion “Hey man, it was still in the brown-smudge stage. Why should you care about brown smudges?” I submit that you would find my defense utterly absurd. [By contrast, if I had simply destroyed a blank, unexposed piece of your film, you would have been much less upset. You really would have lost little more than a smudge. Passive potential does not count for much. Only developing potential already contains its own form (or essence or identity), is already the what that it is in the process of manifesting.]

I conclude that pro-choice folks think pro-life claims re embryos to be not only wrong but absurd whenever (even unconsciously, in the back of their minds) they think that embryos are under construction in the womb. And pro-life folks find pro-choice denials of prized human dignity in embryos to be equally absurd whenever they think that the unborn child develops (indeed, develops itself, unlike the Polaroid photo) from the moment of fertilization.

The two sides are not quite parallel in this, however: Human beings do develop. To think they are constructed is flat error. This error remains intuitively plausible and has a decent cultural pedigree, so those who make it should not be dismissed as utterly irrational or evil, even though they may seem so from the viewpoint of one who bears in mind the facts of human development. But they are absolutely wrong. We know with certainty that quickening is an illusion, that the child is developing from the beginning, not being made from the outside, for its form lies within it, in its active potency, in its activated DNA. From the point of view of natural science (and natural theology) delayed ensoulment has lost its reason for being and Occam’s razor should cut it out of our debates.

Deception on Cloning

Sunday’s New York Times (10/15/06) laid out the purposeful deception that is being practiced on Missouri voters. The very reason for the Amendment was to promote cloning, and yet the ballot will say (without further clarification) that the Amendment bans cloning. See the Times excerpts below (my emphasis added):

The largest group in the state promoting stem cell research [is] the Missouri Coalition for Lifesaving Cures, which is responsible for putting the initiative on the ballot....

The group’s chairman [is] Donn Rubin....

The ballot measure would guarantee that any stem cell research that is legal under federal law could be performed in Missouri. Mr. Rubin said the coalition sought to get the issue on the ballot in direct response to efforts for years by conservative lawmakers to ban the cloning procedure involved in some forms of the research.

In the most controversial form of stem cell research, embryos are cloned and their stem cells are removed....

“This is the big one, this is the biggest pro-life issue voters have ever been confronted with,” said Pam Fichter, the president of Missouri Right to Life. “This is the people deciding whether they want to enshrine in the constitution the right to clone and kill human embryos.”

blastomeres

It seems to me that the first decisive issue to face is the one that the NYTimes attributes to Senator Brownback's office: that excising a cell from the early embryo is the equivalent of artificially-induced twinning, and thus to stop that excised cell from developing is to take the life of a new human individual (even assuming that the original embryo is wholly unharmed). This is very worrisome to me, but I really don't know enough facts to reach a clear judgment. For example, is the excised cell fully totipotent, like an embryo, or only pluripotent, like the sorts of stems cells that are usually sought? And even if it is totipotent, has that potency been ACTIVATED, so that we must say that a new life is underway? (Or is asking this last question bad to begin with, because it tries to draw too fine a line?)

Another Augustinian effect?

Another possible change that could come with a more Augustinian pope would be in international law. Pope John Paul II was a consistent universalist (or a consistent centralist, if you want to put a negative spin on it). While of course upholding the Catholic principle of subsidiarity, to my knowledge Pope John Paul always opposed localistic isolationism: He favored a united Italy, a united Europe (which he thought his own Poland should join), and a stronger United Nations. But with "big" more and more seeming to mean "bad", I wonder whether our new pope might not seek to find new ways to defend particularism (somehow without abandoning the rest of the world).

Registry of Amnesty International Supporters Who Oppose Abortion

The movement of Amnesty International toward supporting a “right” to kill unborn children has been a matter of great distress among its consistent-life constituency. The sample form letter from AI found below details this movement toward supporting abortion.

All those who report on having called AI’s national office in the United States received curt responses stating that AI is maintaining neutrality, in contradiction to the form letters the same people receive after writing to AI. We have found no indication that the phone calls or the letters are being tallied in order to give decision-makers an accurate assessment of the widespread dismay their decisions can cause. The "policy consultation process" the form letter claims to be underway must be problematic when those who call are not having their names and addresses taken down, while being told emphatically that this process is nothing but a rumor.

Accordingly, Consistent Life (an international network for peace, justice and life--of which I am a board member) is organizing a drive to allow this constituency to be registered and counted (see text at link after next sentence). All those who have ever supported Amnesty International financially or in any other way are invited to sign it at: www.petitionspot.com/petitions/consistentlife

We ask sympathizers to forward this message on to all individuals and listserves who may be interested. Links on web pages and notices in newsletters and newspapers would be much appreciated, along with any other ideas for getting the word out.

The on-line format allows a running tally to be seen by anyone at any time. Tallies will be announced to the media periodically at appropriate points.

Please send this message on to interested others! Thanks.

Richard Stith (for Consistent Life)

Here is Amnesty International’s form letter detailing its movement toward possibly endorsing a “right” to abortion:

> >From: Betsy Ross <bross@aiusa.org>
> >Sent: May 5, 2006, 10:04 AM
> >Subject: Re: AIUSA and Abortion
> >
> >
> >   Thank you for taking the time to share your concerns.
> >
> >   Although AI does not currently take a position on abortion, you are
> >   correct that the AI movement is contemplating whether and how to address
> >   it.
> >
> >   As you probably already know, our policy agenda, and the policies
> >   themselves, are determined by AI members through a democratic process.
> >   The reason that abortion is being discussed right now is that members
> >   throughout the movement felt that AI's work to stop violence against
> >   women and promote women's human rights necessitates that we consider
> >   whether a more comprehensive policy on sexual and reproductive rights,
> >   potentially encompassing certain abortion-related issues, would enable
> >   AI to be more effective in these areas.  This was expressed in a
> >   decision taken last August at AI's 2005 International Council Meeting
> >   (ICM), which is AI's highest decision-making body.
> >
> >   The 2005 ICM decided that AI will develop a policy statement and a
> >   strategy for defending and promoting sexual and reproductive rights.  At
> >   the same time, the ICM decided that an extended consultation process
> >   should be undertaken to determine whether AI should adopt a policy on
> >   abortion and how such a policy should be formulated.  We have just
> >   embarked on this process.  The first stage involves considering whether
> >   and when AI should develop policies on three specific issues that have
> >   been identified as particularly urgent in the context of AI's campaign
> >   to stop violence against women:  1) access to health care for the
> >   management of complications arising from abortion; 2) access to abortion
> >   in cases of rape, sexual assault, incest or risk to a woman's life; and
> >   3) the removal of criminal penalties for those who seek or provide
> >   abortions.
> >
> >   All other abortion-related issues, including whether a woman's right to
> >   physical and mental integrity includes a right to terminate pregnancy,
> >   will be considered by the 2007 ICM.  The extended timeframe for
> >   consultation and decision-making is a reflection of the recognition that
> >   these are profound decisions that require reflection and discussion so
> >   that the AI movement can move forward as one.
> >
> >   Please let us know if you would like to receive an update on how this
> >   process is unfolding.  We expect that we may have some new information
> >   in about six months or so.

Response to Tom

The point I was trying to make is that the principles of non-violence and human inviolability require us as a community to reject all killing (I would include euthanasia and the death penalty though the topic of my blog entry was abortion) not just to make it less common. Ordinarily, this is done but making killing criminal, although one can imagine unusual situations where this need not be so (e.g. in a community committed to anarchism).

I'm open to proposals other than criminalization, but I'm not sure they work. Germany, for example, has experimented with excluding abortion from public health insurance, as an "unconstitutional act of killing", and even requiring the media not to defame the humanity of the unborn, i.e. leaving abortion in some sense nominally illegal but yet not punished as long as prior pro-life counseling has occurred. But my German relatives tell me that these measures have little effect.

I think I'm making the same point that the 1975 German Constitutional decision made (which was reversed in 1993 in this regard): That even if counseling could prevent more abortions than criminal prohibitions, respect for life applies to each individual life, not to life in the aggregate. That is, one cannot withdraw legal protection from some human beings even if the result (getting women to come in for counseling) saves more lives. One cannot say "Just go in for counseling first and then your abortion will be legal", because that would withdraw respect and protection for unborn children as soon as their mothers have gone through counseling.

It's not just preventing deaths by abortion that's the issue. It's the idea that some people get less respect and protection. For example (though thank goodness this is NOT a proposal by DFLA) suppose that we could prevent ALL abortions by pushing true contraception. It would still be wrong to leave abortion legal, because we would still be saying that some of do not get equal respect and protection. (To reduce abortion by means of contraception is like reducing the number of acts of anti-Mexican racism by sealing our borders. Even if it works, it misses the main point.)

I worry that DFLA might let politicians off the hook as long as they commit themselves effectively to minimizing abortions. I want them to come out effectively AGAINST abortion, which at least means coming out against it as a constitutional right under Roe, before they receive any pro-life votes.

Dellapenna's Werk

Having read bits of this in process, I can say it is thorough scholarship and deserves to have a great impact:

Dispelling the Myths of
Abortion History
by Joseph Dellapenna,

Villanova University School of Law

View table of contents (PDF)
Carolina Academic Press, ISBN 0-89089-509-0, 1300 pp , $95.00

Receive a 30% Special Discount until the end of June!
(Type "30% Special Discount" in the comments section of the order form.)

In Roe v. Wade, Justice Harry Blackmun structured the argument of the majority around the history of abortion laws. That history built on the work of law professor Cyril Means, Jr., and historian James Mohr. Means and Mohr proclaim four theses as summarizing the "true" history of abortion in England and America:

(1) Abortion was not a crime "at common law" (before the enactment of abortion statutes in the nineteenth century.

(2) Abortion was common and relatively safe during this time.

(3) Abortion statutes were enacted in the nineteenth century in order to protect the life of the mother rather than the life of the embryo or fetus.

(4) The moving force behind the nineteenth-century statutes was the attempt of the male medical profession to suppress competition from competing practitioners of alternative forms of medicine.

This book dispels these myths and sets forth the true history of abortion and abortion law in English and American society. Anglo- American law always treated abortion as a serious crime, generally including early in pregnancy. Prosecutions and even executions go back 800 years in England, establishing law that carried over to colonial America. The reasons offered for these prosecutions and penalties consistently focused on protecting the life of the unborn child. This unbroken tradition refutes the claims that unborn children have not been treated as persons in our law or as persons under the Constitution of the United States.

Order online at www.caplaw.com or call (800) 489-7486.

Letters to Amnesty Inter. due by May 17

May 15, 2006

Consistent Life Appeals to Amnesty International on Abortion

The Board of Consistent Life has issued an open letter to Amnesty International (AI) regarding AI's consideration of policy positions regarding abortion. AI's 2005 International Council Meeting decided to begin consideration of policies on three specific issues:

1. access to health care for the management of complications arising from abortion;

2. access to abortion in cases of rape, sexual assault, incest or risk to a woman's life; and

3. the removal of criminal penalties for those who seek or provide abortions.

Consistent Life supported the first point, but asked AI to reflect on how much the other two points contradict it. We noted, "What you are basically saying is that governments have a responsibility to clean up after botched abortions, but should have no ability to prevent those botched abortions. They should simply allow the harm to occur, and then deal with it." We asked that AI act consistently with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of the Child, which states that every child "needs special safeguards and care, including legal protection, before as well as after birth."

We also noted that AI's points do not explicitly cover a woman's right to aftercare for the trauma which often follows having an ordinary abortion. Nor do they cover coerced abortion, or sex-selection abortions. We commented, "In these cases no one could argue whether abortion itself is clearly violence against women, and no policy could pretend to oppose violence against women while remaining silent on these points."

We observed that perpetration-induced traumatic stress (PITS) affects all those who kill other human beings, including those who perform abortions as well as those who kill in war, in police actions or in executions. The effects of PITS lead to botched abortions, as is demonstrated by a number of cases involving legal abortions.

We also observed that sincere advocates of certain life positions may sabotage their own goals by being inconsistent. For AI, its principled position against the death penalty, in which we stand in solidarity with them, "may be discredited if they advocate laws that allow imposition of the death penalty on innocent children without due process."

Response to Greg: The significance of abortion lies not just in numbers

Much as I sympathize with the frequent appeal to the high numbers of abortion deaths to galvanize us to action, I think that such appeals actually distract from abortion’s full significance.

To take the life of one’s own child is destructive of our core humanity in a way that killing strangers cannot be. Abortion involves the betrayal of a dependent by a natural guardian.  Furthermore, abortion is emblematic of wider lethal betrayals of radically dependent persons, like Terri Schiavo. All these betrayals are rationalized precisely by the victims’ lack of autonomy-based dignity. 

“All power to the autonomous!” is monstrous and frightening. Like “Non serviam!”

(My thoughts on this are developed in greater detail in the November 2005 issue of New Oxford Review.)

How to write to Amnesty International

P.S. Here is Amnesty International's e-mail address, in case anyone else wishes to comment on the current proposals for AI to take a stand in favor of an international right to abortion and against, as I understand, any rights of conscience that impede access to abortion.  admin-us@aiusa.org 

Comments must be received by May 20.

I apologize for the blue type in the posting below. I don't know why it does that sometimes.

From my letter to Amnesty International

As a long-time supporter of Amnesty International (most recently in an unsuccessful attempt to get a student chapter started here at this law school), I write to urge caution in adopting the proposed positions favoring reproductive rights. The essential problem is that the world is increasingly divided over whether such positions would be steps toward or away from universal human rights. That is, state enforcement of abortion rights would not just be something that conservatives might object to—like support of gay rights, for example—but rather would undercut your credibility with many of your natural constituencies. Many would see you as coming out against certain fundamental human rights, namely the universal right to life as well as the right of conscience-based refusal to participate in violence, something that could not easily be said regarding gay rights or almost any other cause AI might wish to support. [An international right to life before birth is recognized in the U.N. Dclaration of the Rights of the Child and in the American Convention on Human Rights.]

Even on the Left, such an endorsement is problematic. What I mean is this: Some  on the Left not only consider abortion rights an anti-communitarian expression of extreme individualism, a claiming of private ownership of the next generation, but also see rights-talk (in  the context of the real world) as hostile to care and concern for the needs of women. Catherine MacKinnon, for example, has written of the way “privacy” language thrusts women back to private oppression (where males will decide to abort their wanted children) and away from public equality. As with the so-called right-to-work, the individual freedom to abort is in reality a freedom for the powerful more easily to oppress the weak—especially in the third world.

Only after women have achieved true equality could it be argued that abortion would be truly their own right rather than that of their male oppressors.

Back to Eduardo's issue: on narrow and broad intent

Dear Eduardo--

 

Basically, what is at stake in your condom conundrum is the question of whether morality is solely a matter of the narrowest of intentions, i.e. whether intent always includes every direct effect. Grisez and Finnis are the luminaries in favor of the narrow meaning while I believe that Peter Geach and his late, great wife are the main thinkers on the other side (but I could be wrong on this). Anyway, I think it all comes down to whether you can blow up the fat guy who is stuck in the mouth of the cave, with rising waters inside about to drown a party of spelunkers. Your INTENT is said by the “narrow school” to be only to use a stick of dynamite (the only means available) to dislodge him, even though you know it will have an immediate and directly lethal effect on him. As I understand the debate, Grisez and Finnis would say “If your heart is pure, go ahead and light the wick.” Geach and Anscombe would say that in such a case one cannot not be intending a direct attack on innocent life.

Probing further, in my personal view (N.B.) the issue is whether we are “polluted” only by our intentions or also by any strong causal connection between us and a violation of the Holy. Nowadays, we think that we think it silly to worry about whether the thirty pieces of silver should be put back in the Temple treasury, whether a sword that has accidentally killed somebody must become a deodand  in order to be redeemed, whether my running my car over a child wholly without any fault on my part nevertheless requires some reparation from me, etc. But in fact we would not want the silver or the sword in our home, and (much more than any passenger–onlooker in the car) we would be in deep moral agony and desirous to make reparation to the child’s parents.  Again: our law rightly demands reparation (retribution, if you will) from a negligent archer who has killed someone; he DESERVES significant punishment, we think, while his equally negligent companion archer (who was lucky enough to cause no harm) gets off with little blame and no punishment at all. So, although on many issues I end up with the same conclusions as the “broad school” of intent (because such intent includes all known direct effects of the act in question), I do so because of the directness itself and not solely because of any necessarily broad intent. (I actually agree with Grisez and Finnis that intent itself can be narrow enough to exclude direct effects, but I also think it blameworthy to cause unintended direct harm to human dignity.) Causing evil, as well as intending evil, is, in my own view, blameworthy. (I do not think this is the explicit view of the Church, but it may lurk in the background, as it does in our secular criminal law, as discussed above.) The Eastern Church, for example, in every Liturgy asks pardon for all "voluntary or involuntary" transgressions. Or think back to St. Augustine, et al.

Our Church should not jettison the ancient teaching (and still deeply felt intuition) that it is wrong intentionally OR directly to violate human dignity. Modernity is only a saeculum; the Church must endure in saecula saeculorum.

 

Richard

Response to Eduardo

Actually, I think the fourth criterion (proportionality) listed by Eduardo is the main stumbling block.

Regarding evil effects: Even if we were to assume that there is no objective evil in avoiding pregnancy during intercourse as long as this effect is not subjectively intended (something which I doubt), there remains the complex but real evil of giving "scandal" both in the act of using a condom and in the teaching that this is permissible.

It would seem that the good effect of avoiding AIDS might still count as a proportionate reason to permit such acts, but I'm not sure that this can enter the calculus. Implicit, I think, in testing the proportionality of good and evil effects is the necessary linkage between the two. Here, since abstinence achieves the good effect of avoiding AIDS without the above-mentioned evil effects, it would seem that AIDS does not enter the double effect calculus of proportionality.

However, another good effect does enter the calculus: the good of marital relations. Particularly if we took an old-fashioned approach and called such relations a marital "duty", it would seem that the good effect of such relations might counter-balance any evil effects of scandal. But that's a very difficult empirical judgment of prudence.

Yet even if the use of a condom here were not held to be justified under double effect principles, I would think it could still count a "lesser evil". "Lesser evil" analysis, I believe, is used to justify preferring a lesser evil, where the fact that it is an evil has been made clear and where there is no realistic prospect of avoiding all evils. If abstinence is taken off the table, because spouses will insist on sex, it seems to me that the other spouse could legitimately demand or use a condom to protect herself. Even if this remains an evil, which Eduardo argues cogently it may not be, it seems to me clearly the lesser evil. The real problem comes in making these complex matters clear to the laity without causing the deep scandal of appearing to revise basic Catholic teachings.

A simple error?

How much of the support for abortion and embryo-destructive research results from a simple confusion of construction and development?

Dalton

Conley seemed to make this mistake last fall (in his plea for father's rights, in the New York Times) claiming  that most Americans think of the fetus only as “an individual under construction.”

Mr. Conley is right that something “under construction” does not yet exist when construction has just begun or, indeed, until construction is nearly finished--and even then the point at which to attach the label seems largely stipulative.  (No one would call a recently poured foundation a "house." But once the roof is on, some will call it a "house," while others will say "not quite yet"--just as they do re the unborn.)

But he’s wrong to think that the embryo or fetus is being made or constructed. Starting at fertilization, the new life develops itself, rather than being constructed  (having its form imposed) from the outside--as the Bible, the ancients, and the medievals had erroneously thought re early gestation. And a developing being is there from the very beginning of its development.