In your vitriol against the church can you not at least admit a good faith motive on the pro life side? I mean, Nick, they think that abortion kills a human person! You don't have to agree with them, you're free to argue that their viewpoint is wrong or absurd or laughable, but for the love of all that's good and honest don't just deny the reality of their motivations! I mean, what, do the huge numbers of women involved in the pro life movement all want to keep women down for patriarchal reasons? Or could it be that they truly believe the thing they always say they believe, that abortion is the murder of a human person.
I'm pro life so of course I fully agree with you on the issue of guns. The culture of death around firearms in this country is sickening. I would point you to the statements of Bishop Daniel Flores after the Uvalde shooting for further evidence that this in fact ought to be the pro life position.
I take your point. Here is my further explanation:
As a Christian who cherishes human life, I understand those who think abolishing legal abortion is good. As a former Catholic, I know firsthand the mindset of its moral milieu. Many anti-abortion activists have convinced themselves they are saving lives. And who doesn’t want to do that? If you think you could be on the side of good—and God—by saving lives, who wouldn’t be at least open to that?
Those who want legal abortion access also think we are saving peoples lives—poor women. But our side, I’m afraid, has done a poor job of marketing by framing abortion as about choice. “Choice” is a word associated with consumer habits and careless, half-baked, impulsive acts. Coke or Pepsi for lunch? Hmm, Coke! Have a baby or abort? Hmm, abort!
This is the troubling image conjured by the word “choice” in the minds of anti-abortion people. It sounds like you’re degrading human life into a commodity. It paints women as careless and indifferent to the moral stakes of sexual intimacy and pregnancy. But that is untrue. Women do not approach abortion like a consumer choice at all. For them, it is a fraught decision. It is about care for their bodies, not frivolous consumption.
The anti-abortion movement has been very psychologically powerful in this regard. I myself wrestled in agony over abortion for many, many years. While I was always for women’s equality, it troubled me to think ending a pregnancy was ending life. Is it?
Cellular life in its earliest, nascent, primitive stages does begin with conception—which is a process, not a moment. All of us started as an embryo. How else would we get here? But no one believes that’s the start of MY LIFE. No culture on Earth celebrates “conception day” that I am aware of. They all mark birth as the profound entry into this new existence. I have read dozens of biographies in my time. Not one begins with a description of its subject forming in the womb. Are those historians deficient in neglecting to describe those first nine months? No—that would be absurd.
This is all to get at the fact that the issue with abortion is personhood—not life. Is an embryo or a six-week old or even twelve-week old fetus a full human person, of the same moral standing as born people? To drive home the question, here is a thought experiment I heard recently that can clarify things:
You are in a burning hospital. You have the chance to save either five embryos, or one day-old infant. Which do you save from the flames?
Unless you are self-deceived or a sociopath, you probably answered the infant. And that tells us a lot. If embryos are full persons of the same status as post-natal people, then everyone who answers “I’d take the infant” (which is most people) is a moral monster. So maybe they’re not. Maybe their instincts are correct, and there is a categorical difference here.
Otherwise, the millions of natural miscarriages that occur every year would amount to the greatest catastrophe to the human species known to us. We’d be pumping every resource into stopping miscarriages, given that it’s the death of millions of our fellow people a year. Since we are not embarked on such a quixotic effort, again, does that mean we moral monsters?
I don’t wish miscarriage on anyone and I don’t wish unwanted pregnancy or abortion. I wish every pregnancy was wanted and our social supports excellent enough for poor women to have more children. The primary reason given for abortion by women seeking it is poverty.
But it is instructive that while we get rightly sad over early misscarriage, we don’t react the way we do to the death of a born child. Obviously, the closer we get to birth heightens the loss of the pregnancy--a late miscarriage or still-birth is wrenching. But that is to my point: the stage in pregnancy matters.
A scholar I heard recently used a great metaphor here: the heap. If you take grains of sand and pile them up, eventually you go from nothing to a heap. But when did it precisely turn into said heap? The millionth grain? One more? One less? At some point, it happens. But where exactly is impossible to say. So with personhood.
A reasonable compromise then is to err on the earlier side of the trimester timetable. This would allow for unregulated abortion at 12-15 weeks, then reasonable regulations after. This is the standard of every European country with abortion. 71% of Americans believe abortion should be legal at some point in pregnancy. More folks support it in the early stages than later.
This is a reasonable, ethical compromise for a diverse, modern, pluralistic society. It is not facilitating murder. It does facilitate women’s full, equal participation in society, while balancing that interest with that of honoring human life.
A democratic society would allow an actual deliberation about abortion among everyday people with experts on hand to present information—the way Ireland did in 2016 with its Citizens’ Assembly. No politicians, and certainly not six judges. This is an ethical decision for the whole society to make—not lawyers. The result in Ireland, a deeply Catholic country? Two-thirds of the people decided to legalize abortion in the first trimester. That is balance, that is reasonableness, that is self-government.
Thank you for this detailed and well thought out response! You raise good points, but I must quibble a little with your conclusions. I agree with you, actually, that there are degrees of life across the course of a pregnancy, and that there is some phenomenological difference between the humanity of a newly fertilized zygote and the humanity of a born child, with the difference growing smaller as the fetus develops. But I don't know that this actually justifies abortion except in severe circumstances. Which is to say, clearly I would save the infant rather than the 5 embryos if forced to choose. BUT, separate from the trolley problem of 'which do you save?' I would not just kill any of those 5 embryos unless there was some grave necessity. So what would be a grave necessity? Well, if the mother was at risk herself, for one. Fortunately every state level abortion ban operative in America contains this exemption. Perhaps the case of rape? I would be willing for the law to permit abortion in those cases as well, though I myself am uncomfortable with the idea of effectively punishing an innocent person for the crime that was committed. Many bans in America, including my state's, contain this exception, but not all of them. Beyond that, what? Poverty? We cannot be satisfied with a society where women are forced to terminate pregnancies due to poverty, just as we cannot be satisfied with a society that denies its citizens healthcare. We should deal with this by expanding the benefits and social services available to poor mothers, not by allowing abortion in such cases. This is a direction that some in the pro life movement are already beginning to move, and I will be beyond disappointed if the movement at large doesn't follow.
In your vitriol against the church can you not at least admit a good faith motive on the pro life side? I mean, Nick, they think that abortion kills a human person! You don't have to agree with them, you're free to argue that their viewpoint is wrong or absurd or laughable, but for the love of all that's good and honest don't just deny the reality of their motivations! I mean, what, do the huge numbers of women involved in the pro life movement all want to keep women down for patriarchal reasons? Or could it be that they truly believe the thing they always say they believe, that abortion is the murder of a human person.
I'm pro life so of course I fully agree with you on the issue of guns. The culture of death around firearms in this country is sickening. I would point you to the statements of Bishop Daniel Flores after the Uvalde shooting for further evidence that this in fact ought to be the pro life position.
I take your point. Here is my further explanation:
As a Christian who cherishes human life, I understand those who think abolishing legal abortion is good. As a former Catholic, I know firsthand the mindset of its moral milieu. Many anti-abortion activists have convinced themselves they are saving lives. And who doesn’t want to do that? If you think you could be on the side of good—and God—by saving lives, who wouldn’t be at least open to that?
Those who want legal abortion access also think we are saving peoples lives—poor women. But our side, I’m afraid, has done a poor job of marketing by framing abortion as about choice. “Choice” is a word associated with consumer habits and careless, half-baked, impulsive acts. Coke or Pepsi for lunch? Hmm, Coke! Have a baby or abort? Hmm, abort!
This is the troubling image conjured by the word “choice” in the minds of anti-abortion people. It sounds like you’re degrading human life into a commodity. It paints women as careless and indifferent to the moral stakes of sexual intimacy and pregnancy. But that is untrue. Women do not approach abortion like a consumer choice at all. For them, it is a fraught decision. It is about care for their bodies, not frivolous consumption.
The anti-abortion movement has been very psychologically powerful in this regard. I myself wrestled in agony over abortion for many, many years. While I was always for women’s equality, it troubled me to think ending a pregnancy was ending life. Is it?
Cellular life in its earliest, nascent, primitive stages does begin with conception—which is a process, not a moment. All of us started as an embryo. How else would we get here? But no one believes that’s the start of MY LIFE. No culture on Earth celebrates “conception day” that I am aware of. They all mark birth as the profound entry into this new existence. I have read dozens of biographies in my time. Not one begins with a description of its subject forming in the womb. Are those historians deficient in neglecting to describe those first nine months? No—that would be absurd.
This is all to get at the fact that the issue with abortion is personhood—not life. Is an embryo or a six-week old or even twelve-week old fetus a full human person, of the same moral standing as born people? To drive home the question, here is a thought experiment I heard recently that can clarify things:
You are in a burning hospital. You have the chance to save either five embryos, or one day-old infant. Which do you save from the flames?
Unless you are self-deceived or a sociopath, you probably answered the infant. And that tells us a lot. If embryos are full persons of the same status as post-natal people, then everyone who answers “I’d take the infant” (which is most people) is a moral monster. So maybe they’re not. Maybe their instincts are correct, and there is a categorical difference here.
Otherwise, the millions of natural miscarriages that occur every year would amount to the greatest catastrophe to the human species known to us. We’d be pumping every resource into stopping miscarriages, given that it’s the death of millions of our fellow people a year. Since we are not embarked on such a quixotic effort, again, does that mean we moral monsters?
I don’t wish miscarriage on anyone and I don’t wish unwanted pregnancy or abortion. I wish every pregnancy was wanted and our social supports excellent enough for poor women to have more children. The primary reason given for abortion by women seeking it is poverty.
But it is instructive that while we get rightly sad over early misscarriage, we don’t react the way we do to the death of a born child. Obviously, the closer we get to birth heightens the loss of the pregnancy--a late miscarriage or still-birth is wrenching. But that is to my point: the stage in pregnancy matters.
A scholar I heard recently used a great metaphor here: the heap. If you take grains of sand and pile them up, eventually you go from nothing to a heap. But when did it precisely turn into said heap? The millionth grain? One more? One less? At some point, it happens. But where exactly is impossible to say. So with personhood.
A reasonable compromise then is to err on the earlier side of the trimester timetable. This would allow for unregulated abortion at 12-15 weeks, then reasonable regulations after. This is the standard of every European country with abortion. 71% of Americans believe abortion should be legal at some point in pregnancy. More folks support it in the early stages than later.
This is a reasonable, ethical compromise for a diverse, modern, pluralistic society. It is not facilitating murder. It does facilitate women’s full, equal participation in society, while balancing that interest with that of honoring human life.
A democratic society would allow an actual deliberation about abortion among everyday people with experts on hand to present information—the way Ireland did in 2016 with its Citizens’ Assembly. No politicians, and certainly not six judges. This is an ethical decision for the whole society to make—not lawyers. The result in Ireland, a deeply Catholic country? Two-thirds of the people decided to legalize abortion in the first trimester. That is balance, that is reasonableness, that is self-government.
Thank you for this detailed and well thought out response! You raise good points, but I must quibble a little with your conclusions. I agree with you, actually, that there are degrees of life across the course of a pregnancy, and that there is some phenomenological difference between the humanity of a newly fertilized zygote and the humanity of a born child, with the difference growing smaller as the fetus develops. But I don't know that this actually justifies abortion except in severe circumstances. Which is to say, clearly I would save the infant rather than the 5 embryos if forced to choose. BUT, separate from the trolley problem of 'which do you save?' I would not just kill any of those 5 embryos unless there was some grave necessity. So what would be a grave necessity? Well, if the mother was at risk herself, for one. Fortunately every state level abortion ban operative in America contains this exemption. Perhaps the case of rape? I would be willing for the law to permit abortion in those cases as well, though I myself am uncomfortable with the idea of effectively punishing an innocent person for the crime that was committed. Many bans in America, including my state's, contain this exception, but not all of them. Beyond that, what? Poverty? We cannot be satisfied with a society where women are forced to terminate pregnancies due to poverty, just as we cannot be satisfied with a society that denies its citizens healthcare. We should deal with this by expanding the benefits and social services available to poor mothers, not by allowing abortion in such cases. This is a direction that some in the pro life movement are already beginning to move, and I will be beyond disappointed if the movement at large doesn't follow.