Stage Left on Choice
Finding a “middle ground” on abortion is a bad idea.
By Julian Sanchez
Thursday November 9, 2006
Someone must have slipped a textbook on quantum mechanics into the offices of the Democratic Party. Careening desperately toward a more "moderate" stance on abortion rights, centrist Democrats are now hard at work searching for Schrödinger’s Fetus: alive and dead at the same time. Indeed in a trend that has been developing for years, a few high-profile anti-choice Democratic candidates, including Heath Shuler in North Carolina and Bob Casey in Pennsylvania, won election on Tuesday.
John Kerry rankled pro-choice activists during the 2004 campaign by suggesting that his party should recruit more pro-life candidates—advice that the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee apparently took to heart, offering primary endorsements to pro-lifers such as Casey this year. A speech by Hilary Clinton, describing abortion as "a tragic choice" that she hoped one day would "not ever have to be exercised," won kudos from Slate columnist Will Saletan, who wrote: "Once you embrace that truth—that the ideal number of abortions is zero—voters open their ears.”
The idea that abortion should be, in Bill Clinton’s memorable formulation, "safe, legal, and rare," is appealing, if only because it would be clearly preferable if effective sex education and broad access to contraception made unwanted pregnancies less common. But framing that worthy goal as a means to the end of reducing abortion would be both a moral and strategic mistake. Solomonic attempts to split the difference will collide unpleasantly with the reality that Schrödinger’s Fetus, like its feline predecessor, is always either alive or dead under scrutiny.
Abortion raises deep questions about the origins and basis of moral personhood, so one’s position on abortion should be "radical," in the etymologically precise sense of "going to the root." Abortion is a difficult and complex question if we suppose that the fetus is a person with interests and rights that must be weighed against those of the mother. But the proposition that fetuses are not moral persons is both true and worth defending loudly. Even very late in pregnancy, when a fetus may have some sort of rudimentary awareness, it lacks all the features traditionally advanced as moral distinctions between humans and other animals: a sense of self or identity, the capacity for abstract thought and reflection, and the capacity for moral choice. But the vast majority of abortions, about 98 percent, take place before the 20th week of gestation, well before the cerebral cortex is "wired up" to the rest of the nervous system. At this stage, the fetus has nothing that could reasonably be described as conscious awareness.
The only reason for regarding an abortion as more regrettable than a root canal, then, is the belief that moral personhood is not fundamentally about having a certain kind of mind. This is a strange view, when you think about it: If we are ever visited by some alien species, we will decide what kind of treatment we owe them by reflecting on the sorts of minds they have, not by poking at their genetic structure. If the most popular basis for considering fetuses persons is some sort of theory about souls, giving credence to this view tacitly endorses the notion that public policy ought to be tailored to accommodate moral premises whose sole basis is theological.
Treating fetuses as persons has harmful consequences, even if we simultaneously insist that their interests are trumped by women’s right to control their bodies. For one, it means endorsing the notion that the one-third of American women who will have an abortion will be killing a child. And in the political realm, how uneasy we are about abortion will determine what measures short of an outright ban we are willing to entertain as means of ensuring that abortion remains "rare." Hillary Clinton, for instance, has suggested that because "religious and moral values" are strong predictors of abstinence, we should "support programs that reinforce the idea that abstinence at a young age is not just the smart thing to do, it is the right thing to do." But if there is nothing seriously immoral about abortion, then this sort of unseemly government-sponsored religious indoctrination would gain little of importance even if it were effective.
Of course, having the right moral position doesn’t do a great deal of good without the political power to implement it. So what about the strategic case for playing up antipathy to abortion on the stump? The group Third Way has been one of the loudest proponents of the view that progressives have much to gain from pandering to "Abortion Grays," the 67 percent of voters (by their measure) "who believe that abortion should be neither always legal nor always illegal." Their analysis doesn’t stand up to much scrutiny.
About 43 percent of the voting group Third Way considers moderate holds the "nuanced" view that abortion should be "mostly illegal." Which is to say, they favor banning abortion with exceptions for rape, incest, or threat to the life or health of the mother—cases accounting for fewer than 5 percent of abortions by the highest estimate. Any sane taxonomy would characterize these as pro-life voters. To the extent that they’re casting their ballots on the basis of those views, it seems unrealistic to suppose they’ll be impressed by any platform that emphasizes preserving the basic right to an abortion, whatever other concessions it may make.
Third Way assumes Republicans are gaining ground by capturing the mantle of the reasonable middle on abortion, since Democrats win "mostly legal" voters by smaller margins than Republicans win "mostly illegal" voters. An alternate explanation seems far more likely, though: Since abortion is currently legal, voters who think it involves the killing of tiny persons will feel it’s urgent to change the status quo; abortion will tend to be a significant factor in their vote. Voters who favor legal abortion, on the other hand, may simply feel more comfortable voting on other issues at present.
Finally, there is something disturbingly shortsighted about taking a snapshot of public opinion as representing some kind of eternal verity, independent of the positions parties take. People often form their opinions on difficult issues by a sort of Bayesian weighting of other people’s views. Many genuine abortion moderates probably reason that since large numbers of people seem equally powerfully convinced that abortion is either morally unobjectionable, on the one hand, or tantamount to murder, on the other, it’s best to leave such a fraught decision in the hands of individual women. If it begins to seem that there’s a broad cross-partisan, cross-ideological consensus that abortion is a morally terrible thing, however, there’s no reason we should expect the distribution of opinion to remain stable.
When enough people self-consciously move to the political "center," it ceases to be the center and becomes a new pole. A "mainstream" of political discourse defined by the shared assumption that all abortion is morally suspect should be regarded by all advocates of reproductive freedom as a rough beast, slouching toward 2008 to be born.
Julian Sanchez is a Washington, D.C. based writer and a contributing editor for Reason magazine. You can read his blog here.
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Comments
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Julian, what a bunch of ‘Dred Scottian’ bovine caca! I wish I had known you were going to come along before I took all those philosophy classes while trying to figure out the meaning of life.
Just one question,please. By your reasoning, what is the moral difference between a fetus and a baby the instant after it leaves the womb? Your argument seems to suggest we could practice infanticide along with root canals, or we should never-never-never allow abortions after the 20th week. I can’t figure out which.
In my progressive world, other life forms need not love me in order to establish moral existence. They have moral standing just because they are loved by others.
Suffer me a ‘Beatleian’ paraphrase. “The amount of love you get is equal to the amount of love you give.”
With all my love,
— Bob Stephens - Nov 9, 03:47 PM - #Bob
Bob- No intrinsic difference, but there are a lot of pragmatic reasons to make birth the legal line, insofar as we need some line or other.
And defining something’s moral status by how much other people love it? That doesn’t sound very progressive at all.
— Julian Sanchez - Nov 9, 04:09 PM - #I don’t agree that we do (or should) make decisions regarding someone’s rights based on that someone’s capacity for reason. If we do, then aren’t babies, senile old folks, and the mentally challenged fair game for anyone who wants to torture or kill them? I always assumed a being’s capacity for suffering was the necessary criterion, the idea being that moral individuals do not needlessly inflict suffering upon others of any kind. Thoughts?
— sabi - Nov 9, 05:40 PM - #I scrolled up to see if this article was written by a man or a woman and the answer, Julian, was unsurprising. I am extremely pro-choice, but that doesn’t make abortion medically or emotionally akin to a “root canal.” It is a scarring procedure that should— in Bill Clinton’s words which you quoted— be rare in a society with such unprecedented access to birth control and emergency contraception. The true travesty in this nation is the lack of comprehensive sex education and the price of condoms. Seriously— for a college student $12.99 a box gets crippling and the free Lifestyles condoms they give out at my school, at least, smell hardcore of latex. Unsexy. And your arguments for late-term abortion? Insensitive, man. For me, liberalism and pro-choice philosophies are all about social compassion. You’d do well to learn some.
— Liz Stein - Nov 9, 09:26 PM - #Here’s someone untainted by a Y-chromosome making a substantially similar argument; maybe it’ll be OK when she says it:
— Julian Sanchez - Nov 10, 01:07 AM - #http://society.guardian.co.uk/ health/story/ 0,,1932834,00.html
Julian, you are scaring the heck out of this old style liberal. Your ‘ pragmatic reason to make birth a legal line’ smacks of Social Darwinism. ‘Reasons to make birth the legal line, insofar as we need some line or other’ leaves the door open to establish that line based on race, ethnicity, religion or any other ism.
You yourself said a fetus is not a moral person because it lacks the capacity to make moral choice. If we only use pragmatic reasoning to determine who lives or dies then, according to your arguement, we are all fetuses.
Being progressive is when one chooses to love (action not just a temporary feeling) those in which one shares humanity. This is based on a moral inperitive.
Love,
— Bob Stephens - Nov 10, 08:57 AM - #Bob
Two points:
It seems to me, when we observe things from an objective scientific standpoint, this issue resolves itself. Mentioning an alien encounter in your article is useful in that we would characterize an alien species not by esoteric criteria such as capacity for self-awareness, but genetically or at the very least from a basic biological standpoint. Conversely, if an alien was to study a human embryo at the moments after conception, they would immediately label it as human, regardless of its progression through maturity. The only question remaining to us is this: will we as a society condone the termination of what these aliens would call “immature humans”?
Second, Liz, is it the true travesty really a “lack of comprehensive sex education and the price of condoms”? I fail to see how $12 condoms and “unsexy” free condoms are on par with facing the choice of abortion. Should taxpayers only supply “sexy” contraceptives? Why not lingerie well?
— Tom F. - Nov 10, 01:02 PM - #Julian –
Thank you for this article. I have been advancing a similar line of reasoning for years, except that I’m a bit more progressive than you in that I think that infanticide should be acceptable up to ~2 years of age. Until that age, the brains of infants are demonstrably less developed than those of animals I regularly consume. Taking a step back, I also think that it is hypocritical to be anti-choice and also a meat-eater, as so many are; but, then, their position on abortion typically wasn’t arrived at through reason, and so it’s impossible to reason them out of it.
I know that this post might seem to be meant as ironic, or as a troll, but it is nothing of the sort. This is what I really believe, and it’s supported by the evidence. I think it’s what most anyone would believe, when stripped of received wisdom, religious indoctrination, and the need to be political.
— Stephen Schweizer - Nov 10, 06:21 PM - #People of limited intellect have no concept of humanity…....
— ausblog - Nov 10, 07:02 PM - #Wow, never thought I’d see someone accused of lacking compassion for advancing an uncompromising argument for abortion rights. The progressive mind just gets curioser and curioser.
— Andrew Bissell - Nov 10, 07:22 PM - #“Conversely, if an alien was to study a human embryo at the moments after conception, they would immediately label it as human, regardless of its progression through maturity. The only question remaining to us is this: will we as a society condone the termination of what these aliens would call “immature humans”?”
Do you have a lot of contact with aliens? How do you know what their labeling/classification process will be?
Unless you’re talking about illegal aliens. In that case, they would agree with you. Most Mexicans are pretty hardcore Catholics.
— Elliott Owen - Nov 10, 07:51 PM - #Guys (as in males), while I’m impressed by the sanity of most of the responses here, I’ve always thought that this is a topic that should only be debated and ultimately resolved by women. I believe our abstention from the argument would significantly lower its temperature. However, I also realize that this stance is probably not going to be attractive to the average opinionated guy!
— Michael Mikowski - Nov 11, 02:35 AM - #Michael: I disagree with you. That’s the same as saying nobody should critique movies except for directors. Humbug, I say, humbug!
— Stephen Schweizer - Nov 12, 04:01 PM - #Even if a fetus is a person is it right to coerce another person into keeping it alive for 9 months? We don’t coerce kidney donations to save lives, we should not force pregnancy either
— captured shadow - Nov 12, 11:16 PM - #World estimations of the number of terminations carried out each year is somewhere between 20 and 88 million.
3,500 per day / 1.3 million per year in America alone.
50% of that 1.3 million claimed failed birth control was to blame.
A further 48% had failed to use any birth control at all.
And 2% had medical reasons.
That means a stagering 98% may have been avoided had an effective birth control been used.
I am a 98% pro-lifer, 2% Pro-choicer, who has no religious convictions at all . I didn’t need the fear of god or anything else to come to my decision, just a good sense of what is right and wrong.
You see we were all once a fetus. Is it beyond the realm of possibilities that when your mother first learned she was carrying you, she may have considered her options? What if she had decided to terminate? Would that have been OK?
You would not exist, if you have children they would not exist, and your (husband or wife) would be married to someone else. You would have been deprived of all your experiences and memories. In this day and age with terminations being so readily available and so many being carried out, if you make it to full term you can consider yourself lucky.
Lucky you had a mother that made the choice of life for you.
Don’t you think they all deserve the same basic human right, LIFE?
At the point of conception is when life began for you. This was the start of your existence. Your own personal big bang. Three weeks after conception heart started to beat. First brain waves recorded at six weeks after conception. Seen sucking thumb at seven weeks after conception.
Though it pains me to say it , there may always be a need for the 2% medical reasons and such, but that’s all.
So how do we get the other 98% to be responsible…................
How do we get them to be honest with themselves, about when life begins.
Everyone knows life begins at conception, egg+sperm = human being
Sadly many prefer an occasional abortion, over using birth control, they have all kinds of reasons, each of them selfish.
Then there’s the christian impossition,(all a bit talibanish), and their men in high places.(church and state should never entwine) their stance against b/c has only added to the numbers.
Sanity must provale, abortions should remain available and safe to the 2% and the rest need to have a good look at themselves and get their act together.
I’d like to see effective birth control made available to all who can’t afford it.
I’d also like to see an ultrasound in every clinnic to provide a more informed choice,
— ausblog - Nov 13, 01:57 AM - #before going through with something they may regret.
Why do you say “claimed failed birth control” as though they wold lie about it? I know several girls who all got pregnant using birth control that got recalled nation wide. There will always be cases that don’t fit into what is your definition of “acceptable reasons” to get an abortion. I hope you never get put into any of them, but if you did it might open your eyes a little bit.
If my mother had not given birth to me…?! That’s a philosophical question. I disagree that I would not exist, How do you know when existence starts? And who says the value of life is determined at conception? The only Basic human right that we all share is the certainty that we will all die. There is no right to live, or any guarantees. What sense does it make to be discussing abortion when there are already millions of people who are alive NOW and suffering and dying. I don’t see so many people up in arms about the children dying of starvation right now, are they not also being deprived of a future? — elise - Nov 13, 02:06 PM - #AusBlog:
Life is a right only for people who are already alive. I don’t think you’ve followed through on your premises completely. If my mother had aborted me when I was a fetus, I would not be here—true. However, it is equally true that I would not be here if I had just been a cumspot on my father’s towel. Surely you’re not saying that the it is unethical for a man to “spill his seed,” and then claiming this is not religiously based. The line, quite simply, should be drawn at the point where budding human beings are possessed of intellectual capabilities exceeding those of animals we kill for sport and flesh.
PS: I am not at all against using excerberose homo sapiens are organ banks. I think, at the moment, this is a much better option than stem-cell research, as we could probably bring it about even now, and it would save and/or enhance millions of lives.
— Stephen Schweizer - Nov 14, 04:22 PM - #If conception is NOT when life begins,and a clump of cells is just that and not a living human being.
Then at least concider this-
Soon after you were conceived you were no more than a clump of cells.
— ausblog - Nov 15, 03:45 AM - #This clump of cells was you at your earliest stage, you had plenty of growing to do but this clump of cells was you none the less. Think about it.
Aren’t you glad you were left unhindered to develope further.
Safe inside your mother until you were born.
ausblog,
I am glad to be here today. However, if I had been aborted when I was still a clump of cells, there never would have been a “me,” and hence, there would be no way for me to regret my loss of life. You have to posit an entity which doesn’t exist at the time of abortion—the future self—in order to draw equivalence between abortion and murder.
If I had been aborted as a mere clump of cells, my educated guess is that that clump of cells would regret its demise no more than a bacteria which is destroyed by a bacteriophage.
-Stephen Schweizer
— Stephen Schweizer - Nov 15, 05:36 PM - #Some people will get it, some people won’t…..
— ausblog - Nov 15, 08:58 PM - #Logic check.
“Even very late in pregnancy, when a fetus may have some sort of rudimentary awareness, it lacks all the features traditionally advanced as moral distinctions between humans and other animals: a sense of self or identity, the capacity for abstract thought and reflection, and the capacity for moral choice.” We assign moral personhood to — and I’ll bet you a nickel you’d vigorously defend the moral personhood of — many people who lack these characteristics.
“Treating fetuses as persons has harmful consequences, even if we simultaneously insist that their interests are trumped by women’s right to control their bodies. For one, it means endorsing the notion that the one-third of American women who will have an abortion will be killing a child.” Here you reason, ‘Abortion would be uncomfortable if fetuses were persons; ergo, fetuses are not persons.’
— Michael F. Cannon - Nov 16, 09:52 AM - #How unsurprising—someone who finds the notion that abortion is murder to raise sticky issues decides it isn’t murder because, essentially, he believes it’s not.
I would like a chart demonstrating which persons have moral personhood and which don’t. If the severely retarded, people in comas, certain tribes of aborigines, children less than a year old, etc., can be murdered in the same spirit with which a root canal can be carried out, that would be good to know.
Really, this article is appalling.
— guy - Nov 16, 12:20 PM - #Guy: Now, really, why would “certain tribes in the aborigines” be in the same category as “children less than a year old, people in comas, and the severely retarded”?
Anyway, I could pretty easily draw you a chart, if you’d like. However, I’d like to hear your criteria for moral personhood first, and some justification for this criteria.
— Stephen Schweizer - Nov 20, 10:27 AM - #