This week I made a dear friend of mine cry, for what I think is the first time in the long time I've known her, just by insisting on an analytic truth. "Abortion is murder" is a debatable proposition; sometimes, at least, it might not be. "Abortion is homicide" is purely analytic. "Abortion" means the killing of a thing that is a human being; "Homicide" means "the killing of a human being" (homi-cide from homo sapiens sapiens). It's not quite a tautology, because there are sorts of homicides that aren't abortions; but every abortion is certainly a homicide. That's analytic.
As such, abortion is the sort of thing that cannot be a right. Self-defense is a natural right that may sometimes -- often! -- entail homicide. Yet homicide itself is not and cannot be a right without disposing of the basic human equality that underlies the theory of rights. To say that one class of people has the right to kill another is to deny that human beings are equals in this basic sense. Homicide must always be justified.
We can argue all day about what the proper justifications are or might be; we can argue at length about whose authority suffices as justificatory. What we can't argue about sensibly is whether or not a homicide is under discussion.
Yet I found myself hearing things like "Those are not human beings." Yes they are, undeniably. You can see from their genetic code that they are homo sapiens. That's analytic too, literally written in the thing. "It is an insult to compare a being like me to them." No it isn't; you were one, and were we all, necessarily. It is only an accident that we happen to be older and bigger now. "If they're a being, they should be able to survive in the world on their own without my help." A born baby can't do that, not for a long time; nor can an elder, sometimes, though no one would deny that they were (and had long been) human beings.
A lot must be at stake in this capacity to kill your children for whatever reason, without having to justify it to anyone else. It can't just be money; there's not enough money in the world to have convinced my mother to kill her children. The denial of logical truth, of the evidence of your eyes, it can't just be ideology. There is something awful hiding here.
17 comments:
Newborns don't look much like adult humans either. We are just used to seeing the stages from the point of birth up to adulthood, so learn the connection over time.
If the contents of the womb were visible I think there would be fewer people who would allow abortion, and certainly fewer would choose it.
An acquaintance of mine who was earning her master's in philosophy once proposed that it is language that makes us human. Her idea was that we aren't fully human until we can use language.
There seems to be this ongoing search for ways to define humanity in such a way as to allow abortion to not be homicide.
"Language use" as a yardstick for humanity has problems. The fabulous (I use the term carefully) novel NEXT by Michael Crichton highlights the concerns. In real life, KoKo the gorilla and Chaser the border collie push the boundary hard. But mostly it leaves "normal" humans the problem of our genetic fellows who have various forms of aphasia. What, when a dog like Chaser can comprehend and respond to human speech better than most infants and toddlers -- and sad-to-say, many of the very elderly.
"...language that makes us human..."
'...KoKo the gorilla and Chaser the border collie "
I normally object to the use of "person" in this discussion, because it is just another way to try to make it ok to kill humans that don't rise to the level of "people." ('OK, fine, maybe a live fetus is a homo sapiens, and therefore a living human being; but it's not a person.')
However, the usage could be appropriate where the usage expands 'personhood' beyond humanity. The category of "person" should at minimum include all humans; but it might also include some animals who prove capable of using language and, therefore, reasoning. The category should only be used to expand protections to more entities, however, not as a backdoor to reduce the sphere of protection. That was how 'race' came to be important, as a backdoor to reduce the sphere of protections, and we can see what evil and baleful effects that had on civilization and on all of us.
J., yes, I agree. Using language this way is very problematic. People who for whatever reason (trauma, illness, etc.), lose the ability to use or process language lose their humanity and so we can kill them, or at least impose limits on their human rights.
Grim, good points. Christians believe that God is three persons, so the term can extend beyond humanity.
Let's suppose we confine "using" language to literacy. So KoKo and Chaser are ruled right out. Only animate creatures who can "read and write" are human persons.
So, what's been our history with such definition on, say, voting? And what democratic processes do when the majority of voters impose definitions (restrictions, etc) on illiterate non-voting not-quite-persons?
Wanna get into sex-selective abortions? Female fetuses being defined as a family burden to be disposed of while male fetuses are human assets to be cultivated ...
It's that history, J Melcher, which inspires me to propose the principle that 'personhood' can only ever expand the field of rights beyond humanity. It must never be allowed to restrict the field.
There is something awful hiding here.
That 'something' has been ID'd as the Father of Lies. This is a battle against principalities and powers, not flesh and blood.
Difficult to believe, in these days of 'comity', that the nice girl next door is a mouthpiece for Lucifer.
There is something awful hiding here.
If a woman has had an abortion; or has encouraged another woman to have an abortion; or has stood by silently while another woman had an abortion then it is very difficult for that woman to acknowledge the validity of the arguments against abortion. It is absolutely essential to that woman that she believe the kinds of statements you say you are hearing: Those are not human beings. It is an insult … If they’re a being…
To have been complicit in abortion and then to acknowledge that abortion is the killing of a human being means facing the fact that one has done something that is both wrong and not fixable. Where does one go for forgiveness? How does one make this right? Very few of us are as clear-sighted as Camille Paglia, who can see the moral superiority of the pro-life side and still be pro-abortion. Most of us need denial.
Given where we are now with so many of us (men as well as women) having been complicit in abortions, the unwillingness to concede that “a homicide is under discussion” is perfectly understandable. The real question is how we got so far down that road that so many of us need to deny the humanity of aborted children. I think Naomi Wolf does a good job of considering this in her piece, “Our Bodies, Our Souls”:
As a result of the bad old days before the Second Wave of feminism, we tend to understand abortion as a desperately-needed exit from near-total male control of our reproductive lives. This scenario posits an unambiguous chain of power and powerlessness in which men control women and women, in order to survive, must have unquestioned control over fetuses. It is this worldview, all too real in its initial conceptualization, that has led to the dread among many pro-choice women of departing from a model of woman-equals-human-life, fetus-equals-not-much.
And here we are. Wolf’s essay is 37 years old but her thoughts about acknowledging the gravity of abortion are still applicable.
https://www.salon.com/2016/04/07/camille_paglia_feminists_have_abortion_wrong_trump_and_hillary_miscues_highlight_a_frozen_national_debate/
https://naomiwolf.substack.com/p/our-bodies-our-souls
...facing the fact that one has done something that is both wrong and not fixable. Where does one go for forgiveness?
It's a two-step process (with some sequelae, but they aren't directly related to the two steps). The first is to recognize that one has screwed up, to recognize the imperfection of one's humanity. The second is that where to go: oneself. It's necessary first to forgive your own self; only then can anyone else do so, and only with forgiving yourself is it possible to move on, to do better in the moving.
Both of those take courage.
Eric Hines
It never occurred to me to set up a multi-step program, but I’ve been to war three times. I know a lot of killers. We used to use the term as a sort of group bonding: “Morning, killers!” It just meant you were one of us, and we are going to ride out today with rifles in our hands.
I think also of Kingdom of Heaven, where the marshal declares to the Baron that his son is a murderer. “So am I,” he answers.
It never occurred to me that would be the issue, but of course it is. Thank you, Elise. I’ve been trying to formulate my apology for days — it is my duty, having made her cry — and I couldn’t decide what wrong I was apologizing for. Speaking the truth doesn’t seem like one. But I shall reflect on this.
I agree, Eric, but if one truly comes to a realization that abortion is murder, the immensity of the misdeed can seem beyond forgiveness. I think Wolf's ideas about - in essence - making amends are very useful.
You're welcome, Grim. Like you, I do not think speaking the truth requires an apology but hurting a friends does seem to require one. An interesting conundrum. I hope your reflection brings you clarity.
I think there are very few, indeed, actions that are beyond forgiveness. I'm a firm believer in the possibility of redemption and rehabilitation. Forgiving oneself is a necessary first step on that path. Of course making amends is the rest of that path, and what's being atoned for may require a longer path than one's lifetime permits. But we should walk it, or try to, anyway.
I do not think speaking the truth requires an apology but hurting a friends does seem to require one.
If the truth hurts the friend, that's on the friend, not the speaker of the truth. Two things here, though: maybe the truth could have been spoken more gently than it was. The roughness might want apology. The other thing is that the truth hurting the friend being on the friend doesn't mean we shouldn't then help the friend deal with that truth, or with why that truth caused that hurt.
Eric Hines
"There is something awful hiding here."
As in the heart of every man. I am reminded of this all too often when looking inward.
C.S. Lewis warned us that if we find ourselves thinking a crime is "unforgivable," it just means that all our cant about forgiveness meant nothing--we were really only saying that the things we needed to be forgiven for up to that point weren't truly sinful. When we talked of forgiveness we really meant being let off the hook, as if we'd scored a pardon from a friendly President for something we never really thought should warrant punishment anyway. All that falls away when we have to come to terms with a profound and sickening remorse for something we have no power to erase or make right.
So there is indeed something awful hiding. People who enabled the Nazi concentration camps faced the same dilemma: for anyone not supremely courageous about facing the abyss in his own heart, the first desperate step was to deny that what one did was really as awful as one's neighbors and conscience are now suggesting it was. And in the case of abortion, there's something to it. None of us feels that the termination of an ectopic pregnancy is a reprehensible murder. That tiny growth has human DNA, but we can scarcely think of it as a human like ourselves. The loss of the pregnancy is tragic, but nothing like as tragic as the loss of a pregnancy in the 30th week. It's not crazy to say there's a scale of developing humanity from the 8-cell stage to a creature recognizable human in an ultrasound, even before viability.
Which isn't to say that the right moral path isn't recognizing the value of the tiny life and protecting it at almost all costs. It's just to say that what drives that moral conviction isn't quite the same as to say that the life of an 8-cell blastocyst is exactly the same thing as the life of the mother.
Still, for a young woman who fears and knows she is pregnant when she desperately wants not to be, it's understandable that she'll cast about for anything that will help her feel better about the overwhelming urge simple to make it stop, make it go away. She is not, without great effort, going to force herself to think of her problem as a human being to whom she owes a duty of mercy and in fact considerable self-sacrifice. She's facing a pregnancy that will wreck her life as she knows it. It takes love and courage to accept that and move on--perhaps later to find that the "wrecking" was just a path to a new and better life. Perhaps later to find that she really did wreck her life, but that's the breaks, and we don't necessarily get to kill someone innocent to get out of even a very bad jam.
It's not crazy to say there's a scale of developing humanity from the 8-cell stage to a creature recognizable human in an ultrasound, even before viability.
I never said that position was crazy -- I just said it doesn't make any sense to me. I don't know what 'a scale of developing humanity' looks like, or how it would be applied, or why it should be the standard instead of the crystal-clear standard of "is it a living human being, or not?"
Nevertheless it is a hugely popular standard, even if it is not a thoroughly-examined and built-out one. I think nearly everyone in America wants to apply some version of that standard, myself excluded of course, but it's very popular. It thus has a kind of democratic legitimacy, even if it isn't philosophically rigorous. "Common sense" standards aren't always rigorous -- maybe they usually aren't, just because they arise from popularity and the bulk of the people aren't inclined to thinking that way.
I'm sorry for your friend; she's clearly in a very bad place indeed. As with most of the people here, I'm pretty sure that she's got blood on her hands in some way/shape/form, and can only agree with what's been said so far. One exception: E Hines's comment about turning into oneself for forgiveness. I disagree-- turning into oneself is what got you into this situation to begin with. What comes from within is not forgiveness, but repentance, and indeed, there is no "moving on" without that first. But "self-forgiveness" is a self-indulgent lie.
But your friend's situation is even worse than that, I'm afraid. Because very likely, this isn't just an isolated bad decision. Rather, it's one of the stones in the arch holding up her life-- and if that one goes, so do all the others. Abortion is the necessary, bloody "repair job", for a life of promiscuity with sleezeball men; a life devoted to selfish pleasure, absent deep connection with reliable people; life in a world where weakness is treated with abusive contempt; where there is no forgiveness and no ultimate justice; where everyone around you is constantly manipulating you, with lies and partial truths, and where you do the same.
Yet there are some things that we cannot NOT know, among them, that abortion is homicide. But she probably also cannot NOT know that: promiscuity is not empowering, but rather hurts people, especially women, and doubly especially older women, and very specifically herself and her friends. Women are different than men. Human dignity can't be measured by money or power, without enabling terrible abuses. She's dedicated her life to principles that were lies, people who manipulate her and lie to her, and goals that were mirages. Imagine being in the situation of someone who, from 1930 to 1945, was a big supporter of the Nazis: endlessly rehashing the injustice of Versailles, explaining the scientific basis of racism to people, defending the "removal" of Jews to Poland as wholly justified by the historic truth and economic necessity, Germany's legitimate need and right to "Lebensraum" and the Anschluss of German-speaking areas, the defensive nature of the wars with (uh) everybody, and so on. Once you start doubting ANY of those things, the whole edifice comes tumbling down.
I don't know what to tell you, other than, she's crying because she is living in rebellion against the truth-- you shouldn't in any way compromise on that yourself. But it sounds like she needs a safe place to go when it all comes crashing down, and you could help her in that way, I think.
Janet
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