Maverick Philosopher

Caiati on Feser on the GOP Platform re: Abortion

This just in from Dr. Vito Caiati:

I am wondering if you have been following the ongoing, intense debate on the GOP platform that has taken place on X and in several conservative online journals, which was ignited by Edward Feser and other social conservatives, who are strongly critical of the removal of long-standing planks supporting a national ban on abortion and in favor of the traditional definition of marriage, viewing both as fundamental capitulations to the increasingly hegemonic secular ideology of the Left. (Feser on X: “The Left will force us into the catacombs, while the Right will tell us that going into the catacombs voluntarily is the most politically realistic way to keep the Left from forcing us to go there”).

Yesterday, Feser posted a short piece on his blog, “Now is the time for social conservatives to fight,” that references his tweets on X and several articles on this matter (https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/). I think what we are seeing here is the populist nature of the MAGA movement, headed by Trump, ever more openly differentiating itself from the traditional conservatism of the GOP, and I am curious to know your thoughts about this leftward cultural shift. I myself think that Feser makes some excellent points and see no reason for him and others not to fight for their moral and social ideals within the party, but also that, given the grave crisis of the nation, these do not justify any hesitation about aggressively supporting Trump/Vance.

We've discussed this before, Vito.  See, for starters, Abortion and Last Night's GOP Debate (24 August 2023).  There I wrote:

The overturning of Roe v. Wade returned the abortion question to the states. That means that each state is empowered to enact its own laws regulating abortion. Some states will permit abortion up to the moment of birth. Others will not. Different states, different laws.

What then are we to make of Mike Pence and Senator Tim Scott and their call for a Federal law that bans abortion (apart from the usual exceptions) during the last 15 weeks of pregnancy? 

Am I missing something? (When I write about political and legal issues, I write as a concerned citizen and not as an expert in these areas.) It strikes me as obvious that if the abortion issue is for the states to decide, then there cannot be any federal abortion laws. 

[. . .]

The precise question is: How is a federal abortion restriction consistent with the states' right to decide the abortion laws? ND Governor Doug Burgum alone seemed to understand the problem, but his fleeting remark failed to set it forth clearly.

The answer to the precise question is that the federal restriction is not consistent with states' rights. It is unconstitutional.

This is not a very satisfying answer given that abortion is a moral abomination. (See my Abortion category for arguments.) But arguments, no matter how good, cut no ice in the teeth of our concupiscence. This is explained in my Substack article, Abortion and the Wages of Concupiscence Unrestrained.

In the Comments, you agreed with me:

“The precise question is: How is a federal abortion restriction consistent with the states' right to decide the abortion laws?”

Like you, Bill, I am no expert in constitutional law, but I believe that such a restriction would not be consistent with the right of the states to determine the law on this matter. The confusion of Pence and Scott appears to arise from their understanding of the wording of the Supreme Court in the Dobbs Case, in which the majority held: “The Constitution does not confer a right to abortion; Roe and Casey are overruled; and the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives” (https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf). Specifically, they seem to interpret the phrase “returned to the people and their elected representatives” as one that permits the federal legislature, the Congress, to establish a national ban on abortion during the last 15 weeks of pregnancy, save for unusual cases. However, I think that such an interpretation contradicts the Tenth Amendment, which decrees that “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” Of the enumerated or expressed powers granted to the United States, i.e., the federal government, none include that of regulating abortion, nor is such regulation proscribed to the states; therefore, such power resides with the latter. Moreover, an attempt to utilize the Fourteenth Amendment, which protects the rights of individuals granted by the Constitution, would not permit federal intervention, since the Court found in Dobbs that it does not grant such a right.

Posted by: Vito B. Caiati | Friday, August 25, 2023 at 02:58 AM

I responded:

Vito's comment above is a model of how a good comment is constructed.

Note that he deals directly with the question I raised. He does not go off on a tangent, or change the subject to a topic that interests him but is not germane to my entry. He engages what I said and he lets me know whether he agrees or disagrees. As it is, he agrees.

He then supplements what I said in two ways. He points out the relevance of the Tenth Amendment to the question I posed. That had occurred to me, but I failed to mention it. Governor Burgum alluded to it near the end of that segment of the debate when he whipped out his pocket Constitution.

But what I found most useful in Vito's comment is his explanation of the confusion of Pence and Scott. Vito: >>Specifically, they seem to interpret the phrase “returned to the people and their elected representatives” as one that permits the federal legislature, the Congress, to establish a national ban on abortion during the last 15 weeks of pregnancy, save for unusual cases.<<

So the mistake that Pence and Scott made was to confuse the people of the U.S. with the people of a particular state. Here is 10A again: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

Now I don't think one has to be a Constitutional scholar to know what that means. "The people" refers to the people of a given state, such as North Dakota or Massachusetts, not to all the people of the U.S.

Posted by: BV | Friday, August 25, 2023 at 02:02 PM

See also: More on the Politics of Abortion: Ron Paul and Subsidiarity.  (26 September 2023)  This entry is relevant to Feser's position inasmuch as he is a traditional Catholic who, I expect,  accepts the principle of subsidiarity.

Also relevant to Feser's position is his integralism. Another prominent integralist is Adrian Vermeule who refers to his integralism as political Catholicism. According to integralism, traditional Roman Catholic abortion doctrine could be justifiably imposed by the state. 

As I recall, you accepted my rejection of integralism.

You say, " . . . Feser makes some excellent points and [I] see no reason for him and others not to fight for their moral and social ideals within the party . . . ."

What are these points, Vito, and how could Feser fight for his abortion convictions within the American political system, given the Dobbs decision?

I suspect that something much deeper is at issue here. I suspect that what conservatives such as Feser are ultimately opposing is our constitutional system of government, as she was founded to be, with its commitment to religious liberty and federalism.  What he wants is a different sort of political order than the one the Founders bequeathed to us. 

One thing you and I and Feser all agree on: abortion is in almost all cases a moral abomination from the moment of conception on.  And if this is so, it it so always and everywhere. But SCOTUS has spoken and the issue is now one for the states.  Some states will enshrine the abomination, so to speak, others will not. We don't like that, but we have to accept it. I can think of only two alternatives: either change our system of government or convince people to rein in their concupiscence. Neither of these alternatives has much chance of success.

 

A Common Mistake in the Abortion Debate

Here is an oldie but a goodie of mine from almost 20 years ago (17 July 2004) dredged up just now via the Wayback Machine. Reproduced verbatim. Perfection needs no modification.

........................

It is commonly assumed that opposition to abortion can be based only on religious premises. To show that this assumption is false, only one counterexample is needed. What follows is an anti-abortion argument that does not invoke any religious tenet:

(1) Infanticide is morally wrong; (2) There is no morally relevant difference between abortion and infancticide; ergo, (3) Abortion is morally wrong.

Whether one accepts this argument or not, it clearly invokes no religious premise. It is therefore manifestly incorrect to say or imply that all opposition to abortion is religiously-based. Theists and atheists alike can make use of the above argument.

Is it a good argument? Well, it is valid: if one accepts the premises, then one must accept the conclusion. That is a logical ‘must’: one who accepts the premises but balks at the conclusion embraces a contradiction. But there is nothing to stop the argument from being run in reverse: Deny the conclusion, then deny one or both of the premises. Thus, one might argue from ~(3) and (2) to ~(1). Someone who argues in this way is within his logical rights, but is saddled with having to swallow the moral acceptability of infanticide.

Trump's Dobbs Strategy

I'd say it's the right one.  You are free to differ.

Related:

Abortion and the Wages of Concupiscence Unrestrained

and

Slavery, Abortion, and 'Skin in the Game'

 

The Politics of Abortion

Ron Paul and the principle of subsidiarity.

Top o' the Stack.

What is Potentiality?

Substack latest. An exploration of a much-misunderstood notion.

Mike Pence 'Suspends' his Campaign

Here: 

"I came here to say it’s become clear to me this is not my time. So after much deliberation I have decided to suspend my campaign for president effective today," he said onstage. "

It'll never be your time, pal. You're a superannuated relic of a time long gone. Good riddance. Your use of the weasel word 'suspend'  fits well with the slipperiness of the professional pol. It beggars understanding that anyone would fund your campaign.

Pence called for federal abortion legislation to establish a 15-week minimum national standard . . . . 

The fool seems unaware that the abortion question was returned to the states by the overturning of Roe v. Wade. To call for federal abortion legislation after the 2022 Dobbs decision makes no sense at all.  Or am I missing something? It is hard to believe that a seasoned and well-connected politician such as Pence could be either that stupid or that ignorant.

Is it not more likely that I am missing some nuance of the law?

More on the Politics of Abortion: Ron Paul and Subsidiarity

Ron Paul. M.  D.:

I strongly believe that the more difficult the issue is, the more local should be its solution. That is the real success of the Dobbs decision, because abortion should have never been a federal issue in the first place. Overturning Roe v Wade returned us to where we belonged, with state and local laws governing all issues not Constitutionally reserved for the Federal Government.

Bigger problems are best decided closest to home. Look for example at what happened when parents started going to school board meetings and demanding accountability on everything from Covid restrictions to transgenders in school bathrooms. Parents were extremely effective because they only had to travel to the local school board meeting to demand – and get – results. Does anyone think they would have been able to get the same results at the Department of Education in Washington DC?

Similarly, immigration is much better handled by those closer to the action. Ideally it would be a property rights issue, but at the least states like Texas should be taking an active role in preventing a foreign invasion into its borders rather than waiting for Washington to make a move.

Ron Paul is urging something very much like the Catholic doctrine of subsidiarity. David A. Bosnich, The Principle of Subsidiarity:

One of the key principles of Catholic social thought is known as the principle of subsidiarity. This tenet holds that nothing should be done by a larger and more complex organization which can be done as well by a smaller and simpler organization. In other words, any activity which can be performed by a more decentralized entity should be. This principle is a bulwark of limited government and personal freedom. It conflicts with the passion for centralization and bureaucracy characteristic of the Welfare State.

The principle of subsidiarity strikes a reasonable balance between statism and collectivism as represented by the manifest drift of recent Democrat administrations, on the one hand,  and the libertarianism of those who would take privatization to an extreme, on the other.  

Subsidiarity also fits well with federalism, a return to which is a prime desideratum and one more reason not to vote for Democrats.  'Federalism' is  one of those words that does not wear its meaning on its sleeve, and is likely to mislead.  Federalism is not the view that all powers should be vested in the Federal or central government; it is the principle enshrined in the 10th Amendment to the U. S. Constitution: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

Whether or not you are Catholic, if you accept the principle of subsidiarity, then you have yet another reason to oppose the Left.  The argument is this:

1. The Left encroaches upon civil society, weakening it and limiting it, and correspondingly expanding the power and the reach of the state.  (For example, the closure of Catholic Charities in Illinois because of an Obama administration adoption rule.)

2. Subsidiarity helps maintain civil society as a buffer zone and intermediate sector between the purely private (the individual and the familial) and the state.

Therefore

3. If you value the autonomy and robustness of civil society, then you ought to oppose  the Left (and the Democrat Party which is now hard-leftist to the core.)

The truth of the second premise is self-evident.  If you wonder whether the Left does in fact encroach upon civil society, then see my post Obama's Assault on the Institutions of Civil Society.

The Politics of Abortion Again

Tony Flood writes and wants my response:

What if we gain the presidency and lose our soul?

I believe the conceptus (a fortiori, the embryo, the fetus) is an immature, but complete, human being with all the rights accruing thereto, including the right not to be wantonly destroyed. Most of the electorate, however, disagrees and will not extend protection to a human fetus younger than 15 weeks, or so Trump calculates. If Republicans insist on such protection, as I interpret his calculus, the majority will electorally complete America's descent into a one-party tyranny. In the American gulag we will reflect on the price of principle. Trump will not (because he cannot) provide the analytical rigor we need now to weigh life against liberty.

Our topic is not the morality of abortion, but the politics thereof. Tony and I agree that abortion is a grave moral evil, from conception on.  (For arguments, see my Abortion category.) But as Tony rightly points out, most of the electorate disagrees.  As for Trump's calculation, I will assume that it is correct.  And I suspect that Trump is right that if Republicans say the kind of stupid things that Mike Pence said in the first debate, the chances of a Republican return to the White House will be appreciably lessened.

I will now reproduce portions of something I wrote earlier which Tony may not have read.

The overturning of Roe v. Wade returned the abortion question to the states. That means that each state is now empowered to enact its own laws regulating abortion. Some states will permit abortion up to the moment of birth. Others will not. Different states, different laws.

What then are we to make of Mike Pence and Senator Tim Scott and their  call for a Federal law that bans abortion (apart from the usual exceptions) during the last 15 weeks of pregnancy? 

Am I missing something? [. . .] It strikes me as obvious that if the abortion issue is for the states to decide, then there cannot be any federal abortion laws. 

Nikki Haley and Pence danced around this issue but their heated tango  was irrelevant blather. [. . .]

The precise question is: How is a federal abortion restriction consistent with the states' right to decide the abortion laws? [. . .]

The answer to the precise question is that a federal restriction is not consistent with states' rights. It is unconstitutional.

This is not a very satisfying answer given that abortion is a moral abomination. (See my Abortion category for arguments.) But arguments, no matter how good, cut no ice in the teeth of our concupiscence. This is explained in my Substack article, Abortion and the Wages of Concupiscence Unrestrained.

Now Tony, you must respond directly to what I said above, in particular, to the third paragraph. Am I right or am I wrong? If you think I am wrong, explain why.

I now add a couple of further points that I consider very important.

1) Politics is a practical game. It is not about perfect versus imperfect. It is (almost) always about better or worse. If you sit on the sidelines waiting for the perfect candidate, you are a fool.  Trump is flawed, but he is far better than Biden or anyone else the Dems are likely to replace him with. So if Trump gets the nod, the conservative must vote for Trump; if De Santis, then De Santis. 

2) Abortion is just one issue of several. Here are some issues that are equally if not more important. Crime.  No doubt, unborn lives matter.  But then so do born lives.  A little old lady should be able to walk down the street to buy groceries without fear of being beaten to death with a tire iron. Democrat policies have led to an unprecedented upsurge in unspeakably vicious forms of violence against persons and property. National sovereignty. The Biden administration is guilty of utter dereliction of duty in intentionally allowing the invasion of the country by drug cartels, human traffickers, terrorists, people bearing sub-tropical diseases, etc.  Financial collapse.  Assaults on constitutionally-guaranteed liberties. I could go on. 

My suggestion is that presidential candidates should shut up about abortion. There is nothing that they can do about it at the the federal level. This issue has been returned to the states.  

Tony asked: "What if we gain the presidency and lose our soul?" 

My answer is that if we don't gain the presidency then we lose everything including our soul. Think about it. If the Left wins, then they will pack the Supreme Court and reinstate Roe v. Wade.

And Tony, haven't we already lost our collective soul? You admit that the majority of the electorate has no moral objection to abortion on demand at any stage of fetal development.  A soul that has already been lost cannot be lost a second time.

Where am I going wrong?

Abortion and Last Night's GOP Debate

The overturning of Roe v. Wade returned the abortion question to the states. That means that each state is empowered to enact its own laws regulating abortion. Some states will permit abortion up to the moment of birth. Others will not. Different states, different laws.

What then are we to make of Mike Pence and Senator Tim Scott and their  call for a Federal law that bans abortion (apart from the usual exceptions) during the last 15 weeks of pregnancy? 

Am I missing something? (When I write about political and legal issues, I write as a concerned citizen and not as an expert in these areas.) It strikes me as obvious that if the abortion issue is for the states to decide, then there cannot be any federal abortion laws. 

Nikki Haley and Pence danced around this issue but their heated tango  was irrelevant blather. Pence insisted that the abortion question was a moral one. No doubt, but that it is not to the point. Haley irrelevantly asserted that that an anti-abortion majority has not been seen in the Senate in “over 100 years.” and “Don’t make women feel like they have to decide on this issue when you know we don’t have 60 Senate votes.” 

The precise question is: How is a federal abortion restriction consistent with the states' right to decide the abortion laws? ND Governor Doug Burgum alone seemed to understand the problem, but his fleeting remark failed to set it forth clearly.

The answer to the precise question is that the federal restriction is not consistent with states' rights. It is unconstitutional.

This is not a very satisfying answer given that abortion is a moral abomination. (See my Abortion category for arguments.) But arguments, no matter how good, cut no ice in the teeth of our concupiscence. This is explained in my Substack article, Abortion and the Wages of Concupiscence Unrestrained.

How Low Can We Sink?

Seen at SOTU 2023 as worn by Senator Ed Markey, Massachusetts Democrat:

For a long time now, the Democrats have been the abortion party. But under the 'leadership' of the 'devout Catholic,' Joe Biden, they've 'evolved' to use the Hillary word which means    devolved: they now celebrate abortion by expressing 'love' for it.  And they are not above using rank Orwellianisms to express their 'love.' "Abortion is health care" is the most outrageous of them.  

Story here.

Slavery, Abortion, and 'Skin in the Game'

Substack latest.

A Common Mistake in the Abortion Discussion

It is often said that a human fetus is a potential human life. Not so! A human fetus is an actual human life.

 

Consider a third-trimester human fetus, alive and well, developing in the normal way in the mother. It is potentially many things: a neonate, a two-year-old, a speaker of some language, an adolescent, an adult, a corpse. And let's be clear that a potential X is not an X. A potential oak tree is not an oak tree. A potential neonate is not a neonate. A potential speaker of Turkish is not a Turkish speaker. But an acorn, though only potentially an oak tree, is an actual acorn, not a potential acorn. And its potentialities are actually possessed by it, not potentially possessed by it.

 

The typical human fetus is an actual, living, human biological individual that actually possesses various potentialities. So if you accept that there is a general, albeit not exceptionless, prohibition against the taking of innocent human life, then you need to explain why you think a third-trimester fetus does not fall under this prohibition. You need to find a morally relevant difference -- not just any old difference, but a difference that makes a moral difference -- between the fetus and any born human individual.

Two Excellent Substack Articles

Keith Burgess-Jackson, The Abortion Pendulum

Michael Robillard, How I Left Academia, or, How Academia Left Me

Fetal Rights and the Death Penalty: Consistent or Inconsistent?

Substack latest. 

Is it consistent to support both fetal rights and the moral acceptability of capital punishment? There are two senses of ‘consistency’ at issue, and in neither sense is there any inconsistency.

"The People are Supreme"

Thus read a protester's placard. Now that is rich!

The implication is that in a democracy the people decide, not nine black-robed elitists, when the whole point of overturning Roe v. Wade is to return the question of the legality of abortion to the states where -- wait for it --  the people will decide.

Abortion and the Wages of Concupiscence Unrestrained

Why do the arguments against abortion have such little effect?

Substack latest.

See also Anthony G. Flood, Abortion, euphemism, and moral evasion.

Democracy and Abortion Law

There is no need for me to make the point when Malcolm Pollack has made it so well:

As a detached observer, I have to ask: If the two most important things in the moral universe are Democracy and abortion law, why is it a catastrophe when the Court decides that abortion law should be determined democratically? All that the Court has said in the leaked opinion is, in effect, this:

“You folks seem to care a very great deal about the sovereignty of the people. Very well, then — if you really are fit to rule yourselves, here is a vexatiously difficult question upon which the Constitution is silent, and which, therefore, must be decided by the sovereign power of the nation. (That’s you, the People, in case you haven’t been following along, you knuckleheads!) We were wrong to take this sovereign power away from you back in ’73, and so now we’re giving it back to you.

Happy Democracy! Mind how you go.”

The response to all this, however, from the ironically named Democrats, has been to explode with anger that such an important issue might actually have to be worked out in a democratic fashion, by things like debating and voting. And perhaps that’s reasonable, because we don’t do any of that very well at all anymore; it seems that we are actually rather farther along in the great cycle of Polybius than the people running things would care to admit.

So, here we are, America: you’ve been doing a lot of yelling about “MUH DEMOCRACY” lately, and now it looks like you’re about to be served up a heaping helping of it. If you don’t really want it after all, that’s, fine — but in that case I think we’d be glad if you would please shut the hell up about it.

Addendum (5/13)

Malcolm above implies that the abortion question is "vexatiously difficult." In one sense it is and in another sense it isn't.  Clarity will be served if we distinguish these two senses. I will begin with the second.

1) I take the central abortion question to be the question whether the aborting (and thus the intentional killing) of human fetuses is morally permissible at every stage of fetal development for any reason the mother may have. (I don't doubt that there are some good prima facie reasons for permitting abortion at any stage of pregnancy in such special cases as rape, etc.)   Now if this is the question, then it has a fairly easy answer: no, abortion is not morally permissible.  For we all accept -- I hope -- that there is a general moral prohibition against the intentional killing of innocent human beings.  Now human fetuses are human and they are innocent. It follows that the general prohibition against the intentional killing of innocent human beings extends to pre-natal human beings at every state of gestation. More needs to be said to counter various misunderstandings and objections, but that was fairly easy, don't you think?

2) The question becomes difficult and vexing when we descend from the general level to that of a particular woman in particular circumstances who becomes pregnant, but didn't intend to become pregnant, and doesn't want to be pregnant for whatever reason (she can't afford another child; giving birth will interfere with her career plans; she wants to go to Europe, etc.) It is not very difficult to know what ONE ought to do; what is difficult is to do it. For then it is not ONE who is doing it, but YOU. 

To put it in Kantian terms, duty and inclination come into conflict at the level of the individual agent.  I know what I ought to do, but I am very strongly inclined not to do it, and if I live in a permissive society the mores and laws of which allow me to do what is morally wrong, I will probably "go the way of all flesh," follow the path of least resistance and then put my intellect to work rationalizing my decision to take the easy way out, and then make use of the decadent West's multiple opportunities for 24-7 distraction to induce amnesia  about what I did.

To Provoke a Pre-Emptive Crap Storm?

Is that why it was leaked?

...........................

A correspondent replies:

Yes, Bill, I believe so. Someone in Sotomayor's or Kagan's office. 

It was a call to action. They weren't going to let their side be blindsided.

The leaker will either be protected or, if caught, then lionized. For them, the end of Roe is the end of the world.  Roberts will do for Roe what he did for Obamacare. The homes of Alito et al. will be picketed, their occupants threatened to revise their opinion. The enemy's been planning for this as they have for the next election.

Sadly, our political opponents are indeed enemies. If you are one of us, broadly conservative and/or classically liberal, and you do not understand this, then you are a useful idiot. One of the reasons the destructive Left is so hard to defeat, despite the obvious lunacy of so many of their assertions and policies, is because of this very large group of useful idiots.  It includes roughly half of the Republicans in government, and a large segment of rank-and-file Democrats who live in the past, or for some other reason are oblivious to the threat the 'woke' folk pose to them, their progeny, their beliefs, their security, and their way of life. If you are not on the hard Left and you voted for Biden, then you are a  useful idiot. I have noticed, however, that people do not like being called idiots; adding the qualifier 'useful' does little to mitigate their umbrage.  For they  understand that they are being called useless to the cause of the Sane and the Reasonable.

Secular Arguments against Abortion

Substack latest.

A question rarely asked is the one I raise in this article:  

Is the abortion question tied to religion in such a way that opposition to abortion can be based only on religious premises?

Or are there good reasons to oppose abortion that are nor religiously based, reasons that secularists could accept?  The answer to the last question is plainly in the affirmative.  The following argument contains no religious premises.

1) Infanticide is morally wrong.
2) There is no morally relevant difference between (late-term) abortion and  infanticide.
Therefore
3) (Late-term) abortion is morally wrong.

Are There Reproductive Rights?

There are, but abortion is not one of them.

Substack latest.

When Does Life Begin?

A brief Substack entry which makes a very simple point that, amazingly, is not appreciated by vast numbers in this country 'thanks' to the erosion of standards of thought and behavior caused by so-called 'liberals.'

'A Fetus That Was Born'

More linguistic chicanery from the Left. Obviously, a fetus that was born is no longer a fetus.  To refer to a fetus that was born as a fetus aids and abets the next murderous move: the sanctioning of infanticide as just another form of abortion, post-natal abortion. The 'reasoning' might go like this: The killing of human fetuses is morally acceptable;  a human neonate is a human fetus; ergo, the killing of human neonates is morally acceptable.

But I must also lodge a protest against certain conservative extremists who think 'fetus' a dirty word. They think that the use of this perfectly good word somehow denigrates pre-natal humans or strips them of their right to life.  It does no such thing.

Language matters!  It is the foolish conservative who allows the leftist to hijack the terms of the debate.

Why Did Trump Get the Religious Vote?

A re-post from two years ago. Cognate question: Why do leftists keep asking the title question?

.................................

Why did Donald J. Trump receive the support of evangelicals and other religious conservatives?

After all, no one would confuse Trump with a religious man.  Robert Tracinski's explanation strikes me as correct:

The strength of the religious vote for Trump initially mystified me, until I remembered the ferocity of the Left’s assault on religious believers in the past few years—the way they were hounded and vilified for continuing to hold traditional beliefs about marriage that were suddenly deemed backward and unacceptable (at least since 2012, when President Obama stopped pretending to share them). What else do you think drove all those religious voters to support a dissolute heathen?

Ironically, a pragmatic, Jacksonian populist worldling such as Donald J. Trump will probably do more for religion and religious liberty in the long run than a pious leftist such as Jimmy Carter.*  

Mr. Carter famously confessed the lust in his heart in an interview in -- wait for it -- Playboy magazine.  We should all do likewise, though in private, not in Playboy. While it is presumptuous to attempt to peer into another's soul, I would bet that Mr. Trump is not much bothered by the lust in his heart, and I don't expect to hear any public confessions from his direction.

But what doth it profit a man to confess his lust when he supports the destructive Democrats, the abortion party, a party the prominent members of which are so morally obtuse that they cannot even see the issue of the morality of abortion, dismissing it as a health issue or an issue of women's reproductive rights?  

______________________

*My prediction, made on 19 January 2017, proved correct. In response to Trump's speech at the March for Life the other day, Bernie Sanders tweeted the vicious Orwellianism, "Abortion is health care." Way to go, Bernie, you have further galvanized our opposition to you and what you stand for.

Note that at the present time no House Democrat is pro-life. The Dems have take a hard Left into the mephitic precincts of lunacy and evil. 

Were You a Part of Your Mother?

Here

Elselijn Kingma

Mind, Volume 128, Issue 511, July 2019, 609–646.

Abstract

Is the mammalian embryo/fetus a part of the organism that gestates it? According to the containment view, the fetus is not a part of, but merely contained within or surrounded by, the gestating organism. According to the parthood view, the fetus is a part of the gestating organism. This paper proceeds in two stages. First, I argue that the containment view is the received view; that it is generally assumed without good reason; and that it needs substantial support if it is to be taken seriously. Second, I argue that the parthood view derives considerable support from a range of biological and physiological considerations. I tentatively conclude in favour of the parthood view, and end by identifying some of the interesting questions it raises.

I don't have time now to study the above, but I will have to eventually, and then maybe write an evaluation.

Related: The Woman's Body Argument

Potentiality and the Substance View of Persons

Here at MavPhil Strictly Philosophical

Why Are We Discussing This?

Here:

. . . members of the media were mostly interested in my finding that 96% of the 5,577 biologists who responded to me affirmed the view that a human life begins at fertilization.

It was the reporting of this view—that human zygotes, embryos, and fetuses are biological humans—that created such a strong backlash. 

Why is this being discussed? There is simply no reasonable question as to when an individual biologically human life begins.  It begins at fertilization. That is not to say (but neither is it to deny) that normative personhood begins at conception.  That is a further and much more difficult question. It  is the question about when a biologically human individual becomes a rights-possessor, where one of the rights is the right to life. 

Consider a fetus, using the term in the narrow sense as above. If it is the offspring of biologically human parents, then, self-evidently,  it is biologically human. What else could it be? Bovine? Porcine? Lupine?  Not even Wolfman Jack was lupine in his pre-natal existence.

You don't need to be a biologist to know that biologically human parents have biologically human offspring. You also don't need to be a biologist to know that in the typical case human fetuses are living organisms. What else would they be? Dead? Is every birth still birth?  You would have to be profoundly ignorant to think that a biologically human being begins to live when it takes its first breath.  One does not come into existence as a human individual when one is born.

Don't ask: When does life begin?  This question is insufficiently specific to be tractable.  It is ambiguous as between phylogeny and ontogeny, and as between human and non-human.  Presumably you are not asking when life first appeared on Earth. Nor are you asking when human life first appeared on Earth. Define your terms and formulate the question precisely. These are interesting questions, but they are not relevant to the abortion debate.

Ask this: When does an individual biologically human life begin?  The answer is clear: at conception. There is nothing to discuss and you don't need no stinkin' survey of 5, 557 biologists to know the answer! (And what's with the dissenting 4%?)

Ask this: When does an individual biologically human life first acquire rights? There is much to discuss here, and the answer is not obvious.

See the entries in my Abortion category for my answer to the last question, especially those having to do with the Potentiality Argument.

The Orwellian Left and Abortion

For leftists, words are weapons. Nothing new here. If you have been paying attention, however, you will have noticed that their weaponization of language is becoming increasingly Orwellian.

Case in point: OPPOSITION to abortion is now 'racist.' 'Racist' has long been a verbal cudgel in the hands (mouths?) of leftists, elastic in its meaning, but now an Orwellian twist is added. It makes some sense to say that abortion is 'racist' because it disproportionately affects pre-natal blacks. But to say that OPPOSITION to abortion is racist is just insane.

Not only is truth not a leftist value, sense isn't either. Being a lefty means not having to make sense.

The Democrats are now a hard-left party. So I ask one more time: Why are you still a Dem?

Abortion and the Wages of Concupiscence Unrestrained

Why do the powerful arguments against abortion have such little effect?

The 'pro-choice' movement, to use the polite euphemism, is fueled by concupiscence.  Not entirely, of course. To what extent, then?

One naturally wants the pleasures of sexual intercourse without any consequences. One seeks cost-free indulgence in the most intense sensuous pleasure known to man. Unrestricted abortion on demand is a convenient remedy to an inconvenient pregnancy should other birth-control methods fail.  Combine the following: a fallen being, a powerful drive, advanced birth-control and abortion technology, the ever-increasing irrelevance of religion and its moral strictures, 24-7 sex-saturation via omni-invasive popular media -- combine them, and the arguments against the morality of abortion come too late. As good as they are in themselves, they are impotent against the onslaught of the factors mentioned.

It's always been that reason is reliably suborned by passion; it's just that now the subornation is quicker and easier.

And then there is the feminist angle. Having come into their own in other arenas, which is good, women are eager to throw off the remaining shackles of family and pregnancy. They insist on their rights, including reproductive rights. And isn't the right to an abortion just another reproductive right?  Well, no it isn't; but the sexual itch in synergy with emancipatory zeal is sure to blind people to any arguments to the contrary. (That there are some reproductive rights I take for granted.)

And now for a little paradox. Sexual emancipation 'empowers' women. But in a sex- and power-obsessed society this 'empowerment' also empowers men by increasing the cost-free availability of women to male sexual exploitation. Enter the 'hook-up,' the name of which is a perfect phrase, hydraulic in its resonance, for the substitution of impersonal fluid-exchange for the embodiment of personal love.

It is no surprise that men with money and power who operate in enclaves of like-minded worldings take full advantage of the quarry on offer.  But lust like other vices is hard to control once it is given free rein. And so the depradations of Harvey Weinstein and Matt Lauer and a hundred others is the natural upshot. 

Women rightly push back but too many veer to the extreme of #metoo. 

The result is a strange blend of sexual licentiousness-cum-sanctimony. 

A lefty will say that I preaching, posturing, moralizing. But for a lefty all moral judgment is moralizing, except when they do it not knowing what they do; and all preaching is hypocritical, except when they do it.

But don't ever expect to get through to benighted people whose will to power has so suppressed their will to truth that they cannot look into the mirror and see themselves. 

Related:

The Role of Concupiscence

Ohne Fleiß Kein Preis

The Role of Concupiscence in the Politics of the Day

Shakespeare on Lust

Shakespeare on the Fire Down Below

Like a Moth to the Flame (on the lessons to be learned from Anne-Marie Zamora's murder of the logician Jean van Heijenoort)

Addendum

The Latin above is 1 John 2:16: "For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world." (KJV)

Omne quod est in mundo, concupiscentia carnis est, et concupiscentia oculorum, et superbia vitae . . . .

Why do the powerful arguments against abortion have such little effect?

The 'pro-choice' movement, to use the polite euphemism, is fueled by concupiscence.  Not entirely, of course. To what extent, then?

One naturally wants the pleasures of sexual intercourse without any consequences. One seeks cost-free indulgence in the most intense sensuous pleasure known to man. Unrestricted abortion on demand is a convenient remedy to an inconvenient pregnancy should other birth-control methods fail.  Combine the following: a fallen being, a powerful drive, advanced birth-control and abortion technology, the ever-increasing irrelevance of religion and its moral strictures, 24-7 sex-saturation via omni-invasive popular media -- combine them, and the arguments against the morality of abortion come too late. As good as they are in themselves, they are impotent against the onslaught of the factors mentioned.

It's always been that reason is reliably suborned by passion; it's just that now the subornation is quicker and easier.

And then there is the feminist angle. Having come into their own in other arenas, which is good, women are eager to throw off the remaining shackles of family and pregnancy. They insist on their rights, including reproductive rights. And isn't the right to an abortion just another reproductive right?  Well, no it isn't; but the sexual itch in synergy with emancipatory zeal is sure to blind people to any arguments to the contrary. (That there are some reproductive rights I take for granted.)

And now for a little paradox. Sexual emancipation 'empowers' women. But in a sex- and power-obsessed society this 'empowerment' also empowers men by increasing the cost-free availability of women to male sexual exploitation. Enter the 'hook-up,' the name of which is a perfect phrase, hydraulic in its resonance, for the substitution of impersonal fluid-exchange for the embodiment of personal love.

It is no surprise that men with money and power who operate in enclaves of like-minded worldings take full advantage of the quarry on offer.  But lust like other vices is hard to control once it is given free rein. And so the depradations of Harvey Weinstein and Matt Lauer and a hundred others is the natural upshot. 

Women rightly push back but too many veer to the extreme of #metoo. 

The result is a strange blend of sexual licentiousness-cum-sanctimony. 

A lefty will say that I preaching, posturing, moralizing. But for a lefty all moral judgment is moralizing, except when they do it not knowing what they do; and all preaching is hypocritical, except when they do it.

But don't ever expect to get through to benighted people whose will to power has so suppressed their will to truth that they cannot look into the mirror and see themselves. 

Related:

The Role of Concupiscence

Ohne Fleiß Kein Preis

The Role of Concupiscence in the Politics of the Day

Shakespeare on Lust

Shakespeare on the Fire Down Below

Like a Moth to the Flame (on the lessons to be learned from Anne-Marie Zamora's murder of the logician Jean van Heijenoort)

Addendum

The Latin above is 1 John 2:16: "For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world." (KJV)

Omne quod est in mundo, concupiscentia carnis est, et concupiscentia oculorum, et superbia vitae . . . .

Orwellianism of the Day

"Abortion is health care." 

I didn't make that up. It is from a protester's sign.

Advice for Leftists: Don't Call it Infanticide

Call it fourth trimester abortion. That should appeal to your twisted Orwellian sensibility. Why shouldn't infanticide also be celebrated?

Jews and Abortion

Here:

Jewish law does not share the belief common among abortion opponents that life begins at conception, nor does it legally consider the fetus to be a full person deserving of protections equal those accorded to human beings. In Jewish law, a fetus attains the status of a full person only at birth. Sources in the Talmud indicate that prior to 40 days of gestation, the fetus has an even more limited legal status, with one Talmudic authority (Yevamot 69b) asserting that prior to 40 days the fetus is “mere water.” Elsewhere, the Talmud indicates that the ancient rabbis regarded a fetus as part of its mother throughout the pregnancy, dependent fully on her for its life — a view that echoes the position that women should be free to make decisions concerning their own bodies.

The above illustrates the pathetically low level of public discourse about abortion. Mere biology refutes the "mere water" nonsense, and the first clause of the first sentence. The only bit worthy of comment is the final sentence.

Many say that a woman has the right to do what she wants with her own body and any part thereof.  This is the Woman's Body Argument:

1) The fetus is a part of a woman's body.
2) A woman has the right to do whatever she wants with any part of her body.
Therefore
3) A woman has the right to do whatever she wants with the fetus, including having it killed.

For this argument to be valid, 'part' must be used in the very same sense in both premises. Otherwise, the argument equivocates on a key term.  There are two possibilities. 'Part' can be taken in a wide sense that includes the fetus, or in a narrow sense that excludes it.

If 'part' is taken in a wide sense, then (1) is  true. Surely there is a wide sense of 'part' according to which the fetus is part of its mother's body. But then (2) is reasonably rejected. Abortion is not relevantly like liposuction or the removal of swarts and tumors, etc.  Granted, a woman has a right to remove unwanted fat from her body via liposuction. Such fat is uncontroversially part of her body. But the fetus growing within her is not a part in the same sense: it is a separate individual life. The argument, then, is not compelling. Premise (2) is more reasonably rejected than accepted.

If, on the other hand, 'part' is taken in a narrow sense that excludes the fetus, then perhaps (2) is acceptable, but (1) is surely false: the fetus is plainly not a part of the woman's body in the narrow sense of 'part.'

The argument falls victim to an equivocation on 'part.'

For those who cannot think without a pictorial aid:

No doubt, women have reproductive rights. For example they have the right not to be forced by the state to procreate. But it cannot be assumed that the right to an abortion is automatically one of them. There is a grave moral issue here that Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren and others of their ilk do not want you to see. But it is not going to go away and you need to address it as honestly as you can without obfuscatory rhetoric and with attention to biological fact.

Slavery, Abortion, and 'Skin in the Game'

Slavery is is widely and rightly regarded as among the worst of moral evils. Abortion is not. On the contrary: the latter is now celebrated in some circles. Why the difference? Why the difference when both are grave moral evils? 'Skin in the game' plays an explanatory role. Not the whole role, perhaps, but a major one.

No one owns slaves or has an economic interest in them. There's no  skin in the game. But everyone is naturally concupiscent. There's plenty of skin in that game both literally and figuratively.  Add to the natural the social: Western societies do little or nothing  to restrict, and quite a lot to facilitate, the pursuit of sexual gratification for its own sake.  Now add to the social the technological: safe and reliable birth control and safe and reliable abortion. The resulting trifecta of mutually reinforcing factors has brought us to the current decadent and hedonistic pass.

It is easy to think clearly and disinterestedly about slavery and its immorality since we have no stake in it. There are no passions or interests to suborn the intellect. Denunciation of slavery and its real or imagined consequences such as 'institutional' or 'systemic' racism also allows one a cost-free way of displaying one's supposedly high moral status. One doesn't have to give up anything or do anything. One signals one's virtue by one's bien-pensant attitude. At most one will be called upon to mouth some politically correct pieties.  One's 'thinking' merges easily with thoughtless groupthink.

To think clearly about the immorality of abortion on demand at any stage of fetal development for any reason, however, requires one courageously to cut against the grain of groupthink and to resist one's natural desire for unlimited sex without consequences.

For one whose mind  is in the grip of the Zeitgeist and his loins in the grip of concupiscence, rational argument arrives too late. 

Can One Reasonably Hold that Abortion is Murder but Ought to be Legal?

Victor Reppert poses the following important question on his Facebook page:

What, if anything, is wrong with holding, at the same time that a) Abortion is murder, and b) abortion should be legal?

It's not a logical contradiction, is it? Is it merely counterintuitive? Is it un-Christian?

One way of reaching this position might be to hold that, given a metaphysical or religious perspective, you view abortion as murder, but, living in a society where large segments of the population don't share that perspective, you don't think it reasonable to pass laws imposing that view on the general public.

The propositions in question are not logically contradictory. But one can generate a logical inconsistency by adding an eminently plausible  proposition.  Consider the following antilogism:

a) Abortion is murder
b) Abortion should be legal
c) Murder should be illegal.

The triad is logically inconsistent: the constituent propositions cannot all be true.  

Now (c) is the least rejectable (the least rejection-worthy) of the three propositions. For if the law does not proscribe murder, what would it proscribe? The purpose of the State, at a bare minimum, is to protect life, liberty, and property. (Call it the Lockean triad.) If the State is morally justified, then its passing and enforcing of laws is morally justified. Among these laws are laws pertaining to the killing of human beings. Without going any deeper into it, I will just assert what most of us will accept, namely, that the intentional killing of innocent human being is morally wrong and therefore ought to be made illegal by a morally justified State.

In short, we ought not reject (c). Therefore, one who accepts (a) ought to reject (b). Transforming the antilogism into a syllogism, we get:

Murder should be illegal
Abortion is murder
Ergo
Abortion should be illegal.

Reppert ought to be persuaded by this argument since he accepts the minor and I have given a powerful argument for the major.

Reppert asks whether it is reasonable to pass laws against abortion in a society in which large segments of the population do not oppose abortion.  Well, was it reasonable to pass laws against slavery in a society in which large segments of the population did not oppose slavery?

Suppose we become even more morally depraved than we are now. We get to the point where the majority considers infanticide  morally acceptable. Would it be reasonable to do away with the laws proscribing it?  Or the laws proscribing child pornography? Or rape laws? Should the law merely reflect the going moral sentiment no matter how decadent it becomes?

I'll leave you with these questions.

Chelsea Chucklehead the Orwellian

According to Chelsea Clinton, who is self-avowedly "deeply religious," to stem the slaughter of the pre-natal would be "unchristian." But of course one cannot expect the child of Bill and Hillary to have a functioning moral compass. 

Mockery and derision are essential weapons in modern political warfare for the simple reason that our enemies, bereft of moral sense, cannot, most of them, be engaged on the plane of reason. We do well to turn their Alinskyite tactics against them. 

But if there are a few lefties still in possession of a modicum of moral sense, I offer the following argument, sincerely meant and free of invective.

Suppose I want to convince you of something. I must use premises that you accept. For if I argue from premises that you do not accept, you will reject my argument no matter how rigorous and cogent my reasoning.

So how can we get through to those liberals who are willing to listen? Not by invoking any Bible-based or theological premises. And not by deploying the sorts of non-theological but intellectually demanding arguments found in my Abortion category. The demands are simply too great for most people in this dumbed-down age.

Liberals support inclusivity and non-discrimination. Although contemporary liberals abuse these notions, as I have documented time and again, the notions possess a sound core and can be deployed sensibly. To take one example, there is simply no defensible basis for discrimination against women and blacks when it comes to voting. The reforms in this area were liberal reforms, and liberals can be proud of them. A sound conservatism, by the way, takes on board the genuine achievements of old-time liberals.

Another admirable feature of liberals is that they speak for the poor, the weak, the voiceless. That this is often twisted into the knee-jerk defense of every underdog just in virtue of his being an underdog, as if weakness confers moral superiority, is no argument against the admirableness of the feature when reasonably deployed.

So say this to the decent liberals: If you prize inclusivity, then include unborn human beings. If you oppose discrimination, why discriminate against them? If you speak for the poor, the weak, and the voiceless, why do you not speak for them?

 

More Proof that 'Progressives' are Morally Obtuse

Re: Twitter's Content Blockage:

Some examples of this supposedly offensive content include pictures of children developing in the womb and even simple ultrasound images of babies — like the ones that expectant parents hang on their refrigerator doors. 

Twitter's actions suggest it’s OK for Planned Parenthood to tweet that a woman has a right to an abortion, but when I tweet and try to promote that a baby has a right to life, Twitter considers that inflammatory. 

Twitter's actions suggest it's fine for Planned Parenthood to tweet that taxpayers who don’t want to fund the nation’s largest abortion chain are "extremists," but when I tweet that there are alternative options to Planned Parenthood, Twitter calls that an offensive violation of policy.

And you are still a Democrat?  Please be aware of what you are voting for when you vote Democrat.

The Left: Morally Obtuse and Economically Retarded

As witness the Deep Thoughts of Chelsea Clinton:

Has abortion made America more prosperous? Chelsea Clinton seems to think so.

The former first daughter spoke recently at a “Rise up for Roe” event in New York City, one of a series of meetings organized by NARAL and Planned Parenthood to oppose the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. In the course of her remarks, she suggested that one way to strengthen support for keeping abortion legal and readily available is to emphasize what a boon Roe v. Wade has been for the US economy.

Read it all, as we say in the blogosphere.

Chelsea in 2020!

Are There Reproductive Rights?

I should think so. The right to procreate is one; the right not to procreate is another.  But no one has the right to kill an innocent human being. So no one has the right to kill an innocent human recently born, not even the mother.  Infanticide cannot count as a reproductive right. Now if there can be no right to infanticide, how can there be a right to kill an innocent pre-natal human being? (The 'innocent' is of course redundant but helps underscore the obvious for the inattentive.)

The point is more easily digested if you think of a third trimester fetus. (By the way, contrary to what some conservative zealots think, 'fetus' is not a question-begging or derogatory term. In fact, its emotional neutrality recommends it.) 

The natal -prenatal difference is not a difference that makes a moral difference. Or do you think that a difference in spatial location makes a moral difference?  There is a difference between killing me in my house and killing me outside my house, but that difference in spatial location does not a moral difference make.

You will tell me that there is a temporal difference between the pre-natal and the natal. True. The difference may be a day, a week, a month, a trimester. These temporal differences do not make a moral difference either: they do not justify a difference in treatment.  Compare the temporal difference between the neonate and the two-year-old. That is not a difference that translates into a difference in rights or a difference in the moral gravity of maltreatment.

I invite you to think of the other differences and reflect on whether they make a moral difference. For example, the neonate breathes on its own whereas it did not while in the mother. Is that a difference that makes a moral difference? If it does, then is the right to life of an adult on a ventilator in any way impaired by his having to use such a device to breathe?

You say a woman has a right to do anything she wants with her own body? I'll grant you that if you grant me that the healthy human individual developing within her is not her body. It is not her body nor a part of her body in any sense of 'part' that could justify her doing anything she wants with it.  For those who cannot think without a pictorial aid:

So yes, women have reproductive rights. But it cannot be assumed that the right to an abortion is automatically one of them, or even that there is a right to an abortion. There is a grave moral issue here that Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren and others of their ilk do not want you to see. But it is not going to go away and you need to address it as honestly as you can.

Does a woman have a right to do whatever she wants with her own body?

If I grant you that, will you grant me that the fetus growing within her is not her own body, but a separate body, a separate biological individual, a separate life?

Related: The Woman's Body Argument

Should a Pro-Lifer Advocate the Killing of Abortionists?

Mike Valle on his Facebook page raises the title question in these terms: "If you believe that abortion is truly murder, then wouldn't it be incumbent on you to kill an abortion doctor? After all, wouldn't you kill a serial killer in the act? " One way to construe the question is as follows. Is it logically consistent for a pro-lifer to hold both of the following:

a) Abortion is morally wrong.

b) Killing abortionists is morally wrong. 

To focus the issue, let's consider only cases of third-trimester abortion in which both fetus and mother are healthy and normal, the pregnancy did not result from rape or incest, and the mother's carrying the child to term will not endanger the mother's life.  To sharpen the issue even more, suppose the fetus is likely to be born within a week.  

To my mind, abortion in a case like this is a grave moral evil for reasons I supply elsewhere, for example here. If you agree with me on this, is it "incumbent on you," i.e., morally necessary for you, to at least try to kill any late-term abortionists you are in a position to kill?  Or is it morally justifiable to hold both (a) and (b)?

Answer A. Yes, one can hold both (a) and (b) because all intentional killing of humans is wrong, regardless of who the humans are, what they have done and what they have left undone.  This pacifist answer is no good because it rules out killing in self-defense, just war, capital punishment, and suicide, and surely at least one of these is morally justifiable.  Surely some intentional killing of human beings is morally justifiable.

Answer B. Yes, because abortion is legal and we have a moral obligation to uphold the rule of law by obeying particular laws and by not taking the law into our own hands. This is a much better answer.  The rule of law is a precious thing because civil order is a precious thing. Laws enacted and enforced by proper procedures have a prima facie claim on our respect. To tolerate mass lawbreaking is to invite social chaos. We should work within the system to have the abortion laws changed.

Answer B is better than Answer A although it is not quite satisfactory. I myself am not about to kill abortion providers, nor do I advocate that anyone else do so.  In explanation I would invoke something like Answer B.

But if I am not willing to kill abortion providers, do I really believe that abortion is a grave moral evil?  Yes, I really believe it. My belief is demonstrated by such actions as voting and arguing against abortion over many, many entries that have cost me a lot of time and effort without making me a cent.   Note that if a person lacks the full courage of his convictions, in the sense that he is not willing to sacrifice his life or liberty for them, it does not follow that he lacks convictions.  Most of us are moral mediocrities and I am no exception. The fact that my efforts to save the unborn are paltry and insignificant does not show that I do not really believe that abortion is wrong. 

Let Roe Go

Megan McArdle:

I am myself uneasily pro-choice. Moreover, just a few days ago, I argued that the increasingly bitter judicial wars tearing apart today’s politics can only be ended with more judicial deference to legislatures and to precedent. It stands to reason that I would be dismayed by the politically electrifying prospect that Roe might be overruled entirely. But I wouldn’t be dismayed. I’d be glad to see Roe go, as quickly as possible.

[. . .]

Somewhat paradoxically, the way to make abortion less contentious is to throw the matter back to the states so that people can argue about it. Debating the difficult decisions regarding gestational age and circumstances would force people to confront the hard questions that abortion entails, which tends to have a moderating effect on extreme opinions.

Returning the matter to the states would give most people a law they can live with, defusing the rage that permeates politics and has more than once culminated in acts of terrorism against doctors who perform abortions.

Secular Arguments Against Abortion

A question rarely asked is the one I raise in this post:  

Is the abortion question tied to religion in such a way that opposition to abortion can be based only on religious premises?

Or are there good reasons to oppose abortion that are nor religiously based, reasons that secularists could accept?  The answer to the last question is plainly in the affirmative.  The following argument contains no religious premises.

1) Infanticide is morally wrong.
2) There is no morally relevant difference between (late-term) abortion and  infancticide.
Therefore
3) (Late-term) abortion is morally wrong.

Whether one accepts this argument or not, it clearly invokes no religious premise. It is therefore manifestly incorrect to say or imply that all opposition to abortion must be religiously-based. Theists and atheists alike could make use of the above argument.  

Now suppose someone demands to know why one should accept the first premise.  Present this argument:

4) Killing innocent human beings is morally wrong.
5) Infanticide is the killing of innocent human beings.
Therefore
1) Infanticide is morally wrong.

This second argument, like the first, invokes no specifically religious premise.  Admittedly, the general prohibition of homicide -- general in the sense that it admits of exceptions -- comes from the Ten Commandments which is part of our Judeo-Christian heritage.  But if you take that as showing that (4) is religious, then the generally accepted views that theft and lying are morally wrong would have to be adjudged religious as well.

But I don't want to digress onto the topic of the sources of our secular moral convictions, convictions that are then codified in the positive law.  My main point is that one can oppose abortion on secular grounds. A second point is that the two arguments I gave are very powerful.  If you are not convinced by them, you need to ask yourself why.

Some will reply by saying that a woman has the right to do what she wants with her own body.  This is the Woman's Body Argument:

6) The fetus is a part of a woman's body.
7) A woman has the right to do whatever she wants with any part of her body.
Therefore
8) A woman has the right to do whatever she wants with the fetus, including having it killed.

For this argument to be valid, 'part' must be used in the very same sense in both premises. Otherwise, the argument equivocates on a key term.  There are two possibilities. 'Part' can be taken in a wide sense that includes the fetus, or in a narrow sense that excludes it.

If 'part' is taken in a wide sense, then (6) is  true. Surely there is a wide sense of 'part' according to which the fetus is part of its mother's body. But then (7) is reasonably rejected. Abortion is not relevantly like liposuction. Granted, a woman has a right to remove unwanted fat from her body via liposuction. Such fat is uncontroversially part of her body. But the fetus growing within her is not a part in the same sense: it is a separate individual life. The argument, then, is not compelling. Premise (7) is more reasonably rejected than accepted.

If, on the other hand, 'part' is taken in a narrow sense that excludes the fetus, then perhaps (7) is acceptable, but (6) is surely false: the fetus is plainly not a part of the woman's body in the narrow sense of 'part.'

I am making two points about the Woman's Body Argument.  The first is that  my rejection of it does not rely on any religious premises.  The second is that the argument is unsound. 

Standing on solid, secular ground one has good reason to oppose abortion as immoral in the second and third trimesters (with some exceptions, e.g., threat to the life of the mother).  Now not everything immoral should be illegal.  But in this case the objective immorality of abortion entails that it ought to be illegal for the same reason that the objective immorality of the wanton killing of innocent adults requires that it be  illegal.

A Common Abortion Mistake

It is often said that  a human fetus is a potential human life.  Not so!  A human fetus is an actual human life. 

Consider a third-trimester human fetus, alive and well, developing in the normal way in the mother.  It is potentially many things: a neonate, a two-year-old, a speaker of some language, an adolescent, an adult, a corpse. And  let's be clear that a potential X is not an X.  A potential oak tree is not an oak tree.  A potential neonate is not a neonate.  A potential speaker of Turkish is not a Turkish speaker.  But an acorn, though only potentially an oak tree, is an actual acorn, not a potential acorn.  And its potentialities are actually possessed by it, not potentially possessed by it.

The typical human fetus is an actual, living, human biological individual that actually possesses various potentialities.  So if you accept that there is a general, albeit not exceptionless, prohibition against the taking of innocent human life, then you need to explain why you think a third-trimester fetus does not fall under this prohibition.  You need to find a morally relevant difference -- not just any old difference, but a difference that makes a moral difference -- between the fetus and any born human individual.

No Voice for Men in Abortion Debate? Do Arguments Have Testicles?

Michael in Russia writes,

Got a question for you. I am a pro-abortion man (or even more generally a pro-death man since I support capital punishment too). You strongly oppose the former. I'm not going to repeat all familiar pros and cons. Rather, I've got one peculiar premise which I have never met in discussion of the issue and which I take to be the first step in dealing with it—namely, I hold that we, men, should have no voice at all in this business. Since no man has ever known what it is (like to be a bat) to conceive, to bear, and to give birth, and it appears that no one is going to, I maintain that this issue must be decided on strictly by women whatever the outcome. It's utterly undemocratic, but I'm not a fan of egalitarian democracy. So, what do you think of this: no voice for men in abortion debate, that's strictly women's business?

Thank you for reading, Michael, and thank you for writing.

It warms my heart to hear that you are pro-death - - when it comes to capital punishment.  You are probably aware of my arguments for the latter's moral justifiability in some cases and in some venues. (In a place where the justice system is unfair, I would be inclined to support a moratorium on the death penalty.)  I also maintain, pace the late, great Nat Hentoff, that it is logically consistent to be for capital punishment and against abortion. 

My view in one clean sentence: Abortion is morally prohibited in most cases while capital punishment is morally required in some cases.

Now on to your question: Ought men have a say in the abortion debate?  Here is my short answer:

Arguments don't have testicles!

But that bumper sticker wants unpacking. 

An argument for or against abortion is good or bad regardless of the sex of the person giving the argument.  And similarly  for race. One doesn't have to be black to have a well-founded opinion about the causes and effects of black-on-black crime.  The point holds in general in all objective subject areas. For purposes of logical appraisal, arguments can and must be detached from their producers and consumers.

Here is an argument. "Infanticide is morally wrong; there is no morally relevant difference between infanticide and late-term abortion; therefore, abortion is morally wrong." The soundness/unsoundness of the argument cannot pivot on the sex of the producers or consumers of the argument.

Suppose someone argues that repeat-offending rapists should be be chemically or in some other way castrated by the state. Would the fact that men and men alone would bear the burden of the punishment be any reason to maintain that women have no right to a say in the matter? No.

It is also clear that one can be a competent gynecologist without being a woman, and a competent specialist in male urology without being a man.  Only a fool would discount the advice of a female urologist on the treatment of erectile dysfunction on the ground that the good doctor is incapable of having an erection. 

"You don't know what it's like, doc, you don't have a penis!" 

What's it like to be a pregnant woman? 

In objective matters like these, the 'what it's like' made famous by Thomas Nagel is not relevant.  One needn't know what it's like to have morning sickness to be able to prescribe an effective palliative.  I know what it is like to be a man 'from the inside,' but my literal (spatial) insides can be better known by certain women.

What's more, we white men can have a sort of knowledge by analogy of what women and cats and blacks feel. For example, men and women both urinate and defecate, and typically a certain pleasure accompanies these activities. I know by analogy what it is like for a woman to micturate and feel relief and a modicum of pleasure even though my modus micturiendi  is somewhat different.

Defecation triggers orgasm in some women. I have never experienced that, but I can imagine it. Similarly with menstrual cramps, morning sickness, and other miseries of pregnancy.  I am a sympathetic and sensitive guy as everyone knows. To be honest, I am a bit womanish in this regard, and I don't intend 'womanish' as a term of derogation.

I don't know what it is like to be a bat, and I will grant that bat qualia are beyond our ken even analogically; but I have some sense of what it is like to be a cat inasmuch  as cats manifestly feel analogs of such human emotions as fear, surprise, annoyance, etc.

I have no idea, however, what my cat Max Black feels when he retromingently takes a leak.

Do I know what it is like to be black? Well, I know what it is like to disrespected. So I know what it is like to feel the hurt and the rage of a black motorist who is stopped by a cop merely for 'driving while black.'  

But do I know what it is like to be a slave?  About as well as contemporary blacks do in the West none of whom are or have ever been slaves.

"But you have never faced the prejudice blacks experience." Not that particular prejudice, but plenty of other kinds.

At this point tribalism enters the discussion.  The more we tribalize, the more we shrink the space of objectivity, reason, and argument.  The more we tribalize, the more we reduce ourselves to mere tokens of racial, ethnic, and other types. The more we do that, the more we miss the person, the free agent, the rational being. 

There are blacks who would say to me, "You have no idea what it is like to be black!" I say, "Bullshit! You have incarcerated yourself in your tribal identity."  Same with women who feel (that's exactly the right word) that abortion is a women's issue exclusively. Well, it is not. It is an objective issue that affects both males and females. Stop feeling and start thinking.

That should be obvious. Among those aborted are males and females. So abortion cannot be solely a concern of women.

So let us set our tribalism aside and approach the question as rational beings on the plane of reason and argument where no testicles are to be found.

California and Abortion

The first is becoming as morally repugnant as the second. Here:

California has long promoted abortion on demand, and even forces taxpayers to pay for elective abortions through its state Medicaid program. But one of their latest efforts is really beyond the pale. Abortion advocates in the state recently became alarmed that the burgeoning number of pro-life Pregnancy Care Centers (they now outnumber abortion facilities nationally 5 to 1) neither offer abortions to their clients, nor refer women for them. To do so would be antithetical to their mission. But in response, groups such as NARAL and Planned Parenthood convinced California to pass AB 775, which requires pregnancy centers to post signs on the walls of their waiting rooms (or by other means) informing clients that California offers “immediate free or low-cost access” to abortion, along with the phone number of the county social services office. In other words, this requirement would force pro-life doctors, nurses, and staff to advertise for free abortions, plain and simple.

More proof that leftists are morally obtuse.

The Left's Misplaced Moral Enthusiasm

Among the leftists who profess deep concern over the effect on children of the President's salty talk are  leftists who endorse the killing of disabled unborn children.  I call that misplaced moral enthusiasm. Which is worse: mocking a disabled reporter as Trump is alleged to have done, or the late-term abortion of the disabled unborn?  

The hypocrisy is unbearable. Leftists who have worked tirelessly to normalize crudity and wanton self-expression well beyond the bounds of social responsibility now have the chutzpah to complain that POTUS is crude, obnoxious, and lacking in gravitas?

Leftists are moral idiots.

And you are still a Democrat?

Related articles

Maverick Philosopher: The Contribution of Hollywood Cultural Polluters to Violence

Unreality and Incoherence at the Vatican

Death Penalty, Abortion, and Certainty

Maverick Philosopher: King Midas, The Philosopher, and the Leftist

Maverick Philosopher: The Left's War Against The New York Times

Abortion and the Wages of Concupiscence Unrestrained

The 'pro-choice' movement, to use the polite euphemism, is fueled by concupiscence.  Not entirely, of course. To what extent, then?

One naturally wants the pleasures of sexual intercourse without any consequences. One seeks cost-free indulgence in the most intense sensuous pleasure known to man. Unrestricted abortion on demand is a convenient remedy to an inconvenient pregnancy should other birth-control methods fail.  Combine the following: a fallen being, a powerful drive, advanced birth-control and abortion technology, the ever-increasing irrelevance of religion and its moral strictures, 24-7 sex-saturation via omni-invasive popular media -- combine them, and the arguments against the morality of abortion come too late. As good as they are in themselves, they are impotent against the onslaught of the factors mentioned.

It's always been that reason is reliably suborned by passion; it's just that now the subornation is quicker and easier.

And then there is the feminist angle. Having come into their own in other arenas, which is good, women are eager to throw off the remaining shackles of family and pregnancy. They insist on their rights, including reproductive rights. And isn't the right to an abortion just another reproductive right?  Well, no it isn't; but the sexual itch in synergy with emancipatory zeal is sure to blind people to any arguments to the contrary. (That there are some reproductive rights I take for granted.)

And now for a little paradox. Sexual emancipation 'empowers' women. But in a sex- and power-obsessed society this 'empowerment' also empowers men by increasing the cost-free availability of women to male sexual exploitation. Enter the 'hook-up,' the name of which is a perfect phrase, hydraulic in its resonance, for the substitution of impersonal fluid-exchange for the embodiment of personal love.

It is no surprise that men with money and power who operate in enclaves of like-minded worldings take full advantage of the quarry on offer.  But lust like other vices is hard to control once it is given free rein. And so the depradations of Harvey Weinstein and Matt Lauer and a hundred others is the natural upshot. 

Women rightly push back but too many veer to the extreme of #metoo. 

The result is a strange blend of sexual licentiousness-cum-sanctimony.

A lefty will say that I preaching, posturing, moralizing. But for a lefty all moral judgment is moralizing, except when they do it not knowing what they do; and all preaching is hypocritical, except when they do it.

But don't ever expect to get through to benighted people whose will to power has so suppressed their will to truth that they cannot look into the mirror and see themselves. 

Related:

The Role of Concupiscence

Ohne Fleiß Kein Preis

The Role of Concupiscence in the Politics of the Day

Shakespeare on Lust

The Sad State of Public Discourse in an Age of Ideology

The inability to follow an argument and respond reasonably and civilly to what an author actually maintains is a mark of the present miserable state of public discourse. Even prominent conservative commentators display this inability. A recent example is the Never-Trumper and NRO contributor David French's febrile flailing at Tully Borland.  Professor Borland ignited a firestorm of controversy when he presented an argument why Alabamans ought to vote for Roy Moore. Chad McIntosh, in a fine defense of Borland, accurately restates Borland's main argument:

Comparing Moore to opponent Doug Jones, Borland argues that a Moore victory would be the lesser of the two evils in a binary election in which these are the only two viable options. Why? Well, even if Moore is guilty of sexual assault and seeking sexual relationships with girls as young as 14 some 40 years ago, as accused, that is very unlikely to have policy ramifications today, whereas Jones supports a policy of unrestricted abortion today.

Don’t be misled here: Jones supports killing a fetus up to the moment of crowning, the moment a baby exits his mother during birth. That isn’t your typical pro-choice position. That’s almost as extreme as they come. So, as Borland sees it, “either Jones knows exactly what he’s doing in supporting killing babies in utero but doesn’t care, in which case he’s a moral monster, or his moral compass is in such need of calibration that one should never trust his judgment in moral matters.” Borland therefore concludes that one is morally justified in voting for Moore, whose win would result in lesser evil.

This is a very strong argument. You will not appreciate its strength, however, unless you appreciate the grave moral evil of unrestricted abortion, abortion at any stage  of fetal development, for any reason.  Unless you are morally obtuse you will understand that the intentional killing of innocent human beings is morally wrong and that the pre- and almost-natal human beings in question are human individuals in their own right, not globs of tissue or parts of their mothers.

McIntosh again:

The closest French comes to a substantive response to Borland is in the following:

"Of course we’re always choosing between imperfect men, but there are profound differences between conventional politicians and a man who tried to rape a teenager when he was a D.A. Believe it or not, the American political ranks are chock-full of politicians who possess better character than Moore, whose pasts are far less checkered. I don’t even have to get to the difficult process of line-drawing to have confidence in declaring that Christians should not vote to put a credibly-accused child abuser in the Senate."

But this is misdirection. That the American political ranks are chock-full of politicians who possess better character than Moore is beside the point, since they aren’t running against Moore. It’s Jones running against Moore, so that is the only comparison that matters.

That's right. It's Jones against Moore, and exactly one of these two will be elected. Not both and not neither. 

It is also important to note that while character matters, policies, programs, and ideas matter even more. People of the 'Never X' mentality seem not to understand this.  French apparently thinks two terms of Hillary and all her damage to conservatism would be a fair price to pay for keeping Trump out of the White House with all the good he has already done in less than one year in office.

But suppose you are not convinced by the Borland-McIntosh argument.  Then you should at least have the decency to admit that it is a reasonable argument. But that is not what French does. He heaps abuse on Borland. See McIntosh piece for documentation.

Why Alabamans Should Vote for Roy Moore

Tully Borland makes the case in The Federalist.  

In so doing he has provoked a crap storm of controversy. See here and here. The quality of the Twitter jabs of an army of thoughtless twits justifies my talk of a crap storm.

It is depressing to realize how few people today are able calmly to follow an argument and evaluate it as opposed to heaping abuse upon its producer.

(I have noted the same thing in popular opposition to the work of David Benatar.)

Politics is almost always about choosing between the better and the worse.  Both Moore and his opponent, Doug Jones, are flawed character-wise. But character is only one consideration. Equally if not more important are the policies the candidates support.  Now Jones is for unrestricted abortion which, as Professor Borland points out, is tantamount to infanticide. Unrestricted abortion is a grave moral evil. So if you refuse to vote for Moore because of his (alleged) sins of 40 years ago, then you indirectly lend support to a pro-abortion candidate.  I should think that the gravity of the evil of future abortions far outweighs one man's (alleged) evil sexual excesses of 40 years ago.

According to David French, "There’s no defensible argument for choosing the 'lesser of two evils' in Alabama."  But I just gave one!

As Borland points out, if one had a policy of voting only for the morally perfect, one would have to abstain from politics entirely.

..........................

UPDATE (12/1). The controversy continues.  I won't link to any of it due to its low quality.  Much of its rests on the assumption that an argument is good if and only if it leads to a conclusion that the consumer of the argument antecedently accepts.  Otherwise it is bad and one is free to mock and malign the producer of the argument.

Trump Nixes Outrageous Obamacare Birth Control Mandate

Here.

Prominent Catholics such as Robert P. George and George Weigel who refused to vote for Trump made a massive error in judgment. I was right to lay into them in Catholics Must Support Trump.

Are 'Progressives' Now Entirely Devoid of Moral Sense?

From an article by A. N. Wilson:

Not believing in abortion, like not believing in gay marriage, is now, unquestionably, a thought crime. It was hardly surprising that the Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg recently said he did not believe in abortion, because he is a man of conviction as well as a Roman Catholic, and this is the teaching of his Church. Yet his view was treated with incredulity and disdain by everyone from trolls and women's groups to the higher echelons of the political Establishment.

Catholics need to to realize that it is utterly foolish to invoke the teachings of their church in justification of their beliefs when countering leftists.  If that is what the Tory MP did, then he needs to wise up.  In the eyes of a leftist, he may as well have 'defended' his opposition to abortion on the ground that his mum/mommy taught him that it is very bad.

Is the abortion question tied to religion in such a way that opposition to abortion can be based only on religious premises? Or are there good reasons to oppose abortion that are nor religiously based, reasons that secularists could accept?  The answer to the last question is plainly in the affirmative, although few seem to understand this. Yet another reason why you need my blog.

I argue it out here.

Related articles

"A Danger to the Faithful"