The Atlantic - Latest Comments in Of abortion and abolition

Re: Of abortion and abolition

JonF — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 20:41:44 -0000

Re: The fundamental question in the abortion debate is, "When does life begin?"

No it isn't, because that question is absurd on the face of it. There is never a moment when "life begins". Sperm and egg are indisputably alive and they do not die and resurrect anytime in the reproduction process. Life began about four billion years ago. Period. The question before us is who should have the various rights of personhood and at what stage of their existence. We've managed to do a pretty good job of defining that boundary at the end of life (though not so good a job that we were spared the Terri Schiavo circus), but we've been unable to agree at the other end of things.

Re: The debate wasn't over the personhood of blacks

Enslaved Blacks had no personhood: they had no rights whasoever that were legally enforceable. Free Blacks did have some of the rights of persons, though the extent of this varied by jurisdiction. (Women of course were also deficient in being denied some rights). Meanwhile no one doubted Blacks were human-- the very fact of what polite society called "yellow babies" proved that they were the same species as their masters.

Re: Really? History has shown that? When, exactly? There aren't exactly a large number of historic examples of societies that rejected religion.

There have been plenty of instances of people who evince bigotry, of various sorts, without it having any religious aspect at all. Surely the good old profit motive is not free of blame here-- quite often it's very much in people's self-interest to hate "The Other" and keep him/her under their thumb. Meanwhile expanding the boundaries of religion to include any negative ideology (like Naziism or Maosim) is cheating. The Nazis and the Communists were political movements, pure and simple. There was nothing religious about them.

Re: And there is a reason they call it "emancipation".

Cute folk etymology, but the "man" in that word is from Latin "manus" for hand: A slave is released from his master's hands.

Re: Of abortion and abolition

mattc — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 15:07:21 -0000

Is there really a scientific answer to whether life begins at conception?

Scientifically, biological life begins at conception. There is no doubt about that. Your life began when you were conceived. You cannot skip this step and become a walking, breathing, human being.

However, we (and I'm generalizing here) don't necessarily care much for biological life. Protozoans aren't high on PETA's protection list. This kinda frames the scientific part of the abortion question: when does the pre-human biological specimen (zygote, embryo, etc..) become a "human" (i.e. a homosapien)?

This definitely happens in the first-term of pregnancy, so pretty much after that point you are terminating the life of a human being. Human neurological development begins at this stage, along with development of feet, fingers, lips, eyes, etc...Brain waves have been recorded as early as the second month of pregnancy. So, again, there really is no (scientific) debate about this.

Here's where the rub is, and here's where religion plays a big role. When does this new human being develop an identity (or spirit, if you will)? If you believe that we are all imbued with individuality and the rights and freedoms associated with that, this is an important stepping stone. The scientific part of the debate is over; after the second month of pregnancy, the biological being you are killing is a sensory human being. The philosophical debate (legal and/or religious) is just beginning.

That's why I think most Americans, if pressed on the issue, would say that they feel 2nd and 3rd term abortions should be outlawed unless it is a life-or-death decision between the mother and the child (in this case, we leave it to our medical professionals to help determine the best course of action). "Life-or-death" meaning if a mother does not terminate her pregnancy she will die from associated trauma, infection, or other disease being caused by her fetus. "Life-or-death" not meaning the mother just doesn't want the baby and we find some reason to excuse the abortion. The question then becomes: legally (constitutionally) can this type of a mandate be written into law? Roe supporters say no, though nearly any honest legal scholar will tell you that Roe was a complete legal overreach. So that's where we are stuck, and most likely will be stuck for eternity...unless another abortion case is heard by SCOTUS and a new precedent is set.

Re: Of abortion and abolition

Mark H. — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 11:10:03 -0000

"The whole reason abolitionists had to use religion was, A.) Because there simply was no other real tool for making a popular argument and B.) Because the slave-holders, themselves, had made the case for slavery, largely, on religious grounds."

Actually, this gets it almost exactly backward. At first, Europeans had no idea how to justify the pracice of slavery, which they had ALREADY begun to practice absent a moral justification. The main problem was that they had an oblgiation to try to convert their slaves, but that, under then prevailing Christian law, a Christian could not hold another Christian in slavery. Their answer -- at least in the American colonies -- was a theory of racial supremacy.

Some did do through resort to biblical passages as justification. The idea that black people originated with the "curse of Ham" became popular (and likely originated) only in 17th and 18th centuries AS A RESPONSE TO the slave trade that by then had already begun.

But most slaveowners were wealthy Episcopalians and Presbyterians, who were not Bible literalists in the requisite sense and did not engage in this sort of cherry-picking to support slavery. Others, such as Baptists, started out being opposed to slavery (or at least in favor of equality of races within the church for purposes of membership, voting, etc.), but gradually adopted the dominant racial theory without which no Christian could have supported slavery.

The whole story is well told in Winthrop D. Jordan's The White Man's Burden.

Re: Of abortion and abolition

zak — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 09:38:29 -0000

If rights imply responsibilities, what exactly are a fetus's responsibilities?

Re: Of abortion and abolition

stonetools — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 09:00:09 -0000

Some points on person-hood/Humanity. I really don't understand TNC's distinction between the two and don't think it matters. Bluntly:

The Africans who sold other Africans to Europeans and Arabs over the course of centuries probably thought of those being sold as " persons" and " humans"; they just didn't think of them as equals.

Again, its hard to understand that outside of the Christian world practically nobody objected to slavery prior to the 18th century. Africans, Asians, and Arabs continued to practice slavery right into the 20th Century, and ceased to do so only through Western ( specifically Christian) pressure.

It was the genius of Christianity that it took seriously the idea that you should love all people, even "sinners" and "enemies" - which is the lesson of the parable of the Good Samaritan. That is the basis of the Christian case against slavery, which first had to be made against other Christians, then eventually against the whole world.

Its a measure of how far we have come that TNC assumes the case against slavery was obvious. It certainly wasn't -even in Africa, the home of most of TNC's- and my- forbears .

Re: Of abortion and abolition

Chet — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 00:55:25 -0000

The obvious response to this is that the mother (assuming she wasn't raped) chose for the fetus to take up residence inside her.

Clearly not, if she wants to get an abortion. I mean, isn't that self-evident? That a woman who wants an abortion doesn't want a human being living inside her?

I see there is no official doctrine, but the writer believes that since God knows the original fertilized egg will split, he installs two souls at the moment of conception.

So if God knows the woman is going to get an abortion, why bother ensouling the fetus? And therefore, how is it murder?

Re: Of abortion and abolition

Loneoak — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 23:45:16 -0000

Ninja Zombie: that's a rather silly gloss on human biology. Even people who *want* to get pregnant don't *choose* to get pregnant. They might choose to not prevent pregnancy, but that's a different ball game. You can't will a sperm to fuse with an oocyte and fuse to uterine wall, it just happens given certain highly contingent circumstances. And it happens like less than 1% of the time people get it on. And you have to be jerk to assert that women aren't allowed to be human and have sex without having babies.

My guess is Chet is paraphrasing Judith Jarvis Thompson's 1971 essay "A Defense of Abortion." It's the bee's-knees if you can handle analytic philosophical ethics. I still haven't seen an adequate response to it.

http://spot.colorado.edu/~heathwoo/Phil160,Fall02/thomson.htm

The basic thrust of her argument is pertinent to TNC's post: even if you agree that a fetus is the full moral equivalent of an adult human being, that still does not settle the question of whether the woman is obligated to keep it alive in her body. So all this hullabaloo over 'life' and 'persons' and 'humanity' is a semantic dance around the real question of whether or not we ought to morally and legally require women to provide another living body access to the basic life support provided by her body. I think the answer is clearly no. We don't do it anywhere else and we shouldn't do it with pregnancy.

Which is why I think it's a rather ridiculous conflation to connect abolitionists and anti-choicers. Such an analogy only makes sense if you get the moral and political contours of abortion dead wrong, which we almost always do in our fine country. Anyway, if you want to make a connection between the two, then it should be between pro-choicers and abolitionists. Lifers and slavers think that one person's body is rightfully controlled by another person in arbitrary circumstances. Choicers and abolitionists don't. End of story.

Re: Of abortion and abolition

Ninja Zombie — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 21:28:49 -0000

Chet:

*Whether or not the fetus is a person or not is basically irrelevant if it's unlawfully trespassing.*

The obvious response to this is that the mother (assuming she wasn't raped) chose for the fetus to take up residence inside her.

To push an analogy way too far, you aren't unlawfully trespassing if I drag you onto my lawn while you are unconscious.

Re: Of abortion and abolition

davido — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 19:37:59 -0000

Just to let you know Ta-Nehisi, I posted to Megan McArdle's reply to this subject, made what I thought was a reasonable if pointed response to some of her claims and the following happened: she misread something I said, claiming that I said the opposite and, having done that, called my references to the history of the abolitionist movement a "10th grade history gloss" (while assuring me that she didn't mean to be insulting), then blocked me from further responses.

Guess I won't be readin' her blog no mo.

Re: Of abortion and abolition

like totally down — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 19:16:23 -0000

That's a good way of putting it, Scorn.

I would say that religion is OFTEN politics by other means because I don't want to offend some very decent people who are doing wonderful things in THIS realm like the Friends and the good people at the Church of the Brethren.

Re: Of abortion and abolition

Sorn — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 18:47:48 -0000

so like totally down,

If I get what you are saying in a nutshell is that you believe religion is politics by other means.

If by politics we mean power-relationships between groups.

Re: Of abortion and abolition

like totally down — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 18:18:54 -0000

Yes, I realize that I made two typos in that post in case anyone else wants to get out his Pedantic Dick Hat.

Re: Of abortion and abolition

like totally down — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 18:06:14 -0000

Full disclosure: I am a devout deist, but I greatly admire Christians who work for peace and justice.

Often, religion masks conflicts which are really about power. Who believes that the Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland where really fighting over, say, whether having two sacraments is better than having seven. And I have read that the suicide bombers are not necessarily the most pious Muslims (see Robert Pape). Two of the 9-11 bombers were drinking in a tittie bar the night before they committed their heinous crime.

Now to put on my Pedantic Dick Hat: I lived in the mountains, so I know the expression is *cut and dried* because it takes firewood at least a year to dry out after being chopped down.

Re: Of abortion and abolition

cowalker — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 17:58:26 -0000

Joel, thanks for the interesting link to the ensoulment discussion in the case of monozygotic twins. I see there is no official doctrine, but the writer believes that since God knows the original fertilized egg will split, he installs two souls at the moment of conception.

Which leads me to thoughts about an even rarer scenario. If the writer is correct about the process, does God install two souls when he knows that the fertilized egg will split, but one twin will be partially absorbed by the other, creating a headless parasitic twin? So a soul is released at the moment when the parasitic twin is no longer a person? Possibly when the brain no longer functions? The concept of a soul sure leads to some nutty possibilities.

Re: Of abortion and abolition

twoblow — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 17:42:04 -0000

Ta-Nehsi:

Slave holders thought slaves were alive and human, but they did not think they were equal. They thought of them more as children (after all, we think today that children are alive and human but not equal to adults).

Most of the pro-slavery literature in the day was paternalistic.

And there is a reason they call it "emancipation".

I recommend "Roll, Jordan, Roll" as a good insight into the reality of slavery.

Re: Of abortion and abolition

Raindog — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 16:43:49 -0000

(FWI - Bill, I actually started this before I read your post.)

I may be Christian but I’m certainly no Conservative. I do consider myself Pro-Life but I strive not to be a militant about it. I don’t demonize those with sincere Pro-Choice views. And if I was a politician, I would seek to reduce abortion rates though sexual educations programs, (I.E. Free birth control), pre-natal assistance and related post-birth health care, long before I tried to eliminate them entirely though changes to the law.

What I would find interesting would be to take some of those members of Warren's Saddleback Church and ask them this hypothetical scenario. I mean, since esoteric questions were already in abundance Saturday night, (Defeating evil?!?), this one wouldn’t be too out of place.

You are present during the debates of the drafting of the constitution. Once it’s all drawn up, do you advocate ratification as is? If you do, you endorse slavery, at least tacitly. If you don’t, due to your objections over the immorality of slavery, you almost certainly contribute to dooming the chances of America’s existence.

Since you can’t really have American without the Southern colonies, you can’t have America without slavery, at least way back in the 18th century. And even by this early time, there are plenty of enlightened people who realized that Africans, at least have the potential, to be equal to Europeans in terms of their mental faculties.

Now even those framers like Patrick Henry and Alexander Hamilton, who knew slavery to be wrong, chose their country over their morality. So, what do you do Mr. and Mrs. Conservative Christian, what do you do?

Re: Of abortion and abolition

Bill Harshaw — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 16:16:17 -0000

The discussion seems to miss the uncomfortable middle in ante bellum America--the many people who thought slavery was an evil but saw no practical way to end it. Religious impulses, whether Quaker, Calvinist, Unitarian, or Transcendalist, were a major force in emphasizing the evil. While few were ready to do away with the Constitution, many became ready to resist on the day to day level. (Might compare it to people today who eat meat but rally to vote for initiatives requiring humane treatment of animals.) And there was no conflict between science and religion, one examined the wonders of God's creations to draw closer to him And one had a moral duty to understand the world and to use the understanding to improve the world, whether by fighting slavery, promoting public education, spreading the word of God, fighting vice, or giving equal rights to all humans.

Re: Of abortion and abolition

Sid — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 16:14:37 -0000

As pointed out by Stephen Jay Gould's "Mismeasure of Man" - separating 'good' science from 'bad' science is easier said than done. The science that demonstrated that some races were inferior to others is no less 'modern' or 'enlightened' than science today. Comparing it to alchemy belies the fact that, despite its appearance of purity, science is still very much subject to biases and implicit assumptions. In this way it is hardly different from other fields of knowledge, from economics to social sciences.

Re: Of abortion and abolition

Chet — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 14:30:44 -0000

I can't find anything on the internet about such an organization in Britain, and I've never heard of it. There was a French organization by that name, but it was started by a pagan, not an atheist.

I'm aware that there were quite a few anti-semitic organizations in 19th-century Britain, but the ones I know about were predominantly religious and probably thought just as poorly of atheists.

Re: Of abortion and abolition

Scott E. — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 14:27:34 -0000

The claim that undergirded slavery--and really Jim Crow--wasn't simply that blacks lacked "personhood" it was that they either weren't human, were sub-human, or were a lower order of human. This wasn't simply an ethical debate--whole reams of bad science sprung up to back up this notion.

I'm still not buying this. What could be the meaning of a debate about whether blacks "weren't human, were sub-human, or were a lower order of human" if not an ethical debate about personhood?

TNC claims the debate was also about science, in addition to the ethics. But the science (so-called "scientific racism") was *obviously* an attempt to offer an ad hoc rationalization for a prior commitment to the view that blacks weren't fully persons in the moral sense.

The real debate was about the ethical questions. The rest was (and is) window dressing.

Re: Of abortion and abolition

Jaybird — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 13:47:52 -0000

I think that it's a question of echoes.

While there isn't a whole lot of overlap between the whole issues of abortion or slavery, the arguments against the arguments against both have echoes.

That is to say, the responses to "you are doing something wrong here" have overlap.

The discussion of right/wrong becomes discussions of property rights and the limitations of the state to infringe upon property rights. It ceases to be an argument about the rightness/wrongness of abortion/slavery, but about the "right" of you to say "you can't do that!" and certainly about how much power should be given to prevent such things.

There actually used to be quite the vibrant debate about this on the left (think The Nation)... but then I guess they looked at their bedfellows and, like so many debates, positions were picked not on their merits, but by who was on the opposing side.

Re: Of abortion and abolition

Matt — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 13:36:04 -0000

OK, but one rejoinder: it is a bad idea to assume that the historical or cultural associations attributed to a given group of people is a useful guide to the rightness of their convictions about this or that discrete question. To have been or to be right on one question doesn't mean you're right about others, or will be right in the future.

In this way, through much of nineteenth century Europe, anti-imperialists were often associated with reactionary conservatives, with good reason-- but on this question at least, with all their nostalgia for the ancien régime, etc., they were right. The same is true for a given group of people's present political views: the American advocates of women's suffrage were right about suffrage, but those that argued for women's suffrage as a way to preserve Jim Crow were obviously wrong. In the nineteenth century there were plenty of New England, Thomas Nast types who were laudably progressive on race but also anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic bigots of the first order. There were some progressive Americans in the early to mid-twentieth century who had all the right ideas about race and social justice at home, but some truly awful ideas about Stalinism abroad.

The acceptance or rejection of a position by historical/political association leads to some bad places; better to judge each issue on the argumentative merits rather than by the associations of (some of) the people making them.

Re: Of abortion and abolition

Ta-Nehisi Coates — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 13:33:17 -0000

Yes--the broader argument about religion's role in emancipation and the CRM aside--that is my hangup. Again, I think people understate exactly how much 19th century science argued that blacks were either not human or sub-human. But it offered a rather clear line for refutation.

But this is where the bigger problem lies for me. If you extend this of "personhood," I'd argue that the "power of the church" in fact wasn't on the side of establishing black personhood. The black church was on that side. It wasn't like beneficent white people sat around debating this and then a conclusion was reached. More accurately blacks--in the main--applied pressure from the time of emancipation up through the 60s and the walls slowly fell. During that time, the power of the dominant religious communities in this country weren't much help. We've kind of forgotten that before Falwell authored the religious right, he was a segregationist.

Re: Of abortion and abolition

Sebastian — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 13:17:43 -0000

"Several commenters have noted that "alive" question really isn't up for scientific debate, thus giving credence to comparison. I concede the first half, not the second. The claim that undergirded slavery--and really Jim Crow--wasn't simply that blacks lacked "personhood" it was that they either weren't human, were sub-human, or were a lower order of human. This wasn't simply an ethical debate--whole reams of bad science sprung up to back up this notion. Eventually, better science prevailed. I'm arguing that that's a lot more cut and dry than abortion, and that religion was a constant on both sides, and basically dominant among those who defended slaveholding. Science, which rose above the level of alchemy, on the other hand, was not."

I guess I don't understand where you think the non-cut-and-dried confusion on the science is.

On the point of life, the fetus is definitely alive. Slaves were definitely alive. Science has no confusion in either case.

You seem to be stuck on a question like "is the being we are talking about biologically the same species as people we normally give rights to or is this being of some lesser species" as if it turns out differently for slaves and fetuses. In the slave case there was some psuedoscience that pretended the answer was "lesser species". But the clear scientific answer is "same species". The same is true for a fetus. There is absolutely no doubt whatsoever on that matter.

I wonder if you aren't getting stuck on the term 'personhood' because it is being used in its somewhat technical sociological 'term of art' sense. Is that the problem? Personhood in this sense means that the question turns on societal definition rather than a scientific one.

It does. The question isn't scientific. The scientific questions are relatively easy. When does the life of that genetic individual begin? Answer, conception. Is it of the same species as humans? Answer, yes. When is it a person enough to get rights? Answer, that isn't a scientific question. That is a moral question.

Re: Of abortion and abolition

Reality Man — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 13:06:31 -0000

Chet, from what I can remember about it from an article in The Nation from like five years ago, the Anti-Semitic League was an active hate group starting in 19th-century Britain with the goal of ethnically cleaning Britain of Jews. I may be getting the name wrong, but I do remember the author of that article did mention the founder was an atheist (why this was mentioned I can't really remember).