Since
the landmark Supreme Court case of Roe v. Wade in 1973, the debate
regarding abortion has taken a center stage in the political
discourse of the United States. Unfortunately, this debate too often
degrades into tired platitudes and appeals to party lines on both
sides. Even worse, the well-being of mothers and babies is held
hostage to political power plays.
On
the pro-life side, I often hear appeals to religious principles or
scriptural passages, but how do we apply these in a secular nation?
Can we really expect those who don’t believe as we do to accept the
formulations from a book they don’t read or care about? Apart from
scripture, how do we develop an argument that human life (both pre-
and post-born) should be respected? At a more basic level, is there
an argument to be made that a freshly formed zygote is an individual
human being with individual rights?
On
the pro-choice side, I often hear the line that a fetus, or
fertilized egg, is just a mass of tissues and has no rights apart
from the mother. The problem is, I rarely hear a philosophical reason
for why the process of birth separates masses of tissues from fully
formed human beings. Beyond the ritual of having fluid squeezed from
the lungs and passing through a tunnel, what is the difference
between a baby moments from being born, and one already in its
mother’s arms?
I
think it is clear that, in the context of these important questions,
one’s political opinion be founded on philosophically coherent
principles. And the fundamental philosophical question is this: Are
zygotes and fetuses fundamentally human beings with intrinsic,
individual rights?
Now,
as a Christian, I can’t completely remove the influence of my faith
from my political positions, since the fundamental linchpin of my
understanding of the universe rests in the belief that we are created
in the image of God and like God, we have will, desire, moral
understanding, and the ability to create, destroy, and shape our
environments. Still, even a person who either denies the existence of
God, or whose understanding of God is fundamentally different from
mine, can at least (hopefully) agree that human beings exhibit the
above attributes. That being said, I go a step further in my
philosophy of individual rights.
You
see, the above attributes all focus on “ability”. Humans have the
ability to express will or desire, to create or destroy, to make
moral choices, etc. However, if our definition of a human being only
rests in its ability, what does this mean for the mentally or
physically handicapped? Or for those whose ability is restricted by
external circumstance, like the poor? Or those whose ability is
restricted by past choices, like the prisoner? Even in the past
century, we have seen many atrocities committed by regimes who denied
the intrinsic, fundamental human right to life of one or more of
these groups because they lacked “ability” in one way or another.
Hitler,
Stalin, Pol Pot, and the Kims of North Korea all provide ready
examples of the terror such a definition of humanity can create. It
would be bad enough if these outbursts of violent and repressive
regimes were the only examples we had, but there are new acts of
violence and death perpetrated each day, all over the face of this
planet. Every murder, every execution, every act of war represents
the destruction of one or more human beings. And in order for a human
to kill another human being, they first have to justify it in some
way. Usually this means making an argument that the other human being
has lost their right to life in some way, and have become less than
human. Whether these deaths are justified (for instance in the
execution of criminals or when fighting wars) is beyond the scope of
this article.
But
in the context of abortion, the observation remains true, people
justify killing fetuses using the same psychological mechanism which
allows them to kill enemies. This tells me their philosophical
foundation for human rights is fundamentally deficient. A very
pertinent example is the current practice in Iceland to screen for
Down’s Syndrome and abort fetuses based on the results. On the one
hand, their efforts are being lauded as successfully eliminating the
genetic malady from the country. But at the same time, almost any
parent of a Down’s Syndrome child will tell you just how wonderful,
loving, and happy they can be. How long before we begin aborting
fetuses that have the genetic disposition for heart disease, obesity,
or brown eyes instead of blue?
To
correct this, I argue that we must expand our definition to not only
include “ability,” but also “potential.” Though a fetus is
utterly reliant on its mother for the sustenance of its life and its
ability for self-expression is severely limited at the moment, its
potential for all the above attributes is never diminished. After
all, a newborn baby is just as reliant on its mother’s survival as
an unborn fetus and most humans of any age are utterly reliant on
their communities for their survival, as well. In fact, no matter
what challenges or changes the human organism faces throughout its
life, though its ability is constantly changing as well, its
potential for further expression in each of the above areas (however
small) continues to remain a fundamental attribute.
This
expansion of our definition of humanity has the potential to
revolutionize how we philosophically frame a wide variety of
political and ethical issues, including debates over the
justification of war, capital punishment, euthanasia, poverty
alleviation, environmental policy, and even the extension of rights
to artificial intelligence or extraterrestrials we may come in
contact with (topics which are science fiction now, but may become a
part of reality in the future).
For
me though, the issue is much simpler. Because I’ve fallen deeply,
irrevocably, and irrationally in love with God; I love the bearers of
God’s image just as deeply. To see any destroyed breaks my heart.
#politics #philosophy #abortion #prolife #prochoice
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