We note with continuing satisfaction that Mayor Bloomberg’s big-soda ban has been nullified once again in the courts, this time on appeal. (Our reaction to the original ruling is here.)
The issue here is personal responsibility. Implicit in this ban is the idea that it is the proper role of the State to intervene in the choices of its citizens when the citizens themselves cannot be trusted to choose wisely. But this is nothing more or less than the State assuming the relation of a parent to a child. If it is indeed the case that certain of our citizens are so incapable of adult judgment that they must be treated as children in this regard, then for consistency’s sake they ought to be assumed to be children in other respects as well, and declared wards of the State: incompetent to vote, to enter into contractual obligations, or to assume the other rights and privileges of adulthood. For the Mayor simply to assume on a whim this paternalistic role with regard to all of the adults under his jurisdiction, however, is an unjustifiable abridgment of the rights of the free citizens who hired him — as the courts, twice, have rightly observed.
33 Comments
I completely agree about the paramount importance of personal responsibility, and I am disappointed in your otherwise excellent mayor’s Ahab-like obsession with Big Gulps.
Given your strong support of personal responsibility, I am sure that you would agree that the individual should have the personal responsibility to decide whether to bring a pregnancy to term, whether to marry someone of the same sex, and whether to employ euthanasia when faced with terminal illness.
Regarding terminal illness: yes.
Regarding same-sex marriage: I certainly agree that people should be able to associate as they like. Whether the State should be in the business of legitimizing same-sex marriage, or for that matter any marriage at all, is another matter, upon which reasonable people may disagree. There is also the matter of the State’s right to compel citizens to honor and sanction practices that they consider abhorrent. Should an observant Catholic innkeeper have the right to refuse to host a homosexual wedding reception? Should an orthodox Jewish hotelier have the right not to hire out his reception hall for a Nazi association’s pig-roast? In light of the acceptance of same-sex marriage, there any longer a coherent principle by which the State might withhold its sanction of polyamorous, or even bestial, marriages? These are not trivial questions.
Regarding “the personal responsibility to decide whether to bring a pregnancy to term”: by posing the question in this way, you simply sweep under the rug the central issue, which is whether abortion affects a second, otherwise defenseless party whose rights deserve to be considered.
I am glad that we agree about youth in Asia.
Your assertion about abortions is a cop-out. Those who oppose abortion believe that life starts at conception, or soon thereafter, and hence the putative existence of a second life justifies criminalizing it. Those who support legal abortion believe that life begins considerably later in the gestation period, up to the moment of birth, and hence the mother – and not the state – should make that decision. A slim majority of Americans are of the latter opinion.
However, if you truly believe in individual responsibility, then you would support giving the individual the personal responsibility of making this moral decision for themselves, and not having their choice dictated by those who feel differently. Like gay marriage, abortion is an issue where “reasonable people may disagree,” and those on one side of the fence cannot simultaneously praise individual responsibility while denying others the ability to exercise that responsibility.
Bloomberg is just one in a seemingly endless list of narcissistic politicians who seem not to understand that talented people shun the political arena as the domain of pompous mediocrity.
Calvin Coolidge, a relatively unassuming exception to the general rule, said it well:
Peter, your response on the abortion question is disappointingly obtuse. The entitlement of personal responsibility is to make decisions that affect oneself. This entitlement does not, however, extend to making decisions that violate the fundamental rights of others, and certainly not the most important right of all, namely the right to exist. My right to swing my fist ends where your nose begins.
The dispute, then, revolves around whether there is in fact another party whose right to existence is threatened. To assert that this meta-decision is necessarily up to only one of the (possibly) two parties involved is simply to beg the question. Can’t you see that?
One might just as well apply your reasoning to infanticide, or even the murder of other adults. I could make a plausible case, for example, that life begins at forty.
Circular logic. Why should those who believe that there are two parties involved have the right to impose their views on those who believe that there is only one party involved?
The slippery slope argument about infanticide and murder is preposterous. These are not issues on which reasonable people disagree. The entirety of society believes that both are immoral and should be criminalized. By contrast, a majority of Americans believe that abortion should be legal, at least under some circumstances. If there is any issue where the individual should have the personal responsibility to make their own moral decisions, it would be this one.
The motivation of those who believe that there are two parties involved is not to “impose their views”, but to defend the innocent against being murdered. Arguably the question ought to be not whether others have the “right to impose their views” on pro-abortionists, but whether the latter have the right to impose their views, with fatal consequences, upon the unborn. If there is reasonable doubt about the personhood of developing fetuses (and there is), isn’t the more moral course to err on the side of not killing them?
Actually, reasonable people DO disagree about neonatal infanticide. See here, and here.
Let me add: I believe abortion to be among the most difficult of all possible moral questions, because of the unique crossfading of interests involved.
I can understand that people will disagree about it; I am conflicted about it myself. What I cannot abide is to dismiss it as trivially simple, to reject out of hand that there may be more than a single interest at stake, or to suggest that those who oppose abortion do so out of nothing more than a desire to oppress women, etc.
The contentious and complex issue of abortion can not be resolved by logical argument alone, involving (as it does) issues of morality, ethics, religion, as well as the definition of life itself.
In less complex disagreements between the two dominant worldviews, however, it is not generally a question of “Can’t you see that?”. The real stumbling block is that the Left’s worldview is predicated on its own presumed infallibility.
“Why should those who believe that there are two parties involved have the right to impose their views on those who believe that there is only one party involved?”
But you can’t seriously believe that there is no second party involved, not when a second party is quite visible in the woman’s womb. The instruments of abortion are obviously the instruments of killing. They are designed to snuff out life.
“The slippery slope argument about infanticide and murder is preposterous.” Untrue. Partial birth abortions are unarguably infanticide.
The same used to be true about homosexuality. What guides your moral choices? The shifting opinion of the majority?
Let us assume that you are opposed to infanticide, and that in being so disposed, you join the majority of Americans.
Suppose also that ten or fifteen years from now the opinion of the majority shifts, so as to grant mothers the right to postpartum “abortion”, say for the first week after birth.
Would you oppose such a practice, even if it meant you were at odds with the majority? Would you then consider it justified to “impose your views”? Why?
Your argument is a false syllogism. Those who are pro-choice would not conflate a blastocyst with a child, and believe that the term “unborn” is self-contradictory.
Let’s suppose that a woman discovers that the fetus has spina bifida. If brought to term, the child would have a life which is short, brutal, and excruciatingly painful. Using the power of the state to require this woman to bring the pregnancy to term elevates a theoretical and arguable concept of being “unborn” above the pain and suffering which the mother and child would ineluctably endure. If that’s not depriving the individual from making her own moral decisions, then I don’t know what would.
As you note, abortion is “among the most difficult of all possible moral questions.” That is precisely why the power of the state should not apply. If you believe that the proper role of government is a limited one, and that the individual should have the responsibility to make his/her own moral decisions in difficult and complex circumstances, then the notion of individual responsibility should extend to all actions where reasonable people may disagree, and not only those actions which you personally approve of.
I think that the power of the state should be used to enforce moral issues such as abortion only when there is a broad consensus to do so.
I could be convinced that this issue should be decided on a state-by-state basis, and those states whose citizens are overwhelmingly against abortion should be able to outlaw it.
I do not believe that abortion is either an a priori right or a constitutionally protected right. I believe that Roe v. Wade is results-based jurisprudence with no basis in the Constitution. However, on a national basis, because there is a significant number of people who support legal abortion, that a minority – or even a slight majority – should not be able to impose their views on those who disagree.
This is what is known as an “intuition pump”. We should keep in view, however, that the abortion debate does not revolve around spina bifida. Most abortions are simply a matter of convenience, and if you were to try to restrict abortion rights to cases of monstrous deformity, you’d have quite a fight on your hands with your pals on the Left.
To reverse the pump’s direction: is it acceptable to you that a perfectly healthy fetus be aborted simply because, say, it is female?
Also, in the case of horrible birth defects, why does a mother’s “right” to euthanize her child end at birth? The result of doing so post-natally — the elimination of prospective suffering — is no different, after all. On what consistent principle does a society’s moral interest in preventing a killing depend merely on the location — inside the womb, or outside — of the one being “terminated”?
Notice that if a pregnant woman is assaulted, and the fetus dies as a result, the assailant is charged with murder. Yet the woman herself may achieve the same result with impunity. What this does is to grant a Godlike power — to define whether a “person” exists or not, and so is eligible for moral consideration and the protection of society – to the whim of the woman whose body it happens to occupy. Are you not at least a little uncomfortable with that? That’s no different in principle from my deciding that life begins at forty; all that’s left is consensus.
But, very well: your stated position is that the moral truth is whatever the “broad consensus” says it is. On the only consistent reading I can give your remarks, then, what you are saying is that if in future the consensus shifts so as to grant a mother the right to kill her offspring not at two months prior to birth, but two months (or two years) after, then so be it.
Or am I wrong? Would you at that point rally to the defense of the innocent?
Let me put this more succinctly:
We agree, I think, that one of the primary duties of the State is the defense of the innocent against lethal violence.
Your position is that if there is not broad agreement about whether a party is eligible for such protection, then as far as certain other parties are concerned, they are fair game.
The opposing view is that when it comes to human life, the circle of society’s moral obligation should be expanded to include those innocents whose status is unclear and controversial — that where there is disagreement, we should err on the side of protection.
The fact that most abortions are not due to irreversible birth defects is irrelevant. The abortion bans which are being enacted in various legislatures through back-door means prohibit all abortions, whether they involve sympathetic circumstances or not. I would add that birth defect abortions are a large percentage of late term abortions, and would be criminalized by legislation with a twenty week limit.
I believe that aborting a fetus because it is female is absolutely acceptable. It should be the mother’s decision, and whether or not I personally approve of it is meaningless.
The consistent principle which distinguishes between abortion and infanticide is that a fetus is fundamentally different than a child. In my view, life begins at birth, and once a fetus becomes a person it is subject to the protections of personhood.
I believe that the double jeopardy of assaulting a pregnant woman is wrong-headed. It is one offense, not two.
The reduction ad absurdum argument about killing two year olds is a hypothetical which is too far-fetched to consider. The better question would be whether the Nazis were justified in the genocide of Jews because a majority of Germans were (arguably) in favor of it.
The answer, of course, is no. There are certain rights which are universal and absolute, and among these is murder (excluding self-defense but including capital punishment, with one exception which is not relevant here). I understand that those who oppose abortion consider it to be tantamount to murder, which is why I accept the notion that states where the overwhelming majority of citizens share that view can be justified in banning it.
Reductio, not reduction. We’re talking logic here, not port which has been reduced to a glaze.
Also “there are certain wrongs,” not certain rights, which are universal.
It occurs to me that the legality or illegality of abortion may be entirely misguided. After considering the arguments in this thread both for and against abortion, I am just as conflicted about it as I have been for many years.
It seems to me that a more constructive (pardon the pun) effort can be made towards establishing the legal definition of “personhood” for the purpose of individual treatment within our justice system.
Since the major disagreement about abortion has to do with what each side views as a life and death issue, let us establish what our justice system should recognize as an individual human life, the emphasis being on the word “individual”.
Just to get the ball rolling, as it were, I propose that an individual human life is established either when the placenta disconnects from the mother’s womb, or the umbilical cord is cut, whichever comes first.
So then Peter, my summary of your position:
… seems about right.
No, infanticide has been acceptable in many societies, and philosophers such as Peter Singer justify it today. Even legislation to ensure medical support for postnatal infants who have survived abortion attempts has been controversial (quite famously so).
As for things that are “too far-fetched to consider”, the same could easily have been said about a “broad consensus” in favor of gay marriage, not very long ago at all. The Overton Window moves very rapidly these days.
So: your view, as clearly stated, is that abortion of a fully developed fetus one minute before birth cannot be morally wrong in any sense, because no “life” is being terminated. All depends on the mother’s whim. (You appear to share this view, Henry.)
That’s coherent and consistent, if rather arbitrary. (Despite your blithe assertion that a fetus is “fundamentally different” from an infant, you’d be hard-pressed to find anything intrinsic to the fetus/baby that is different one minute before birth from one minute after, other than where it gets its oxygen from.) You should not be surprised, however, to find that a great many people, even most of those who support some degree of latitude in earlier-term abortions, disagree with you, often quite passionately — so with this position, you are seriously at odds with the “broad consensus” you claim to rely on.
Can we assume, then, that your position is that if I attack a pregnant woman in such a way as specifically to cause her fetus to die, that I am guilty of nothing more than I would be in any other comparable physical assault?
You misunderstood my view, Malcolm. My current view, as formulated just a few minutes ago, is that our societal controversy about abortion may be obviated if we shift the debate to establishing a legal definition for the inception of an individual human life.
Though this would entail a much more grave endeavor than, for example, establishing an individual’s age of consent, it would be an analogous legislative process.
My suggestion that we begin by considering whether the physical separation of mother and infant is a suitable point for an individual’s legal inception was merely a point of departure for a much more thorough consideration by all the interested parties of our society.
But this just pushes the definition of a human life, worthy of protection, back onto the consensus of the majority. Why is that acceptable in the case of the unborn, and not in the case of the Jews of Europe? By declaring on the one hand that the consensus is the only valid criterion, but then arbitrarily declaring certain categories of human life susceptible or not susceptible to this ratification by consensus, you beg the question once again.
Should a moral agent’s obligation to defend innocent life ever trump obedience to the consensus? If so, what is the basis for determining whether one should consider oneself so obliged?
Ah. Forgive me, Henry.
I agree that this is the correct focus of the debate. All will agree, I think, that society has an obligation to defend innocent life, but only one side seems to frame the abortion debate in these terms. The Left seems to prefer to focus entirely upon the rights of the mother, which assumes up front the non-personhood of the fetus.
The flaw in your argument is its reliance on false predicates.
The statement “if there is not broad agreement about whether a party is eligible for such protection, then as far as certain other parties are concerned, they are fair game” posits that a fetus is a party, and hence equivalent to a person. Referring to “the unborn” posits that there is such a thing. Speculating about “a moral agent’s obligation to defend innocent life” posits that a fetus is a life.
My view is that a blastocyst the size of a fingernail is no more a human life than an acorn is an oak tree. It’s a bunch of cells which may at one point become a human life. Along the continuum towards birth, as the bunch of cells takes on human-like characteristics, the conflation of fetus with person becomes more plausible. However, by eliding the distinction between a bunch of cells and a party, a human life, or a baby which just isn’t born yet, is where we disagree.
I am fully aware that I have an absolute view which is not shared by many. It’s a choice between reductio ad absurdum – what if the baby’s head is popping out? – and slippery slope – if eight months is OK, what about eight months and one day? Since there is no defining moment between conception and birth, the solution to this conundrum is to make it the mother’s choice in all circumstances, and not just because mothers know best. I don’t think that many women choose abortion in its later stages casually, and these instances are very often the result of something gone very wrong with the pregnancy. In difficult and painful circumstances, it should be up to the mother and not the state. Those who oppose late term abortions – or all abortions – have the burden to explain the provenance of their moral authority to dictate to the mother that she should give birth to the baby with spina bifida and have both mother and child endure its short, nasty, and brutal life.
As for infanticide: Peter Singer is an outlier, and it is something no right-thinking American should support. However, while we would both agree that killing off old people is morally repugnant, the Eskimos have been doing it for centuries by putting geezers on ice floes and wishing them bon voyage. Maybe they still do it for all I know. I’m guessing that they did not suffer moral angst for it, and those who went off to the big igloo in the sky probably recognized it as the right and proper thing to do. Is that immoral? Hard to say.
As for the guy who assaults a pregnant girl: the crime is no different morally than if he assaulted her and caused her spleen to rupture.
Just to be clear: the case of abortion is a morally ambiguous situation where a broad consensus should hold sway. The case of genocide has no moral ambiguity and is always wrong, regardless of what the consensus in Germany happened to be.
The flaw in your argument, as throughout, is question-begging. The issue here is precisely the one you dismiss with a wave of the hand, namely whether an unborn fetus is a “party” deserving of moral consideration. You simply declare that it isn’t. That isn’t argument, it is mere assertion.
Likewise with the distinction between genocide and mass abortion*. You simply declare that the morality of abortion, unlike genocide, is subject to consensus. Presumably this is based on your previous assertion, namely that there is no “party” who can possibly be the victim of abortion. But this is not established by anything you have presented; it is, rather, the very issue under dispute.
* More than 56 million people who might otherwise have been born in America since Roe V. Wade simply do not exist.
Granted.
Let’s stipulate that a blastocyst comprising 2^10 cells (i.e., 1024 cells) does not a human life make. Moreover, let us stipulate that a crying infant whose umbilical cord has been cut is most certainly a living human individual.
It is clear that the transition from “not a human life” to “a living human individual” occurs at some point in the interim. Can we not then come to a reasonable consensus about such a defining moment?
Such a legal definition need not even be etched in stone. As the biological sciences become more and more sophisticated, we can fine tune that agreed upon moment when a human individual legally joins society.
Would that not be a useful criterion for guiding our imperfect traversal through the vicissitudes of modern life?
Again you rely on the “spina bifida” intuition pump, which confusingly conflates the morality of euthanasia with the morality of abortion.
Better, and clearer, would be for you to say:
This they will be glad to do. They will say that the baby is a distinct human life, and as such is deserving of protection against lethal violence.
Henry, I agree with you; I am also inclined to think that a blastocyst the size of a fingernail is not yet a person, and that some sort of consensus regarding the onset of personhood is probably the best we can do.
Establishing a suitable criterion, however, is not easy. Ceteris paribus, if we have no clear way of defining the onset of personhood, it seems morally obvious that we ought to err on the side of caution — that in our ignorance, it is better to err on the side of protecting non-persons rather than killing those who might deserve protection.
I’m not staking out an absolute position here myself. My only purpose in this too-long exchange is to make clear, in response to Peter’s initial comment, that the anti-abortionist’s position — that there may be more interests at stake than just the mother’s, and therefore society is right to take an interest — is not a trivial one.
Malcolm,
Nothing about this decades-long controversy is easy, by any conceivable standards. As God would undoubtedly say, “I never promised you a rose garden.” (Yes; God confides in me).
Nevertheless, if we are going to continue to argue incessantly about abortion, it seems to me worthwhile to consider an alternative manner in which to reach a workable consensus.
Unless, of course, humanity is too enamored with contention and violence.
Which might just be the case.
The distinction between the morality of abortion and the morality of genocide is that the former is sui generis and the latter is not. We could construct a moral edifice based on universally accepted axioms where the practice of genocide is defined as immoral, as the logical consequence of those axioms. However, the question of when life begins is morally unique. It’s at the bottom of the edifice and not the top.
There are certain moral issues which are not amenable to facts and logic. It is this class of issues which should properly be decided by consensus. You might think that sodomy is A-OK for consenting adults, provided they can withstand the feelings of guilt and shame which these disgusting habits must inevitably cause. Or you might think that sodomy is a crime against nature, which society has the right to outlaw.
You might think that it is right and proper for a baby boy to be circumcised at eight days – and be introduced to Jewish life by getting ten percent off – or you might think that it is the mutilation of a child who cannot protect himself.
So it is with abortion. You are correct insofar as my assertion that life starts at birth is no more or less valid than Rick Santorum’s or Paul Ryan’s assertion that life starts at conception (or in Santorum’s case, on the first date). It is what I believe, but I accept the fact that others can vehemently disagree and neither of us can prove the other wrong.
However, if Ryan and Santorum were to get their way, mothers would have to bear the children of rapists, women would be forced to deliver babies in cases where their health was endangered, and babies with horrible diseases would be born and quickly die after a brief and painful existence. If their belief is that “the baby is a distinct human life, and as such is deserving of protection against lethal violence,” they can certainly believe that. However to impose that belief on all women, regardless of how difficult or painful the circumstances, is using the power of the state not only to deprive the individual of freedom and responsibility, but to cause immense pain and suffering in doing so.
Why is it all or nothing with you, One-eye?
Life is complicated. This is why we have jurisprudence in modern society. Most issues are not cut and dried — in most cases, it depends. It depends on many factors. Not the least of which are the multifaceted personal inclinations of most individuals.
I realize that your personal inclinations outweigh those of the entire right-wing conspiracy. But can you possibly imagine that your personal opinions might be fallible?
You are mistaken about this. The morality of abortion is not distinct, in a crucially important sense, from the morality of genocide, or of other forms of socially sanctioned killing. All involve setting the boundary of the circle of moral inclusion, of declaring which beings are or are not entitled to protection from lethal violence. This boundary can be defined by race, as with the Jews; by ideology, as with the purges of dissidents and intellectuals that we saw in the Communist hemoclysms of the 20th century and the extermination of the heretic Cathars in the 13th; or by stage of life, as with abortion, infanticide, or the exposure of the elderly.
Furthermore: to suggest, as you do, that that a moral revulsion for genocide flows naturally from universal moral axioms is obviously at odds with the historical record, in which genocide is not only commonplace, but is also frequently, and explicitly, sanctioned (for example, in the Bible) as a righteous course of action.
Wearyingly, your final paragraph begs the question once again, by focusing the issue — as the pro-abortion camp always does — entirely upon the rights of the mother (save for yet another conflation of the morality of euthanasia with that of abortion):
One could just as easily say, from the opposite perspective, that if Peter Kranzler gets his way innocent children will be be put to death, at the very hour of their birth, merely for the sin of being inconvenient.
If “Ryan and Santorum” believe, as they do, that the rights of the mother do not include the right to murder children, whether born or unborn, then it would be morally derelict of them not to attempt to intervene — just as I assume you would feel justified in intervening to protect those whom you feel are deserving of life, regardless of whatever annoyance it might cause to the murderer, and regardless of the opinion of the majority.
Well I for one am wholly opposed to killing fetuses by drowning them in Big Gulps, so I hope Bloomberg’s ban survives the challenges.
We did get completely off-topic. That happens too often.