Speaking for sensitive secularists everywhere, David Harsanyi asks: “How many Americans instinctively turn to the pro-choice camp because pro-life proponents aggravate their secular sensibilities?”
Since he doesn’t “hang with” Catholics, Baptists, and Lutherans (I’m compelled to wonder: does he actively avoid these and–I presume–other denominations or does he pursue a personal DADT policy when it comes to the religious beliefs of his drinking buddies?), he thinks their prophetic pro-life witness is a turn-off.
Hmm. I wonder how he would have responded to the Civil Rights Movement in the Sixties. Would all those Revs have been a turn0ff, enough to drive a fellow into the waiting arms of the KKK? Probably not: the KKK, after all, only disliked a few denominations, not all of them.
To his credit, however, Harsanyi isn’t satisfied with a cultural pose that even someone as ham-handed as me can lampoon. He asks, and observes:
Does life really begin on the say-so of a single person—even the mother? Does her position or mental state change what a fetus is or is not? That kind of elastic calculation grinds against reason. Even our intuitive reaction to motherhood agrees. As Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, who is an ob-gyn, once explained, “people ask an expectant mother how her baby is doing. They do not ask how her fetus is doing, or her blob of tissue, or her parasite.”
He assumes that “reason” can settle such questions. Perhaps so, but not mere logic. Why does he find killing a human being abhorrent? Why does he think that life-or-death decisions have some much weight and significance?
I’m tempted to answer that “someone” has written something on his heart. I don’t think his understanding of reason is as impoverished as he lets on.
January 27th, 2011 | 4:16 pm
Harsanyi’s article can be counted as a tentative step in the right direction. The libertarian has to, ultimately, come to the understanding that one logically has to be pro-life in order to be libertarian because there is no greater coercion of a person than to choose to do something that will very likely create a person and then kill the person just created. These persons are self-owners and therefore it must be a sort of axiomatic statement that one self-owner (the abortionist/mother) cannot argue (let alone actually perform) for abortion without essentially arguing against his or her own self. In other words, either the unborn has rights, or no one does; in which case libertarianism falls apart. I think this is the sort of logic Harsanyi is asking for, or in fact, already is aware of, but in the end he foists the responsibility to elucidate it back on the pro-life crowd. I think Pilate really wanted the crowd to get it right too…
January 27th, 2011 | 7:39 pm
You know, I regret writing that I don’t “hang” with religious folks, because I do. I simply don’t “hang” with overtly religious groups. That phrase was actually a placeholder that I should have articulated with more care. Archbishop Chaput, for instance, is a person I know and admire. But that’s besides the point.
I certainly don’t believe “reason,” any more than faith, can settle any debate – or, naturally, you’d see the light and agree with my worldview. And I hope I would not have been driven into waiting arms of the KKK. (I’m a Jew for starters, so it would make for an uneasy relationship.) I readily concede that believers stood on the right side of most battles for freedom, life and dignity in history – from slavery to fighting Communism. But your analogy seems wrong because the motivations of those involved are very different. The KKK was/is fueled by obvious hatred and prejudice. I don’t believe the abortion debate features the same divide, despite the consequences. Even today, a secular progressive would side with a priest over a Klansman. Yet, cultural and political forces almost by default make a secular person pro-choice. If you do allow that these forces play some role, then why would a secular humanist argument for life be a problem?
January 27th, 2011 | 7:44 pm
Aren’t a lot of Christians embarrassed by the antics and attitudes of some of these pro-life proponents?
January 27th, 2011 | 10:48 pm
The Civil Rights Movement analogy is not difficult to answer. There were many, many prominent people in the movement who were secularists and came to the movement through a decidedly left-wing view of the world. The secular left could feel very much at home in this movement.
It’s embarrassing to talk about now but the Communist and socialist movements in America were very early agitators for racial equality and some of the leaders of the later movement (not Dr. King, obviously, but people like Ella Baker, Bayard Rustin and A. Philip Randolph) cut their teeth on far left politics before moving on.
January 28th, 2011 | 8:40 am
The Civil Rights movement was very concerned with how it ‘rubbed’ the sensitivity of Americans at the time. For example there was great concern that the movement would be tarred as an agent of communist agitators (an earlier round of Civil Rights activities after WWI got tarred by the role the Communist Party played in them). The inclusion of so many ‘Revs’ and Catholic clergy (the Church earned a very good anti-communist rep) therefore did serve the ‘sensibilities’ of many Americans not directly aligned with the movement.
Not to say it was all planned that way. The nature of segregation made it so that in the black community preachers were the few people who had the power to speak openly as leaders and Churches were places where large numbers of blacks could meet that segregationists couldn’t outright ban.
January 28th, 2011 | 9:01 am
Ehrlich,
Not really, since they seem to be better behaved than pro-choicers. Do pro-choicer antics embarrass you?
January 28th, 2011 | 9:34 am
I was making two points in this post. The first, which everyone has picked up on, has to do with the apparent connection between secularism and the pro-choice movement. If the source of this connection is antipathy to (or disdain for) people who make religiously-inflected arguments, then, I fear, the difference between the KKK and secularists seems more a matter of quantity than quality. if your only “reason” for taking one side rather than the other in the debate is a kind of visceral distaste for the folks on one side of the fence, then what can I say?
Mr. Harsanyi says that we ought to be offering “rational” arguments for the pro-life position, and if those rational arguments are offered, perhaps some secularists would cross the divide. If I’m not mistaken, plenty of people are making what ought to pass as “rational” arguments. Robert George, for example, doesn’t just go around saying “God says ‘Thou shalt not kill.’” Now, he’s pretty obviously a Catholic, but his personal self-identification doesn’t (or at least shouldn’t) “taint” the rationality of his arguments. If the label is already off-putting, and detracts from people’s willingness to engage with the arguments, then we’re back to the aforementioned prejudice.
So, let it be clear, I’m all for making rational arguments, using anything solid that will be persuasive. I’m not, however, going to ask people to hide their lights under a bushel. Let them call themselves, if they want, “Lutherans making a rational argument for life.”
My second point is that if reason is to be anything other than instrumental (if it is to yield anything other than what Immanuel kant called hypothetical imperatives–”if you desire X, then you must do Y”), we have to inquire where the moral or compulsory force comes from. Why does Mr. Harsanyi think that recognizing the humanity of the baby in the womb will or ought to lead us to view it as worth preserving and protecting?
My implicit answer (I don’t know his) is that our aversion to the death or suffering of innocents is woven into the character of our being. It’s an essential (not accidental) part of what makes us human. It can be corrupted or perverted (by passion or bad argumentation), but in a “normal” human being, it’s present. To the degree that it’s “essential,” to the degree, that is, that we are beings with essences, I’m compelled to look for an ordering principle.
By itself, this doesn’t get me to the triune God or to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but this line of argument is at the very least consistent with the existence of such a God.
In other words, the kind of reason Mr. Harsanyi uses ought to lead him to begin asking theological questions and to want to spend time with (questioning, arguing with) people who identify themselves denominationally. Not all will be good apologists for their faith; perhaps very few will have adequate answers to his questions. But that shouldn’t deter him from looking.
On questions of life (and on other questions), religion shouldn’t be, in the words of the late Richard Rorty, a conversation-stopper. it should be a conversation starter, for “secularists” and for believers.
January 28th, 2011 | 10:18 am
Mr. Knippenberg should leave Kant alone. That’s atrocious.
January 28th, 2011 | 10:29 am
I think the main point is that natural law prevails.
For the Jew, there is the Torah, especially Sinai, whose commands are, after all, a recap of what everyone already knows, and the prophets, eg Ez: “I will take from your bodies your stony hearts, giving you natural hearts.”
For the Christian, we have all that plus St. Paul’s passage (Romans, maybe?) on how even the pagans have the law in their hearts. And of course, we also have Thomas Aquinas, whose feast day it is, and his famous discourse on natural law in the first part of the second part of the Summa.
Even the non-believing secularist who is attracted to the promised equality and fair-dealing advertised in leftist principles, and thereby, for example, concludes that he OUGHT to support civil rights, must ask himself where this ought comes from. How does any “ought,” any judgment of the good, or any preference for one course of action over another come to be? If his introspection is honest, he will find the natural law in there.
Two comments: just because we fail to live by the natural law does not mean it doesn’t exist. All law exists because there are outlaws.
2) I understand being attracted to the promises of the “first things” in leftist thought. However, I believe that both empirical data and sound anthropology reveal that these promises are empty.
January 28th, 2011 | 11:28 am
Joe DeVet –
Sure, but does that natural law have to be supernatural?
http://www.intellectualconservative.com/2007/07/12/universal-morality-and-the-morality-of-the-universe/
January 28th, 2011 | 11:33 am
These days the regular correspondence between being a Christian and opposing abortion rights is interesting. I suppose we can understand this connection for Roman Catholics. For evangelicals, however, the correspondence might just be like the link between evangelicalism and climate change skepticism; or between evangelicalism and supporting Bush’s wars.
That is: it may just be wrongheaded to try to account for the connection in terms of any superior commitment to morality, divine revelation, clear-sightedness, etc.
The connection between secularism and pro-choice likely involves a diversity of factors. Knippenberg’s discussion is quite unhelpful. According to his own clarification, his KKK analogy is clear case of the straw man fallacy. Is anyone suggesting that a secularist’s “only reason for taking one side rather than the other in the debate is a kind of visceral distaste for the folks on one side”? And, even if this were a secularist’s only reason for taking sides in the abortion debate (which is totally plausible), why assume that it would be the only consideration she regards in other controversial issues?
January 28th, 2011 | 3:09 pm
C. Ehrlich writes: it may just be wrongheaded to try to account for the connection in terms of any superior commitment to morality, divine revelation, clear-sightedness, etc.
Then again, it may not.
C. Ehrlich again: And, even if this were a secularist’s only reason for taking sides in the abortion debate (which is totally plausible), why assume that it would be the only consideration she regards in other controversial issues?
First of all, to take the pro-choice side because of a visceral reaction at seeing religious pro-lifers is a feeble reason at best. And secondly, the only reason I would assume that she would consider it sufficient reason in other important matters is – from what – memory, experience?
For C. Ehrlich, I suspect that any reason is good enough when it comes to being pro-choice, and not one is helpful when it is for the other side. Are my suspicions correct?
January 28th, 2011 | 4:57 pm
My second point is that if reason is to be anything other than instrumental (if it is to yield anything other than what Immanuel kant called hypothetical imperatives–”if you desire X, then you must do Y”), we have to inquire where the moral or compulsory force comes from. —Joseph Knippenberg
Mr. Knippenberg should leave Kant alone. That’s atrocious. —C. Ehrlich
@ C. Ehrlich: What are you saying is atrocious? Knippenberg got Kant’s notion of a hypothetical imperative exactly right.
January 28th, 2011 | 6:35 pm
If the presidential election had been held in September of 1968, George Wallace would have won. While the public was not driven to the KKK in great numbers, it certainly recoiled from the Civil Rights Movement and its supporters. That was the basis of the Southern Stratregy that transformed the southern states from Democratic strongholds to Republican ones.
In June of 1992, Bill Clinton was behind George Bush until the day he announced that pro choice was going to be a litmus test for his judicial appointments. If you look at the polling data, the next day he pulled ahead of Bush and never lost ground after that.
Whether you would see the same results after 20 years is open to question but there is no question that the behavior of pro-life activists in the early 1990s was devastating to their cause.
January 30th, 2011 | 12:20 pm
>>TFor evangelicals, however, the correspondence might just be like the link between evangelicalism and climate change skepticism; or between evangelicalism and supporting Bush’s wars.
Well for historic evangelicals it ought to be untrue as the Bible is very clear about the blood sacrifice of children and the willful shedding of innocent blood. But for the modern evangelical it may be increasingly true as the modern evangelical is increasingly a liberal and as such, as pointed out by Machen, has ceased to be Christian.
January 30th, 2011 | 1:41 pm
David Gray,
It’s not really a matter of being against “the blood sacrifice of children” or “the willful shedding of innocent blood.” Stated in these terms, you’ll find general agreement among Christians and secular people alike.
Rather, what’s curious are the peculiar views of pro-lifers. Take for instance the view that aborting a human zygote is, morally speaking, just like murdering a 12-year old child, or the view that resisting a ban against first-term abortions is like supporting Nazi death camps.
These are views that seem to stand in need of a sociological explanation. What accounts for the correspondence between being an evangelical and having beliefs such as these? Just as with the correspondence between being an evangelical and supporting the Bush wars, or being excessively skeptical about climate change, it seems unpromising to try to account for evangelical attachment to such positions in terms of any superior commitment to morality, divine revelation, clear-sightedness, etc.
January 30th, 2011 | 6:27 pm
>>It’s not really a matter of being against “the blood sacrifice of children” or “the willful shedding of innocent blood.” Stated in these terms, you’ll find general agreement among Christians and secular people alike.
And the Nazis would have nodded their heads too. They would argue the Jews weren’t innocent. The secularist equivalent would argue that children aren’t children until they have emerged from the womb for either a moment or an extended period depending on their level of degradation. What’s your point? Fact is lots of people who are willing to advance evil will nod their head to statements of good. The devil, so to speak, is in the details.
>Take for instance the view that aborting a human zygote is, morally speaking, just like murdering a 12-year old child, or the view that resisting a ban against first-term abortions is like supporting Nazi death camps.
These are cute formulations but regrettably not relevant to current popular discussion as Roe v Wade has been interpreted in such a way as to functionally allow abortion up to the moment the baby escapes from the mother and even then they are not safe.
The fact that folk are, for selfish reasons, willing to disregard the biology of the matter and question the humanity of the conceived child is certainly disturbing. Personally I think Molech worship is a slightly better comparison for those who favor legalized abortion than National Socialist Germany but given the education level of the secularist audience it probably doesn’t speak to them.
January 31st, 2011 | 11:25 am
David Gray, if you want to discuss what I’ve written, then address what I’ve written. If you want to talk about other pertinent details, then present those details. Otherwise, just introduce a new topic and drop the pretense that you are responding in a reasonable way to anything I’ve actually stated.
February 1st, 2011 | 12:51 pm
Ray, To your question ” does the natural law have to be Supernatural ?”. In a restrictive sense the answer is no, since the natural law is merely an acknowledgement of the order of things. To my limited understanding of these things the materialist version of this order is that it is self ordered, kind of a perpetual motion machine operating in an open system or maybe a closed system that is running down but either way traditional morality, understood by materialists as a series of shoulds and shouldn’ts passed down from on high, has no standing. In its place is a kind of cost/benefit analysis or worse an arrogant claim to a self actualized awareness of the right gleaned from their superior grasp of the reality of the world or even worse simply the will to power.
The appeal to the supernatural, inspite of many bizarre manifestations and exceptions, was and is an acknowledgement that existence is not flat. Given your apparent pro-abortion position it seems that you think that there is no such thing as a rational pro-life position, whether religious or secular. So I don’t quite understand your need to make the issue of the supernatural central to your comment. What am I saying “central”, it was all there was. No need to reply, please.
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