First Things RSS Feed - Christopher Kaczor

The Myth of Vampire Children

Sun, 01 Feb 2015 00:00:00 -0500

My university experience, like that of so many others, was rich. I was a college athlete and editor of a campus paper. I had discovered a love for philosophy, and I was thinking seriously about going to graduate school. Life was great, an ocean of potential.

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If There’s No God, Are Humans Equal?

Wed, 07 Jan 2015 00:00:00 -0500

Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality
by danielle allen
liveright, 320 pages, $27.95

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Equal Rights, Unequal Wrongs

Sun, 17 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0400

In most states, young people can drive a car at sixteen. At eighteen, they can vote and serve in the military. At twenty-one, they can drink alcohol. At twenty-five, they can serve in the House of Representatives; at thirty, in the Senate; and, at thirty-five, as president of the United States. We gain rights as we age. So too, hold some of the most influential philosophers of the day, with the unborn. The child just conceived has no right to live, but one ready to be born does. The right to life is a right one attains sometime between conception and birth.

“The further along the path toward being born a fetus has progressed, the more protection we feel it should have from being destroyed, and the more urgent the need for abortion needs to be (for example, that the life of the mother is at stake),” observes a leading English philosopher Mary Warnock in her book An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Ethics. “Very few people would argue that there is no difference between the decision to abort at six weeks and the decision to do so when the fetus would be viable outside of the womb, which today is generally at 24 to 26 weeks,” argues Frances Kissling, a longtime proponent of abortion, in the Washington Post.

Kissling is right. Most people, including those who are pro-life, share the common intuition that late abortion is worse than early abortion. This intuition seems to undermine the consistent defense of life because it leaves an opening for proponents of abortion to justify at least early abortions on grounds that pro-lifers share. Thus the challenge we face.

A gradualist view of human moral worth appears to be an attractive mean between two extremes. At one extreme, absolutist critics of abortion hold that abortion is always wrong and that the basic moral status of every human being is equal. At the other, absolutist defenders of abortion hold that it is always ethically permissible, even moments before the birth of a full-term baby. The gradualist view captures the apparently reasonable middle ground and may seem to provide the compromise position that so many seek.

Gradualists like Warnock and Kissling seem to have the rhetorical and political advantage, but no sound argument supports the idea that the moral status of a human being—his or her basic rights—is linked to his or her stage of physiological development. That view would call into question one of the most fundamental principles of democratic society: the basic equality of all human beings. If the painful lessons of history are any guide, we must reject any call to divide the human family into those who have basic rights and those who do not.

We should reject, for example, the analogy between the gradual development of a right to life and the gradual attainment of other rights. There is a radical difference between the right to life and the rights to vote or drive or hold public office. Those rights can be enjoyed only by those who can meet the corresponding responsibilities. Five-year-olds have no right to drive, because they cannot meet the responsibilities of drivers. But the right to life does not have any corresponding responsibilities, and so it may be enjoyed by those who cannot discharge any duties, like children before the age of reason or mentally handicapped adults. Although some rights are attained gradually as the person matures, the right to life is not one of them.

We should also reject the gradualist appeal to moderation. It offers a mean between the extremes of holding that personhood begins at conception and of holding that personhood begins at birth. But, as Aristotle points out in the Nicomachean Ethics, not everything admits of a virtuous mean. The mathematical mean between killing one hundred innocent people and killing no innocent people is killing fifty innocent people—a mean, however, that is not virtuous but vicious. The mean between holding that no women have rights and that all women have rights is that just some women have rights, and that mean, too, is vicious rather than virtuous. The moderation of the gradualist view is no evidence of its truth.

More important is that we can account for the greater wrong of late-term abortion without denying the basic equality of all human beings, including those in the womb. There are, as the philosopher Andrew Peach has argued, important ethical differences between late and early abortion that do not require belief in evolving fetal worth.

First, just as murder by torturous means is worse than murder by painless means, so too late-term abortion involving fetal pain is worse than killing of the unborn that does not cause pain. Second, the more easily an obligation can be met, the worse it is not to meet it. To fail to save a man’s life by refusing to walk two blocks is worse than to fail to save his life by refusing to run ten miles. But to finish carrying a pregnancy already several months along is easier (all things being equal) than to finish carrying a pregnancy that has only just begun, thus later abortion is worse than earlier abortion.

Third, later in pregnancy the humanity of the unborn is more evident. Fourth, an action taken deliberately is worse than one taken in panic. Becoming pregnant unexpectedly may induce shock and panic, which lessens the culpability of those who choose abortion then, but as passions cool the choice becomes more deliberate and therefore worse. Finally, the length of a relationship—in this case, between a mother and her unborn child and, to a lesser extent, between the child and his or her father, siblings, and neighbors—affects the ethics of unilaterally ending it.

A sixth argument (not mentioned by Peach) is that late abortion poses greater risk to the woman’s health than does early abortion. Given a general obligation to care for one’s health, a woman choosing the more dangerous late abortion would be committing a greater wrong than if she chose the safer early abortion.

These six reasons justify the common moral intuition that late abortion is worse than early abortion, without justifying early abortion and without denying human equality. However, the gradualist view that the unborn child increases in moral worth as the pregnancy progresses, and the implicit justification of earlier abortions, might still be vindicated on other grounds.

Some defenders of abortion, for example, are drawn to the gradualist view because of the weakness of other ways of justifying abortion, ways that point to a single characteristic—for example, implantation, the development of a brain, being viable, having conscious desires, the ability to experience pain, the inability to twin, being born—that transforms what was merely a human being with no rights into a human person like us. The presence or absence of these characteristics cannot justify abortion.

Some defenders of abortion, for example, hold that beings who cannot experience physical pain have no moral worth, but it is not just the human being in utero at a certain stage of development who cannot experience pain. Those with chronic insensitivity-to-pain syndrome (CIPS) feel no pain whatsoever. The documentary A Life Without Pain depicts the life of Gabby Gingras, a five-year-old girl with CIPS. When her teeth came in, she began to chew off her fingers. She must wear safety goggles lest she damage her eyes by rubbing them too hard. Despite her disability, she is a happy little girl who enjoys playing with her sister and who loves and is loved by her family. Except for her inability to experience pain, she is like any other kindergartner. No one believes—I hope—that Gabby has no moral worth.

None of the characteristics typically proposed by defenders of abortion justifies the exclusion of a human being from full protection. Some are overinclusive, granting the right to life to beings that obviously do not have it. If sentience bestows basic moral worth, we have to recognize the right to life of every worm, wasp, and weasel. Others are underinclusive. If self-awareness bestows moral worth, not only newborns but also adults with serious mental disability merit no protection. Still others do not secure the equal moral worth of all human persons. If conscious desires bestow moral worth, not everyone equally deserves to live. Finally, still other characteristics do not distinguish persons from non-persons because they are episodically related to the human person. Consciousness cannot bestow moral worth because no one is always conscious.

The gradualist tries to overcome these problems by combining these characteristics, treating them as a continuum. But this won’t work. Indeed, if consistently held, the gradualist position entails that killing a twenty-year-old is worse than killing a fourteen-year-old and that killing a fourteen-year-old is worse than killing a six-year-old. But of course this is nonsense, and not even the gradualist philosophers believe it. Human development and moral status are simply not linked like that.

In addition, some human beings in utero are more physiologically developed than some human beings after birth. Compare a pregnancy that continues two weeks past the due date to a baby born prematurely at twenty-five weeks. The more physiologically developed human being remains within the uterus; the less physiologically developed human being is found outside his or her mother in the nursery. If the gradualist view were true, killing a baby born at twenty-five weeks would be more justifiable than aborting one at forty-two weeks’ gestation. No one thinks this, not even the gradualists.

Adding more characteristics that grant moral status, as gradualists do, does not make the gradualist case any stronger. Invalid or unsound arguments do not become stronger when combined. If neither sentience nor the ability to experience pain grants moral worth, neither do the two of them taken together.

A final argument in favor of the developmental view is that people generally do distinguish between the killing of a human fetus and the killing of an adult. They can do so as well from the pro-life view, but without thereby giving up the principle that every innocent human being has an equal right to life. All intentional killing of innocent human beings violates that right, which all of them enjoy, but killing an embryonic human being and killing an adult human being are not equally wrong in other respects. Killing an innocent adult harms the communities that the person contributed to and makes other adults fear for their own lives. None of these harms is involved in taking unborn human life. Similarly, killing a private citizen and killing a prime minister are equally wrong, because the two have an equal right to live, but killing the prime minister may also harm the economy or social stability and perhaps even prompt retaliation or war.

The common intuition—shared, in general, by advocates and opponents of abortion alike—that late abortion is worse than early abortion seems to undermine the basic equality of all human beings and to help justify early abortion. In fact, it implies no such thing. Circumstantially, no two cases of intentional killing of the innocent are exactly alike. Intrinsically, however, every case is identical, as an act that unjustly deprives the victim of life. That it is worse to kill a human adult than to kill a human being in utero, and worse to kill a child already born than to kill one at the embryonic stage, does not in any way justify the killing of the latter.

Christopher Kaczor is professor of philosophy at Loyola Marymount University and author of The Ethics of Abortion: Women’s Rights, Human Life, and the Question of Justice (Routledge).

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Christian Parents and the HPV Vaccine

Thu, 02 Jun 2011 00:01:00 -0400

More than 20 million people in the U.S. alone have HPV, a sexually transmitted infection that can and has lead to sometimes fatal cervical cancer. The vaccination, Gardasil, prevents the most common four strains of HPV but leaves the recipient of the vaccination unprotected against 36 other strains. It can greatly reduce the likelihood of cervical cancer and genital warts caused by HPV.

But do parents who vaccinate their children risk sending a mixed message about the importance of abstinence? As a father who wants to encourage his children to live chaste lives, what should I do?

Obviously, it is a good thing for parents to protect their children from diseases. But do parents who teach their children that sex is reserved for marriage risk sending a mixed message when they have them vaccinated with Gardasil to protect against HPV? In a similar discussion of condom use, moral philosopher and theologian Germain Grisez suggested that trying to mitigate the bad effects of unethical choices we risk suggesting that our children are “unable to avoid sexual immorality.”

Might not the same argument be made against vaccinating to reduce the likelihood of HPV?

One simple solution would be to lie, to tell the child that he or she was receiving a vaccine not for an STI, but for an infection that could be transmitted by a mere cough or touch. The problem, of course, is that it is no more acceptable to lie to one’s children than to seem to condone evil. What is a conscientious parent to do?

I would like to suggest a way out. Parents should vaccinate their children for HPV, but they should not tell them precisely the nature of the vaccination. Likewise, parents should instruct the doctors and nurses involved not to tell their children exactly what this vaccination is for. In this way, the children are physically better protected, but at the same time no mixed message is sent. Both physical health and moral health are preserved.

Parents could avoid lying by simply telling their child, “You need another vaccination in order to prevent possible future diseases,” and leave it at that. This is not a lie. In the event that a child inquires which diseases, the parent could say, “the Human papillomavirus” or “four different strains of a virus, but I don’t know the medical names for each strain,” and leave it at that. These statements are also not lies, since nothing false was said.

There is no obligation to tell the full truth in situations in which speaking the fullness of the truth is not in the best interest of others. In this case, there is no obligation to explain exactly what kinds of health problems this vaccination prevents, and exactly how one could get this disease, particularly since in these circumstances it could lead to the children becoming confused about parental expectations with respect to sexual behavior. Similarly, with most other vaccinations, children are not generally told precisely which diseases they are receiving vaccinations against nor exactly how one might contract the disease. Ideally, the HPV vaccination could take place with other standard medical care.

What if one truly expects that one’s child will live chastely both before and after marriage? Why bother with the vaccination? Even if the children do not know, does not getting the vaccination for their children compromise parents who would know the nature of the vaccination? Wouldn’t this lead to a lessening of parental expectations which itself damages children?

Germain Grisez highlights the danger of parents who begin to expect less of their children:

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Rethinking Single-Sex Dorms

Thu, 12 May 2011 00:01:00 -0400

Many universities, especially religiously affiliated ones, state that they seek to foster both the intellectual growth and the ethical development of their students. Such universities set for themselves a rich goal: to educate the whole person, to develop students inside as well as outside the classroom, to enlarge the mind and the heart.

Two problems face such universities, and indeed virtually all universities: binge drinking and a hookup culture. Binge drinking hampers academic excellence insofar as heavy drinkers are more likely to skip class, fall behind in classwork, and have alcohol-related health problems that hamper academic success. According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, college binge drinking is the leading cause of death in young adults.

In addition to hampering academic excellence, binge drinking also inhibits ethical development by focusing heavy drinkers inwards, on private self-indulgence, rather than outwards to service of others. Binge drinkers are more likely to commit illegal and unjust behaviors, including sexual assault and vandalism. Binge drinking also negatively effects sober or light drinking students who find themselves sexually harassed, insulted, and woken up in the middle of the night.

The other problem on campus, depicted so vividly by Tom Wolfe in I Am Charlotte Simmons, is the hookup culture. Especially for women, hooking up is related to depression, which can damage academic success. Sexually transmitted infections, pregnancy, and pregnancy scares likewise hinder intellectual focus. The hookup culture also inhibits ethical development through a focus on private indulgence in which other people are used for pleasure, rather than on loving, committed relationships. Its practices also impose on others by displacing roommates who get “sexiled.”

What is the solution to these problems? Although there is no perfect solution, meaningful, significant reductions of the extent of both problems are possible.

The answer is simple. Most parents would view it positively. It is compatible with the traditions of religiously affiliated schools. What one change ameliorates both binge drinking and the hookup culture?

The answer is single-sex student residences. Research indicates that students in single-sex residences are significantly less likely to engage in binge drinking and the hookup culture than students living in co-ed student residences.

Let’s look at the connection between binge drinking and co-ed dorms first. Writing in the May 2002 edition of the Journal of Alcohol Studies , Thomas C. Harford and colleagues reported, “Another finding in the present study indicated that students living in coed dormitories, when compared with students in single-gender dorms, incurred more problem consequences related to drinking . . . . The reported differences in problem consequences extend previous studies of underage alcohol use in the CAS (Wechsler et al., 2000), which found that college students residing in coed dormitories and fraternity/sorority house, when compared with students residing in single-gender dormitories, were more likely to report heavy episodic drinking.” The American Journal of Preventative Medicine (2000) and Journal of American College Health (2009) have reported similar findings.

Perhaps students who enjoy risky behavior choose co-ed residences because they seek a more permissive atmosphere. So, the differences between co-ed and single sex residences reflect the kinds of people who choose them, rather than being caused by some difference between single-sex and co-ed residences.

This explanation fails. In almost all cases, students did not select single-sex dormitories, but were placed in them by university officials. Since there was no selection, there can be no selection effect. Researchers found no differences in depression, impulsivity, extroversion, body image, or pro-social behavior tendencies between the two groups—all differences relevant to students’ likelihood to take risks.

Why do co-ed residences have more binge drinking? A plausible explanation is that co-ed living creates a “party” expectation that students fulfill. College males want to get females to drink more, to facilitate hookups. College men themselves drink more as “liquid courage” to approach women and as part of the process of encouraging female drinking (for instance, with drinking games). In order to demonstrate “equality” with male students and so as not to seem prudish, college females drink more than they otherwise would. Single-sex residences reduce this binge drinking dynamic.

Not surprisingly, single-sex residences also reduce the hookup culture. In a 2009 study in Journal of American College Health , B.J. Willoughby and J.S. Carroll found that “students living in co-ed housing were also more likely [than those in single-sex residences] to have more sexual partners in the last 12 months.” Further, those students were “more than twice as likely as students in gender-specific housing to indicate that they had had 3 or more sexual partners in the last year.”

After controlling for age, gender, race, education, family background, and religiosity, living in a co-ed dorm was associated with more sexual partners. Indeed, “two thirds (63.2%) of students in gender-specific housing indicated that they had no sexual partners in the last year, whereas less than half of (44.3%) of students in co-ed housing indicated zero sexual partners in the last year.”

Naturally, some objections may be raised to establishing single-sex residences , especially concerns about enrollment. Students do not prefer single-sex residences, so if a university institutes them, enrollment will plummet.

However, many universities already have a few single-sex residences, and there is no evidence these residences lower enrolment even in part. Other colleges, such as the University of Notre Dame, have only single sex residences, yet have no problems with enrollment at all. If a student wants a “party school,” it may be better for the university environment if that student is deterred from enrolling because of single-sex residences.

Indeed, single-sex residences may benefit enrollment. Many parents would prefer to have single-sex residences for their children. Single-sex residences lead to the perception and the reality of a safer campus, especially for female students. Lower levels of binge drinking and participation in the hookup culture may also lead to higher graduation rates and a more academic atmosphere on campus, increasing prestige, which boosts enrollment.

Another objection is that a university is not a seminary. Division of males and females may be appropriate at a monastery, but not in a residence for college students.

No one is proposing that student residences have compulsory times of prayer like a convent. No one is proposing that student residences have mandatory “spiritual direction” like a monastery. Student residences at universities are not seminaries, but neither should they be visions of Animal House . As so many commentators have pointed out, the current situation is akin to Animal House . An Animal House environment is not conducive to intellectual or moral development. As students at the University of Notre Dame can attest, there is lots of fun to be had and no monastic atmosphere in single-sex residences.

By reducing levels of binge drinking and participation in the hookup culture, universities committed to the academic and ethical growth of students can better fulfill their mission. The time has come to stop bemoaning campus culture and to take concrete steps to improve the situation.

Christopher Kaczor is Professor of Philosophy at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles and the author of The Ethics of Abortion , How to Stay Catholic in College and editor of O Rare Ralph McInerny: Stories and Reflections on a Legendary Notre Dame Professor .

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Pro-Life Doctors: A New Oxymoron?

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0400

In November 2007, the Committee on Ethics of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) published Committee Opinion # 385 entitled, “The Limits of Conscientious Refusal in Reproductive Medicine.” The committee opinion sought to “maximize accommodation of an individual’s religious or moral beliefs while avoiding imposition of these beliefs on others or interfering with the safe, timely, and financially feasible access to reproductive health care that all women deserve.”

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